Nagoya Traveller 2: Oasis 21

View of Oasis 21 from Nagoya Tower

It’s been a while since I did one of my Nagoya posts, so I thought it would be nice to break from the usual Magic oriented posts and talk about my city instead. Today’s spot is Oasis 21, located in Sakae near Nagoya Tower.

Oasis 21 is rather new, and was built for the Japan World Expo in Nagoya and opened back in 2005. It has a glass roof filled with water (which you can walk around), and is 3 floors deep. There are various stores in Oasis 21, and quite a few restaurants as well. There are also events that happen there pretty regularly, so if you’re in town it’s worth checking out for an hour or so.

Shonen Jump store

One of the interesting stores of note is the Shonen Jump store. Shonen Jump is the company that publishes the popular manga/anime series Bleach, One Piece, Naruto, Dragonball,  and many others. Inside there are large amounts of anime goods. You can buy posters, keychains, pins, manga, figurines, and many other goods based on your favorite anime. If you’re a fan it’s definitely worth stopping by. (please note that the quantity of goods for any given anime changes from time to time in relation to it’s popularity in Japan. Right now it’s One Piece.)

The NHK/Studio Ghibli store

Right next to the Shonen Jump store is the NHK/Studio Ghibli shop. The NHK shop’s most popular character is Domo-kun, who has gained international popularity in the past few years (especially in the USA). Studio Ghibli is the animation company responsible for the animated masterpieces ‘My Neighbor Totoro’, ‘Princess Mononoke’, ‘The Castle in the Sky (Laputa)’, and quite a few others. In this store you can find many quality goods based on these movies. If you’re a fan of Ghibli this is a MUST see while you’re in Nagoya!

Pokemon Store Nagoya

Not too far from the Shonen Jump and Ghibli stores you’ll find a Pokemon Store. These shops have been around for a very long time, built years ago during the peak of Pokemon’s popularity in Japan. There are 5-6 others in other major cities in Japan. Inside you can buy various Pokemon goods, ranging from video games, stuffed toys, accessories, stickers, etc. You can also reserve movie tickets here and download free/rare pokemon during special events onto your Pokemon video game cartridge via WiFi.

Pokemon Store Union Room

The Pokemon Store Union Room is located across from the main store, and is used mainly for Wifi Pokemon Battles and tournaments. There are also capsule machines with pokemon toys inside of them that you can get by putting 100 yen coins into them, and card based pokemon battle machines against the wall. If you have any Pokemon fan friends, bring them with you and check it out!

Directions to Oasis 21:

Oasis is pretty easy to get to from Nagoya station. From Nagoya station, take the Higashiyama Line to Sakae station. Signs should be posted with directions to Oasis 21, and if you can find them, follow them. Otherwise, I believe you can head towards exit 4 from the subway, and it should bring you directly into Oasis 21. If you are walking around Sakae and want to go there on foot, look for the tall Nagoya TV tower and use it as your landmark. Oasis 21 is in close vicinity to the tower, and you should be able to have somebody point you in the right direction from there!

That’s it for today’s Nagoya Traveller. I hope you learned something new about Nagoya today and found some locations for buying more souvenirs for friends when you visit in the future ^_^. For my regular readers, I will be posting info about the MTG metagame leading into Magic Gameday before this weekend. Thanks for being patient and see you back here again next time.