When you look at a tourist map of Japan, Nagoya isn't a highlight. There's a castle, but the original burned down in the fires of WWII. The current castle was rebuilt in 1959. None of the gardens of Nagoya make the list of the finest in Japan. And there isn't a lot of history, because Nagoya didn't become a major metropolitan center until the late 1800s.

Nagoya is known as a center of the automaking industry. Some of Toyota's factories are just outside town, and other manufactuers are in town. It's also the home of Noritake china and Ibanez guitars.

So why am I going to Nagoya? There are two places that drew my interest. First is the Tokugawa Art Museum . Founded in 1935 and still owned by relatives of the Tokugawa shoguns, the museum houses numerous artifacts. Among these are books, tea ceremony utensils, and full suits of armor which were actually used by shoguns all the way back to Ieyasu in 1603. Among the collection are 10 Japanese National Treasures, 57 Important Cultural Properties, and 46 Important Art Objects. Among these are most of the surviving pages of the illustrated Tale of Genji (genji monogatari), the world's first novel, written by a lady of the Imperial court in the 11th century.

The second place I'll be visiting is the Ando Cloisonne shop. (No link - the site is in Japanese.) I stopped in at the Ando shop in Tokyo's Ginza district in 2005, and it was amazing. But this is the "head office," the headquarters of the company. In addition to a very nice shop, there is also the Ando Museum. It is a rotating collection of masterpieces created by the Ando company through all its years of existence. I expect to be dazzled.