So our time in Kyoto is done..at least for now. We've got another 3 day visit planned in a little over a week, but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover before then.

Veronica got most of the bags packed last night, so the morning just involved the difficult tasks of eating the ice-creams and snacks that we still had in the freezer, and getting everything out the door so we could get moving to Nagoya.

If the size of a day on holidays is measured in energy spent, then this was the biggest day so far. Today is the first day that I completely drained my camera battery, and was forced to break out the backup battery.

For the last time this trip, we boarded the now familiar subway from our apartment to Kyoto station, and were soon on a Shinkansen in a non-reserved carriage headed for Nagoya.

We haven’t even bothered trying to book Shinkansen tickets for the last 6 or so trips. We have much better luck by just skipping the always long, and always slow lineup at the JR Shinkansen seat booking office, and we just head to the platform 10 to 15 minutes early. Without fail so far cars 1 through 5 have been unreserved cars, so if you’re at the front of the queue when the train pulls up, and people get off, you’re going to get a seat. It has worked fine for us so far.

We’re not exactly familiar with Nagoya, or its train station. Or should I say "stations" since Nagoya station is actually a combination of multiple stations from different rail companies, all crammed together under one massive roof. There are also some subway platforms thrown in there for good measure.

On top of all of the trains is the massive amount of shopping underground, at street level and in the high rise buildings above and around the station. All of this make it nearly impossible for the first time visitor to efficiently find their way through Nagoya station. For much of the trip when we're in unfamiliar territory (i.e. most of the time) we’ve been relying on maps on our phones to get us through, but inside these massive stations, when you’re encased in a million tons of concrete, you can’t get a GPS signal, so you’ve got no idea where on the map you are exactly.

But, we found our way through the chaos, and out onto the street, and headed for our place to sleep for the night, the Nishiasahi guesthouse.

This place got decent reviews, and was a great price. Location is nothing spectacular, at about 15 minutes walk from Nagoya station, but compelling enough for us to give it a try. The guesthouse is located above a café restaurant, which seems to specialise in quality coffee and a limited range of food items, such as the Nagoya specialty “egg sandwich”. Not sure why an egg sandwich is “special”, but I’ll get one at some point over the next few days and see if I can reveal the mystery.

Leaving the bags at the hotel just before lunch, we set out on our day’s activities. We just needed to be back before 10pm so we could check in.

I’m very interested in trying another Nagoya specialty dish while we’re here, called Miso Katsu. It is pretty much a deep fried crumbed boneless pork cutlet, smothered in a miso based sauce. There is a recommended restaurant with several locations, famous for their version of this dish, and as luck would have it, there is one at Nagoya station. So after backtracking to Nagoya station, and setting the location of the restaurant into our map, we began our search. Do you think we could find the damn restaurant?

Defeated, we gave up, and just decided to settle for whatever establishment we could get into, which was a largely forgettable restaurant serving largely forgettable meals. The miso katsu remains on the to-do list.

We headed for Nabana No Sato, which is a botanical gardens of sorts, which for a few months a year hosts one of Japan’s biggest illumination events. This is held on the same peninsula of land that Nagashima Spa Land is situated on, which is the theme park we’ll be visiting tomorrow.

Getting off the train at Nagashima, we immediately began thinking we’d made some kind of mistake. There was nobody around…anywhere. Aside from a bus that just pulled away, the town was essentially deserted. The next bus wasn’t due for another 40 minutes, and Google Maps was telling us that the walk to the illumination was 25 minutes, so we decided to walk.

The walk was surreal. Without exaggeration, it was reminiscent of a recent human extinction level event, such as a zombie apocalypse. Signs of human life were present, such as washing on clothes lines, and kids playgrounds, slightly rusty and overgrown, with the squeaky merry-go-round still slowly rotating in the breeze, but there were no signs of the humans. They were just…gone.

We stopped walking at one stage and all stopped talking, and we heard something we haven’t heard in a very long time. Absolute silence. No cars. No trains. No talking. After a little over a week in Japan, this was quite alien to us.

After about 20 minutes of our solitary walk, we began to see signs of life as we approached the illumination. And, as a bonus, more cherry blossoms that we’d seen for the entire trip. Price for entry was pretty steep, as around $25 per person, but we’d come this far and we’ll never be here again, so we paid the entry and were ushered inside the gates.

The entry fee is almost too expensive, but it includes $10 worth of vouchers per person to spend on food or souvenirs inside the park, which we would have spent anyway, so to make myself feel better I’m calling entry $15.

With a few hours until dark, we explored the park. It was, as you’d expect from a botanical gardens style park, very tidy and immaculately kept. There are apparently many different types of cherry blossom trees, with many different coloured flowers ranging from white, through to pink and red, and also yellows and greens. Pretty certain we saw all of them today.

The walk through the park took around an hour, so with an hour to kill before sunset, with the illumination starting at 6:30pm, we grabbed a table and spent some of our vouchers on foods.

Each voucher was 500 yen or thereabouts, or around $5, and I’m sure by amazing coincidence, each of the foods for sale was 500 yen! Easily the most overpriced food we’ve seen in Japan, but still not horrible value like you’d expect from a captive market like an Easter show or theme park in Australia. Pida pocket kebabs, Takoyaki (octopus balls), Yakiudon (fried noodles), bakery bread products, dumplings, and the list went on and on.

Come 6:30pm, we were honestly exhausted, but when the lights came on it made it worth the wait. Easily the best illumination I’ve ever been to. Trees and pathways were all lit up, and led you from one illuminated area to the next. In one part there was a giant blue field of lights and gates, in another was a lake with rows of lights shooting across its surface following the curvature of the water through the park, and groves of cherry blossom trees lit up to accentuate their colours.

The one thing missing from this park was the crowds. When we arrived the park was essentially empty. We expected this to change when the sun went down, but it just didn’t. It got a little busier after the lights came on, as you’d expect, but it remained, what I would classify, as “empty”. Which was magnificent.

In the middle of the park is a giant UFO style observation platform named Island Fuji, since it is a round observatory with a model Mount Fuji in the middle. This observatory raises up on a crane arm 45 meters into the air, and rotates giving the occupants a 360 degree view over the gardens and illumination.

Again, the lack of queues worked to our advantage, and we were able to pick the exact time we wanted to go up in the UFO. After no more than 10 minutes wait, we were aboard, and raised into the air for what was a short, but pretty fantastic view of the illumination, and out to the abandoned cityscape beyond the walls of the botanical gardens. The view from up high made you appreciate just how much work has gone into the illumination, and the sheer size of the displays on offer. From 45m up it is easy to see why Nabana No Sato is considered one of the best illuminations in Japan.

Onwards from the observatory, to the main event of the illumination which is the light tunnels, and light up video wall. The light tunnels are, as you would expect, a giant tunnel. Of lights. That’s pretty much it. But one does not get to walk down a giant tunnel of light very often, so it was fairly unique.

The video wall was however, magnificent. Made all the more enjoyable by the lack of crowds, the video wall is a huge screen, easily 50m or more long horizontally, by about 25m high, which displays a movie in lights choreographed to music. On the ground in front of the screen of lights, more lights cover the ground which also form part of what is being displayed on the screen. For example, when an ocean scene was being played out on the screen the lights on the ground in the foreground turned into a sea of blue waves very successfully extending the ocean scene towards the audience.

8:30pm, much later than we expected to be staying, we made the made the trek back to the centre of Nagoya to return to our hotel so we could check in. On this trip however we opted for the bus instead of walking through the human free apocalypse zone, especially since it was a very dark night and street lights are another thing that isn’t seen much around this area of Nagashima.

Tomorrow will be an even bigger day, if that’s possible. Nagashima Spa Land is our destination, a roller coaster focused theme park just south of where we were for the illumination tonight.