Nagoya Hotels

Nagoya is the third-largest incorporated city and the fourth most populous urban area in Japan. Located on the Pacific coast in the Chûbu region on central Honshû, it is the capital of Aichi Prefecture and is one of Japan's major ports along with those of Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Yokohama, Chiba, and Hakata. It is also the center of Japan's third largest metropolitan region, known as the Chûkyô Metropolitan Area. As of 2000, Chûkyô Metropolitan Area has 8.74 million people, of which 2.17 million live in the city of Nagoya. In 1610, Tokugawa Ieyasu moved the capital of Owari province from Kiyosu around seven kilometers to a more strategic location in present-day Nagoya. A new large castle, Nagoya Castle, was constructed partly from materials sourced from Kiyosu Castle. Along with the construction, the entire town of around 60,000 people, including the temples and shrines, moved from Kiyosu to the new planned town around Nagoya Castle. Around the same time not far away, the ancient Atsuta Shrine was designated as a way station called Miya (the Shrine) on the important Tôkaidô that linked the two capitals of Kyoto and Edo (now Tokyo). The town thus developed around the temple to support travelers. The combination of these two castle and shrine towns forms what we now call Nagoya.