Nagoya Castle and the new arena
The arena beside Nagoya Castle sits in the Meijo area, at the northern end of the city centre. It is a ten-minute subway ride from Sakae and the same again from Nagoya Station, which means most people will eat before or after rather than nearby. If you do want to stay put, the streets south of the castle towards Marunouchi have the office-lunch density that Japanese cities do well: set meals under ¥1,200, served fast, gone by two in the afternoon.
Mizuho, for the stadium
Mizuho is residential, south-east of the centre, and it does not have a restaurant district. Plan to eat at Kanayama on the way, which is two stops away on the Meijo line and is the best-connected station in the city after Nagoya itself. Kanayama has an under-the-tracks strip of izakaya that fills the moment a match ends.
The port
Port Messe, in the south-west of the city, is at the end of the Aonami line from Nagoya Station — about 25 minutes, and the last stretch runs past container terminals with nothing on either side. There is very little to eat at the port end. Eat in the station building or at Sasashima before you get on the train.
Toyota and Nagakute
Both are outside Nagoya and both are reached on Meitetsu or the Linimo. Toyota is a car town with a genuinely good yakiniku culture, because the beef supply chain runs through it. Nagakute means Ghibli Park, and the restaurants there are geared to families rather than to sport.
Build the day around the session, not the venue
Sessions cluster in mornings and evenings, which leaves a long hollow afternoon — exactly when Nagoya’s lunch kitchens close. The move is to eat lunch properly at noon near a subway hub, see the evening session, and let dinner be the late one: the wing houses and Taiwan ramen shops are open long after the medals are decided.
Keep the IC card charged; the crowd at the ticket machines after a session is its own event.
What to expect from the city itself
Nagoya has not hosted an event on this scale before, and the restaurants in this guide are mostly small — twenty seats, one or two people cooking. Popular places will queue harder than usual through late September. The practical answer is to eat at unfashionable hours: lunch at 11:15, dinner at 17:30. Both work in Japan and neither is considered strange.
One warning about closing days
Many independent shops close on a fixed weekday, and Games traffic does not change that. Every restaurant page on this site shows the closing day and the hours as the shop reports them. Check the day before you build a route around one place.