Day one — the city, on foot and by subway
Morning in a kissaten anywhere near your hotel, because it is the cheapest good breakfast in Japan and it is local. Lunch is hitsumabushi near Atsuta, which is also where the shrine is, so the afternoon plans itself. Evening in Sakae for chicken wings, and then as late as you like — Nagoya’s centre stays open.
Day two — Inuyama, half an hour north
Inuyama has one of only twelve surviving original castle keeps in Japan and a preserved street beneath it built for eating as you walk. Go in the morning, eat your way along the approach, and be back in the city by mid-afternoon. Meitetsu runs there directly from Nagoya Station.
Day two, evening — Osu
The covered arcades at Osu are the one part of Nagoya that feels genuinely unplanned: second-hand clothes, Buddhist temple, electronics, Brazilian food, tenmusu counters. It is a good place to eat several small things instead of one meal.
Day three — pick one direction
East for Ghibli Park and the Linimo. South-east for Okazaki, where hatcho miso is made, and where Tokugawa Ieyasu was born. South for the Chita coast and the fishing ports, on the way to the airport. Each is between forty and seventy minutes from the centre, and each has a food reason to go.
If it rains
Nagoya is a good wet-weather city. The underground malls at Meieki and Sakae connect stations, department basements and hundreds of restaurants without surfacing; Osu’s arcades are covered end to end; and the industrial museums near the station — trains on one side, looms and robots on the other — pair naturally with a long kissaten stop.
Save Inuyama and the coast for the clear day. The castle street and the ports are open-air pleasures.
Leaving
Chubu Centrair is on an island reached from Meitetsu Nagoya in 28 minutes on the fast train. The fourth floor of the terminal has a replica Edo street with several of the region’s specialities, which is the last chance to eat any of them and the only one that is open at six in the morning.