I spent a year (1989-1990) at Nanzan Daigaku studying Japanese. Nagoya is the Detroit of Japan – home to Toyota motors.

I give it a “not worth visiting” because there isn’t much to see from a touristic perspective, but I had a crazy time living here, partying with drunken college students, camping in nearby Mie Ken, hanging out in the discos in the center of town and the underground shopping mall beneath central park, browsing the CD collection at Tower Records in Parco.

When the school year was over, I lived for a couple of months in a seedy apartment in Imaike, the red-light district, while working nights as a bartender in a jazz bar called “Jungle Jap.”

Formative years!