Nagoya Japan Starbucks Mug

Last week I spent my Golden Week holiday on a trip dornw to Nagoya and Kyoto. Naturally Something I had to do was buy the Starbucks mugs for each city (check back in a few days for my post about my awesome new Kyoto Starbucks Mug 😉 ) and I’m very happy with them!

The Nagoya one is very cool. As with several other locations in Japan, 2010 saw a revamp of several city mugs with completely new designs and a different look that included some metalic paint usage as well. I love the refreshing orange, blue and brown colour scheme on the new Nagoya mug and really appreciated the use of traditional Japanese patterns in the background.

Nagoya, Japan Starbucks Mug

There is quite a lot of Nagoya specific design elements featured on this mug from the samurai carrying their family flags (will upload a video of a reinactment we witnessed soon) to
Nagoya Castle where I filmed this video of the Nagoya mug and took the above photo.

The main focus of the mug is of course the giant brown/gold “fish” which is in fact an Orca (i.e. “Killer Whale”) and is actually a traditional symbol of protection in Nagoya and replaces the usual guardian lions in many places. The kanji for these creatures is “鯱” and can be read two ways. 1) “shachihoko” which refers exclusively to the magical creatures shown here. 2) “shachi” which means “orca”. This is very confusing, even for my Japanese friends with numerous sources having different interpretations. When reading up more about Nagoya Castle you will most likely hear that these creatures are “Golden Dolphins” which can seem quite random until you remember that Orca’s aren’t whales as they are famously referred to, but a species of dolphin.

If you look closely at the photo and video on this page you will notice there are two golden Orca atop the Nagoya Castle which are said to protect the building from fires and used to be able to be seen from miles away.

Also while in Nagoya I happened across a Starbucks in Sakae that was using the new Starbucks Logo. Hadn’t seen it in use yet in Japan so thought it was worth filming.