Nagakute is a small city on the eastern edge of Nagoya's sprawl, and for most travellers it is a single-purpose destination: ride the Linimo out to the Expo park, see the sights, ride back. But the town rewards anyone willing to slow down and explore beyond the park gates.
A famous battlefield
Nagakute's name appears in Japanese history books thanks to the Battle of Komaki and Nagakute in 1584, a clash between the forces of Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu. A small, well-kept historical park and museum mark the site, offering a quiet dose of Sengoku-era history that almost no foreign visitors ever see.
One of the world's great car museums
The Toyota Automobile Museum sits a short hop from the Expo park and holds around 140 vehicles tracing motoring history from the late 1800s onward — not just Japanese cars but a global collection, beautifully presented. Even casual visitors tend to lose a couple of hours here, and it is rarely crowded.
Seasonal gardens
In early summer the town's iris gardens bloom in whites and purples, and the surrounding neighbourhoods preserve a slower, residential Japan — small shrines, family bakeries, rice plots tucked between houses. It is the kind of ordinary-Japan texture that rarely makes an itinerary but often becomes a favourite memory.
Building the day
A satisfying Nagakute day might pair a morning at the Expo park — whether or not you hold Ghibli Park tickets — with an afternoon at the car museum or battlefield site, then dinner in Nagoya. The town is compact, calm, and refreshingly free of the crowds that define Japan's headline destinations.
Get there via the Linimo maglev guide, and read how the whole site came to be in the Expo park's history.