Nagasaki - 2nd - 7th May

This Golden Week would be the last 'big' trip that Todd and I would take in Japan before heading home this summer. After a great holiday in Kyushu two years ago I wanted to go back again, but obviously still wanted to explore somewhere new. So we decided to visit Nagasaki - one of the last prefectures on my 'places to visit: Japan bucket list'. Because of travel prices rising during Golden Week, we decided to extend our trip to save some money and so would be in Nagasaki for 5 nights. Needless to say I had been looking forward to this trip for a long time.

Friday was a day of travel. We got up at 6:30am to catch an early train, take a bus, get on a plane and ride another bus to end up at the hotel right around 5:30pm. We were pleasantly surprised that one of the bus stops dropped us off right outside our hotel so at least the journey ended quickly once we made it to Nagasaki City. We had a quick break and time to freshen up before we were out on the streets heading to China Town to have dinner with a couple of friends from Tokushima, who happened to also be in Nagasaki that night. The China Town in Nagasaki is supposed to be the oldest in Japan, but I found it more than underwhelming. It consisted of two streets forming a cross and had a few rather expensive restaurants, and some shops but nothing much of note. Dinner however was delicious so I can't complain too much.
After dinner we decided to go up Mount Inasa which was said to give a brilliant night view off the city from the top - apparently one of the top three night views in Japan. Unfortunately it was a little misty by the time we got up there (there was a bit of a wait for the ropeway) but we could still see a lot of the lights down in the city and we were still able (with some difficulty) to get some nice photos, and I was looking forward to the next day when we could begin exploring and sightseeing properly.

Hard to take photos with the mist

Proving that we were there!

Because we had booked for longer than we would have done if travel prices had been better, we didn't feel pressed for time as we usually do on our various trips, so we allowed ourselves time to relax in the morning (watching terrible but addictive kids TV) before getting up and starting the day. Saturday was to be our busiest sight-seeing day as we planned to visit most of the more popular sights in the city. We started off by visiting Dejima - a man-made island that was at first used to house the Portuguese residents in Nagasaki, and went on to hold Dutch workers and traders - the only Westerners allowed to remain in the country during Japan's period of isolation. I must admit, this place definitely sounded better on paper as when we were there it was pretty uninteresting. Now the island is no longer an island as land has been built up around it over the centuries, and so it is hard to really appreciated how segregated the Dutch actually were. Not only this but the majority of the buildings on the island burnt down at one point so there are not many of the original buildings left. There was however the old theatre that showed an informative video which was interesting so I'm glad we got to see that. Continuing on the Dutch theme, once we left Dejima, we headed up towards an area called 'Dutch Slope' - a street that had a few western influenced houses, former home of western merchants who settled there in the second half of the 19th century. Once again, a bit underwhelmed, we moved on quickly.

Nagasaki's mascot - it encourages people to walk, we'd be doing plenty of that!

Dejima island

On Dejima island

Model of the island

Originally the only gate into the island

Next up was the Confucius Shrine, Koshi-byo, which was built by Chinese residents in 1893. For Todd and I, this was more what we were looking for as the shrine looked very impressive, full of vibrant red and yellow colours vastly contrasting the pure white of the numerous statues in the main courtyard. There was also a pretty little pond where you could feed the resident carps. At the back of the complex there was a Chinese history museum which held various artifacts from China. Although there was no information available in English, it was still nice to walk through and see the items, and we were even treated with two warriors and a horse from the terracotta army, which was pretty fun to see.

Feeding the fish

View from the top of Glover Garden

Dressing up!

Back out in the bright sunshine we then headed over the the Glover Garden open air museum where you could explore some of the mansions of the former western residents that settled there, including that of the Scottish merchant, Thomas Glover. These houses were fairly impressive and the whole area was a beautiful place to wonder around in. There was also an option for the visitors to dress up in the clothes of the time to wonder around the garden in. We didn't do this ourselves, but it was fun to keep wondering past people who were dressed up in these beautiful costumes. A highlight for me (which Todd thought very amusing) was the small patch of pathway that was labelled as the oldest asphalt road in Japan! How cool is that?! Ok, I admit that's not really that exciting, but I still took a photo anyway! After wondering around these houses for a little time, we exited out the other side and stumbled onto a great little street that sold souvenirs. The main famous food sold in Nagasaki is the castella cake - a very tasty sponge cake based on the Portuguese recipe. I was very excited to see that they had branched out and had this cake sandwiched around a block of ice cream, so Todd and I enjoyed one of these as we wondered along the street towards the final stop of the sight-seeing part of the day - Oura Church. This church is considered the oldest standing Christian church in Japan and it was pretty impressive from the outside, being extremely tall and this being accentuated by being placed at the top of a hill. However, there's not much more to say about it as inside looked like any other church I'd been into, and we were both a little annoyed to have payed an entrance fee.

Here it is!

Thought this was cute!

After all this exploring we decided is was high time we got some proper food. At the bottom of the street with Oura church we were spat our very near the waterside. We made our way to the water and wondered along it back towards our hotel looking out for something to eat. We finally stumbled upon Dejima Wharf - an area full of restaurants looking out over the bay that was right near where we started in the morning and pretty close to our hotel. We found a little restaurant that looked like it served fresh fish, so we sat down and treated ourselves to a great set of delicious sashimi and took a load off whilst watching the world go by. It was very relaxing.

After walking around for so many hours, the sun beating down on us, and then sitting down with food and a drink, we found that we were both pretty dead already. We chose to head back to the hotel for a relax before heading out to look for something for dinner (I told you this trip was more relaxing than usual!). Once we had relaxed and got back some energy and appetite, we left the hotel with an idea to make our way to a shopping centre about a 20 minute walk away that would hopefully have something we would want to eat for dinner. One the way we went to another historical sight - the monument for the twenty-six martyrs of Japan who were a group of Christians who were executed by crucifixion on February 5, 1597 in Nagasaki. There wasn't much to this monument, and I didn't know too much about the history of the site, so we didn't stay long, then we continued our walk to the mall, finding a delicious Indian to eat at before catching the tram back to our hotel where we watched a movie before heading to bed.

Monument for the 26 martyrs

Peace fountain with statue in the background

The next morning we had decided to check out the Peace Park and museum that commemorate the atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on the 9th of August 1945. The park was very simple but enjoyable to walk around. On the way towards the giant peace statue at the end, various statues of peace donated by other countries to Nagasaki were displayed. Some of them were extremely interesting as there was a information sign for each statue declaring where it was from and the reasons behind certain aspects of it, however they were somewhat eclipsed by the huge statue that is the focal point of the park. I do believe that out of all the statues I've ever seen, this is hands down the most impressive and my most favourite. The photos do not do this thing justice - it is huge. What I liked most about this statue was the reason behind the pose. The right points towards the threat of atomic bombs, the left is stretched to the side, palm down to present eternal peach, the right leg is folded in a meditative position whereas the left is ready for action. The eyes are closed in prayer for all of the bomb victims. It was both humbling, and inspiring. After seeing this statue we headed over to the location of the hypocentre of the bomb where a black stone pillar marks the position the bomb was dropped. We then ventured into the bomb museum itself which, just like the Hiroshima museum, was thought-provoking and extremely sobering. I had a mixture of emotions going through me during out time in the museums, mostly sadness but this was mixed with bitterness and a strong anger - how could something like this possibly happen not once, but twice?! And how, even after the world is aware of the consequences of these bombs, they are still around and ready to be sent at the touch of a button. It's hard not to fall into despair at this thought.

Marking the hypocentre

Delicious saraudon and champon

It was a very quiet walk for a while after we emerged from the museum, punctuated with my outbursts of frustration at the whole thing. However the wonderful weather made it hard to keep my spirits down for too long, and we were soon grabbing lunch at the local mall - two famous dishes in Japan, saraudon and champon. We knew that at some point on this trip we would need to try these foods, so we took this lunch opportunity to get one of each and share. They were both rather yummy, but I preferred the saraudon and Todd preferred the champon so we had a very harmonious lunch together munching on our preferred dish.

After this it was time to head back to the port to go on the only activity that we had specifically planned and booked - a boat trip to the abandoned island Hashima, which has been given the nickname of Gunkanjima, meaning Battleship Island. This island used to be a coal mine until it closed in 1974. When the mine closed the close to 5000 residents were forced to leave, abandoning the island and all its buildings. Over the years the buildings and mining facilities have been broken down due to the weather including strong typhoons so now most of the buildings are just shells of what they used to be making it quite a creepy experience to walk around. However, because of this deterioration it also meant that tours can't get very close to the buildings for safety reasons. Even so, it was still cool to be on the island and see things from afar, and especially interesting seeing photos and videos of people living on the island. It's hard to imagine it. In one area we were shown a very beaten looking swimming pool - still with dividing lines painted on the floor which I thought was pretty cool, but it was also quite sad to see. Children were brought up on this island, and now it's just a ruin. It's hard to get your head around. This island is not as abandoned as it seems though as during our boat trip around the island, we saw a few locals who had clearly come to fish for the day. It was nice to see that the island still got a bit of action, even if the buildings were no longer in use. Anyone who is a fan of the Bond films might recognise the island as one of the scenes in Skyfall was actually filmed on a set based on the island.

Remains of the swimming pool

Apartments in the background

The building on the right is the school

More apartment blocks

The island

Back to the mainland being battered by the wind made it a pretty tiring trip. We decided to grab dinner before going back to the hotel as there was a chance that once we went back, we wouldn't want to go out again. I had heard of a very special burger made in the nearby town of Sasebo that I was sorely tempted to try. Sasebo was too far for us to get to but luckily we found a little stall selling the burgers a short walk from our hotel. These burgers were simply delicious! I'm not even sure why they tasted so good, but it was definitely a good way to end the day and we both headed back to the hotel feeling very content. It wasn't long after we got back that I gave up the battle and fell asleep very quickly as it was yet another tiring day.

yum!

Let's road trip!

Cute car!

As I've said before, we had much more time for this trip than we normally would have done, so we decided to take advantage of this time and take a day trip across the prefecture to Shimabara peninsular. We picked up our rental car in the morning and started the hour or so drive that would take us to our first stop. Unfortunately due to it being Golden Week, some parts of the journey took a little longer than we were expecting. However we eventually broke through the traffic and had a lovely drive that spent a good while hugging the shoreline which gave us a great view as we were going along. First up we had a very quick stop to the the giant model of Sakamoto Ryoma (a very famous historic person) who had been dressed up in the sports arena in the colours and uniform of the Japanese football team! It was fun to see this very iconic image of Ryoma in such a modern outfit (football included) and it was a good way to get a little giggle into the morning.

Sakamoto Ryoma, ready for the world cup!

We decided not to go to Shimabara castle (we've seen enough of those) instead opting just to drive past it on the way to the next site. Shimabara is the home of Mount Unzen, and active volcano that last erupted from 1990 - 1995. The pyroclastic flows destroyed many houses along its path, and we went to see the sight of buried houses that were hit by the mudflows from the volcano. This was an eerie experience. It was strange to think that these are actual houses and that they are not destroyed, but simply buried beneath the ground. It made me really sad to see these wasted houses, and also intrigued as to whether many personal items could be salvaged from the houses - especially those where the upper stories were still above ground. I also couldn't imagine how the owners of these homes must have felt - the houses are still there but inaccessible. Crazy.

We then headed up onto the mountain towards the hot spring town of Unzen Onsen. Here we could walk around the 'hells' that greatly reminded us of our experience in Beppu two years ago. The rocky area we walked around had several large vents where the (rather smelly) sulfurous steam billowed out, oftentimes swallowing us up so we couldn't even see one another. It was really fun and very impressive. They turned pretty sinister though when we read that in the past they were used to execute Christian rebels!! Being in an onsen town, even I had to admit that we couldn't leave without going to an onsen. So I managed to brave my third, and I'm pretty sure final, onsen visit in Japan. It's just too hot. Coming out steaming and looking as red as a lobster, we meandered back to the car where we made our way back to Nagasaki city to return it to the shop. Then we had a lovely Italian dinner before once again calling it a night so that we could relax in the hotel and check out some of the terrible TV programmes available to us.

Tuesday was our last full day and night in the city and so we used it to go to do and see the things we hadn't managed yet so that Wednesday would be free for whatever else we found. We started off the day going to the Penguin Aquarium which was a thirty minute bus ride out of the city. We kind of decided to go here on a whim because we had nothing better to do, and it was a cute way to spend an hour, though it was nothing special. We spent a little time watching one particular penguin zoom around the pool, grooming himself and leaping out in excitement. It was fun to watch. We also had the extremely healthy breakfast of ice cream, so that was obviously good!

Then we headed back to the city, where luckily, we ended up at another spot we had planned to go to eventually, even though this wasn't the time and I had made us get off the bus ages before the stop we were actually aiming for! Whoops. So this little stop was at the Megane (glasses) Bridge which is just a cute little bridge spanning the river that is said to look like a pair of glasses when you look at its reflection.

After this we wondered back over towards the Glover Garden area to get all our souvenirs (castella cakes and champon crackers) before grabbing some ice cream and heading back to the hotel to dump our purchases. The afternoon was spent on a couple of failed missions, namely a very busy purikura area and a closed beer garden, but we weren't to be disheartened, instead we headed out for a night-time stroll, checking out the lights at China Town before heading back to Dejima Wharf to explore some more of the restaurant options to find somewhere nice to go for our last night. And we certainly did! We found a quirky 'pub' (for lack of a better word) that was on the first floor with a terrace overlooking the water. We secured ourselves a table right in the corner and were happy to find that for our entire meal we were the only ones out there. We had some celebratory wine, delicious cheese and crackers, and quite possibly the best fish and chips I have eaten since being in Japan. All this whilst looking at all the lights reflected in the water. It was perfect and a brilliant way to end a lovely trip.

Oh deliciousness!

So romantic!

The next day we checked out of the hotel and went to do some purikura as our little reminder of the trip. We took a tram to a rather underwhelming looking temple and decided not to go in, and instead too a leisurly walk back to the water front and on to a quick lunch. Then we caught a bus back to the airport and waited for the plane to take us home, getting home in good time with no issues. And that was that. I had a really nice time in Nagasaki, and definitely felt like I did everything I wanted to. I don't think I would ever need to go back. This has been the most relaxing trip I've ever been on in Japan though and it reminded me that spending money for an extra day you might not think you need does so much to change the feel of the whole trip - sometimes its nice to go slow.