Epic Golden Week Adventure - Nagasaki

From our hotel in Kumamoto, it took a bus, ferry and two trains (one on the Shimbara Railway which was beautiful) but we finally arrived in the beautiful city of Nagasaki and immediately fell in love with it. Again we were able to check in early into our accommodation at Hostel Akari which had some lovely friendly owners and a wealth of tourist information. There was so much to see and do that we decided to spend a little bit more time here.

On our first afternoon we headed up to the Peace Park in Urakami just north of the city centre. We saw the giant peace statue and peace symbol zone (with sculptures from around the world) and part of a wedding service at Urakami Cathedral which was nice and calming.

At the entrance of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. there was an amazing string of cranes made with one sheet of paper and the museum itself was very well done but I didn't think it was quite as daunting in scale as the one at Hiroshima but am very pleased that I visited both as they do a good job telling both sides of the story. This led into the Peace Memorial Hall (which is always more touching for me than the museums themselves) with the names of everyone that died preserved in a glass case (152,276 (As of August 9, 2010). In the Atomic Bomb Hypocentre Park there was a monolith marking the point above which the bomb exploded and last (but most definitely not least) we saw the One-Pillar Torii and the giant trees at Sanno-jinja.

After snacking through midday we decided to actually sit down and have some dinner, choosing another local speciality chanpon  from a Chinese restaurant, before heading up to Inasa-yama for a beautiful view out over the city.

There was still so much left to see and do in Nagasaki so we headed out pretty early and started at Kofukuji (dating from the 1620s it is the oldest Obaku Zen temple in Japan) which was really peaceful with noone else there in the morning and an immaculate lawn, Next we checked out Spectacles Bridge - which one of Mindy's teachers had told her she just HAD to see and had fun taking pictures there. To get around today we invested in a Y500 all-day-tram-pass - bargain! and checked out the 26 Martyrs Memorial before making our way down to Dejima to have another traditional food of Nagasaki toruku-rice (Turkish rice) for lunch at a gorgeous little cafe on the waterfront that just happened to be featuring it as their daily lunch special.

We made our way through Nagasakai Seaside Park (beautiful spacious and windy so it felt like I was at home!) It was really nice to take the time to enjoy lunch on the waterfront and stroll through the park but it was something we would pay for later in the day... We jumped back on the tram and made our way through a small shopping street where I picked up some castella  (Japanese sponge cake) as omiyage (to say thanks for covering my work while I was away) for my workmates.

 

Eventually arrived at Glover Gardens. The grounds themselves were beautiful on a hillside with gorgeous views of the harbout and lots of old European houses which were massive, you could easily spend the whole day here (helped that the weather was beautiful) and with the entry price of only Y600 it would make a much cheaper day out compared to the Dutch Village Huis Ten Boch http://english.huistenbosch.co.jp/about_htb/index.html (although it looked pretty we decided it wasnt worth the Y5000 price tag) and we even paid a little extra (Y500) for the experience of dressing up in vintage style clothing which drew a little more attention than I was expecting as apparently westerners wearing old western clothes is amazing for Japanese people - I felt like a character at Disneyland...

Our last stop for the day was supposed to be Sofukuji with the impressive red entrance gate exemplifying the Ming dynasty architecture but they didn't have any temple signing books for sale there (Louise had decided she liked mine so much that she wanted to start one of her own) so we went on a mission to Nagasaki's own Yasaka-jinja and then Kiyomizu-dera and finally found one for her but it meant we were a little bit pushed for time and as we had to tram back to the hostel, pick up our bags and be back down at the bus station for our 5:45pm bus but luckily we managed to make it just in time and left for Fukuoka - Ciao Nagasaki, its been fun! Promise I will be back one day!