Nagasaki #1: Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park

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We awoke at the crack of dawn, after about four or maybe five hours sleep. We had stayed the night in a hotel close to the airport. It was really nice, not really a hotel, but an officetel, where they rented some of the apartments. Honestly, the apartment we stayed in was nice and bigger than the one I live in. They also offered a free pick-up and drop-off service to Incheon. Not bad for 55,000 won for the two of us, I think it was called Crown Guesthouse and I would definitely use them again in the future. We got to Incheon and found our check-in desks. It was still just over two hours before take-off, so the desks weren't open yet, so we queued up and waited for them to open, which they did bang on 6:30 am. We got checked in fine, although I had to produce the credit card that I paid with and sign something, must be because I paid on a foreign credit card. The airport was busy, but not manic. We queued up and waited, as only one security channel was open and the queue was horrific, seriously, the powers that be at Incheon need to stop being tight arses and have all the security channels open or at least two from the get go on a three day weekend.

After getting stamped out of Korea, we had a mooch around the shops, and discovered a newly opened Hello Kitty cafe. We posed on the benches taking photos, but didn't buy anything. We headed to Subway, I think that's new too, for some breakfast. Then it was time to board. The flight wasn't full, but I suppose Nagasaki isn't really a tourist mecca, I'm pretty sure we were the only non-Asians on the flight. We got a set of three seats to ourselves. The flight took just over an hour I think. We were flying Jin Air, a Korean budget airline. They are really casual all the check-in staff and flight attendants wore jeans and Converse. Being a budget airline we had no expectation, we were happy that they included 20kg of baggage and we were really surprised that we were given a breakfast box. Breakfast number two was water, triangular tuna kimbap, a mini chocolate bar, and a slice of cake.

We landed at Nagasaki airport and got through immigration fairly quickly. The custom bloke was chatty, as they usually are, and asked to search my bag, I was praying he wouldn't pull my dirty undies out, which he didn't. We bought our bus tickets from an automated machine and found a bus that was heading to Nagasaki station. We slept for most of the journey. The bus was packed and all the fold out seats were used to fill up the aisles. The bus journey took longer than anticipated because the bus driver spent ages helping one bloke. We arrived at the bus station, which is across the street from the train station and we hopped on a tram to get to our hostel. The tram ride was quick as we were only about two or three stops away from where we wanted to be. It was then a two minute walk to the hostel. We got checked in, the staff were lovely and we were able to dump our bags in the room. We then asked all the important questions such as where is the nearest sushi train, diaso and karaoke. The hostel has some great maps of Nagasaki in general and the area where we are staying and they were able to mark everything we needed on them. We purchased our tram cards 500 yen for unlimited use all day and headed down to the cheap sushi place that was shown on the map.

We got off the tram and walked down the shopping arcade. We totally missed the sushi place on our first walk down and kept our eyes peeled on the way back. The restaurant was quite busy, but we were seated quickly. I was gutted that I had had two breakfasts this morning, as it meant I could eat nowhere near as much sushi as I would have liked to. I only managed a pathetic eight plates. The sushi was good, there was quite a mix of different stuff, lots of non-fishy ones. I only had a couple of non fishy ones, corn mayo and pork and onion skewers. The salmon that they grilled with a blow torch was amazing, it was smokey, but not too smokey. Delicious, it became one of our favourites. We had seen the Diaso early but we stopped ourselves from going in and doing a load f damage to our wallets on the first day. However we did spot 'Can Do' another 100 yen store and we limited ourselves to a couple of essential purchases, sushi tea towels and Kumamon playing cards.

We decided that we would do the more sobering sights today, so first we headed to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. The hostel had given us a discount card (for free) and we were given money off the entrance fee. At 11:02 a.m. on the 9th August, 1945 the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, destroying most of the city, killing 73,884 people and leaving 74,909 injured. The destruction was huge. It was very sobering to walk around the museum and see all the death and destruction one bomb can do. I think the thing that got me the most was that it almost didn't happen. The plane carrying the bomb was running low on fuel and was about to return to base, as cloud cover had been too bad, when suddenly there was a patch of sky free from cloud and they were able to drop the bomb. We spent quite a long time in the museum looking at the exhibits and reading all the information about the atomic bomb.

In the same grounds there is the Nagasaki National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims. We wandered around the memorial hall, it is very peaceful. We visited the Remembrance Hall, which has twelve white pillars and the names of the victims are listed. We also took some time to make some origami cranes. The crane is a symbol of peace and people are encouraged to make the birds. We had a go, but I'm afraid to say my origami skills are terrible. We walked around the grounds of the museum and memorial for a bit. There were a group of Japanese school kids there, about middle school age, they were all really well behaved, apart from one with a mullet, if I had that hair cut I would be acting out too.

We headed over the road to the hypocentre park.The park is quite small and marks the spot where the bomb exploded. There were a few statues, one commemorating the Koreans, who had lost their lives in Nagasaki. There is a monument marking the hypocentre and there are some remains from the cathedral that was destroyed by the bomb. There is a small river running through the park, there were some kids playing in it. We followed the river round to the end of the park and crossed the road to find the Peace Park. We walked up the slope to park. The park is filled with statues dedicated to peace from various nations around the world. We saw the Bell of Nagasaki, which was made to commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the atomic bombing. The construction was paid for by donations from 21,000 of the survivors and relatives of the bereaved. The Fountain of Peace was really beautiful. At the opposite end of the park is The Peace Statue. It is a prayer for everlasting world peace and a symbol of the supreme hope of human beings. It was unveiled in 1955 for the tenth anniversary of the bombing. It was designed by Seibo Kitamura, a renowned sculptor from Nagasaki. The park lived up to its name it was very peaceful.

We then headed from the park to Urakami Cathedral. It's about 500 metres away from the hypocentre and was hailed as the largest cathedral in the Orient. It was destroyed by the atomic bomb. 8.500 of the cathedrals 12,000 parishioners perished. We walked around the grounds of the cathedral. The front doors were locked and we found a side door to enter, we went into a small room off the side, but we could see that some kind of mass was going on, so we left. We found the tram stop via a quick pit stop in Family Mart. Oh Family Mart, how I've missed thee since you left Korea. We got the tram back to the shopping arcade that we had been to earlier. We headed straight to Daiso. We were gutted as we got there about ten to eight, if I'm remembering correctly, and it was shutting at eight, so we stocked up on some essentials, like Japanese curry and left. We were gutted, that it was shutting so early. However Diaso's loss was Can Do's gain. We went a bit mad in Can Do. There were about three or four floors, but also loads of mezzanine levels. It was like a rabbit's warren. We spent ages in there looking at stuff and adding it to our basket. And the best bit was each item was only about 60p. I know people moan that Japan is expensive, but it really can be cheap, and I feel it's a lot cheaper than continental Europe. We took the tram back to the hostel, hefting our big shopping bags.

Back at the hostel we dropped our stuff off and got changed ready to hit the town. We had asked at the hostels some places that they recommended and we took the last tram, they finish pretty early, before 11 pm, to Shianbashi. We headed to Yaitoruken, an izakaya that the hostel staff had recommended. The place was pretty neat inside. We were shown to a table and were given a menu to order from. Well the menu was all in Japanese and we didn't have a clue. We tried to tell the bloke to recommend some things for us, but he didn't understand. So Mel just pointed at three things and then we pointed to a big bottle of beer in the fridge. The place wasn't very busy, although it was seating only, it's not like you could stand around munching on skewers. We drank our beer and our first set of skewers arrived. They were shrimp ones, yay! They were tasty. We waited for our next set to turn up, these ones were whole small fishes. After the initial shock of seeing the fish eyeballing us, we dug in to them. They were really tasty. We finished them and drank the rest of our beers. The third set of skewers never appeared. I feel this happens a lot in Japan, stuff gets forgotten about, I don't know if this happens in general or if it is because we are foreigners and people don't understand us. As we were paying up we realised that we should of sat at the bar as then we could see what was in the cabinet and we could of pointed at what we fancied.

We wandered around the streets of Shianbashi. There were loads of cute small little bars, but most seemed to be full as each bar only held about ten people max. We kept wandering through the narrow little alleys. We finally found a restaurant, it was empty. We went in and order some food using the pictures on the wall. We had noodles with curry sauce and donkass like the one I had had in Nagoya. The food was really nice and filled us up a treat. The restaurant was open until about 5 am I think, we were there about midnight. I bet it got heaving later on. We spent more time wandering around. The streets weren't that busy with revelers, but I suppose we were unfairly comparing this small city to Seoul. We walked through the red light district. There were quite a few prossies out touting for business and their pineapple haired pimps. We saw one old bloke with a lass who was young enough to be his granddaughter. We weren't the only one s looking twice as they walked along the street together.

After wandering for a while, we decided to head back to the hostel as it was about two am. We walked back to the hostel and wandered around the back streets behind the hostel for a bit.The area was residential and all really quiet, so we retired to get some sleep. We had had a very long day.

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Comments

[Jacksny]

Sushi Restaurant
Looking nice with fully equipped kitchen appliances and mainly required for Sushi Restaurant.