Saturday, April 5 - Nagasaki Day 1

We woke up and ate the buffet style breakfast again before packing up our things and heading out. We hopped on an early train to Hakata and made it there before 11am. At the ticket gate, Vaso started to freak out when the gate did not give him back his ticket. “We made it man! This is the last stop on the Shinkansen!” I told him. We thought about staying in Hakata, but decided that it would be best to head to Kyushu right away and come back when we are finished. It is much more difficult to travel Kyushu as there is no Shinkansen, and it might take more time than we think to see all the sights. We bought tickets to Nagasaki. There was this 4 ticket pack from Hakata to Nagasaki for $100. This provided Vaso and I with cheap transportation there and back. While waiting for the train, we spent an hour at the local McDonalds with some cheap coffee and snacks. We got on the train and found ourselves two seats. The train had leather seats! It was almost as good as the Shinkansen, but much slower obviously.



It took a little over 2 hours to get to Nagasaki. The train ride let Vaso and I duke it out in some Advance Wars. I finally was able to convince him to play it with me. As soon as we arrived, Vaso called up a local hostel and made us reservations. There was a jazz band playing at the station which we wanted to listen to, so I ventured out by myself in search of bento. Right by the station I ran into a bunch of high school students who were doing a survey about the atomic bomb in Nagasaki. Of course I obliged and filled out the form. The kid I was talking to was stunned that I was living in Tokyo studying at Waseda. I asked him where I could find some good food around the station and then snapped a picture with him.



Back at the jazz band, they were ending their act so we went upstairs and found a nice steak restaurant. Of course we ordered pasta, but that is besides the point ^_^ Check in time finally rolled around so we headed over to the hostel, by streetcar. Yes Nagasaki has streetcars as well, and they are much more convenient than the ones in Hiroshima. They actually take you where you want to go. On top of that, it is only 100 yen to go anywhere on the streetcar line.



The couple that owns the Akari Nagasaki Youth Hostel was really nice to us. The girl Nana graduated from Waseda . Once again we made more connections! After dropping our stuff off on our beds, we asked Shingo about the local kite festival in Nagasaki. He looked it up on the internet, found out when it started, how to get there, what to bring, and finally said that he wanted to go with us! We found plans for Sunday, that is for sure!



Nagasaki was also had an atomic bomb dropped on it three days after the one in Hiroshima. We decided to visit the peace park for the rest of the day. The peace park in Nagasaki is much more like a park than in Hiroshima. We both decided that it was much better laid out and had many more things to do. We saw the hypocenter of the bomb, peace statues, peace fountains, and many cherry blossom trees that were planted in remembrance of the bombing. We also visited a nearby Christian church that was destroyed and rebuilt after the bombing. We walked and walked and walked! We passed a graveyard that has this guy named “Glover” buried there. At the time we did not know what significance he had, more on that later.



We walked all the way back to the youth hostel and asked where some good places were to eat. They pointed us to the nearby Chinatown, which we also decided to walk to. The specialty in Kyushu is this thing called Chanpon.



It is like a ramen dish, but comes from China, uses noodles that are a bit thicker, and has a milky soup. Vaso and I found a place that had a super big size for only 1000 yen and decided to eat there. I am not going to lie, the Chanpon was amazing. Quite better than Okonomiyaki in Osaka. The rest of the China town was pretty lame. It was all small restaurants with only a few souvenir shops scattered about. We got lost on our way back to the hostel, but eventually found it. Sleep was good.