From Sasebo I set off for the outskirts of Nagasaki, where my room was. It was Golden Week, so I couldn’t get anything in Nagasaki proper and booked a capsule hotel in a nearby town instead. It was my first capsule hotel, and it was cheap and the facilities were good. I managed to shake off all the travel fatigue. If you’re a guy traveling alone, it’s not a bad choice at all. (Plus, the TV with the adult channels was free, just saying.)
I got up in the morning and headed into Nagasaki, and the road was like a roller coaster. I lost count of how many mountains I went over.. and nearly vertical ones, up and down, up and down. I couldn’t believe people actually live in places like this..
And that’s how I ended up at the Peace Park.
The statue is the famous bit. The reason I came here first is that there’s a cheap parking lot nearby at 600 yen a day. Park the car here, ride the 100-yen streetcar around, and you save a lot on transport.
Well.. I don’t think I need to say anything about the atomic bomb. Nagasaki was historically the window through which foreign culture came into Japan, so it has a lot of historic sites, and fortunately the bomb fell toward the hills, so much of it survived. Hiroshima was on a plain, so it was completely flattened.. Walking around the city, I saw lots of interesting buildings. I thought that was at least some small mercy..
The statue up close
There were all sorts of statues.
The park
It’s up on a hill. Sigh. Everywhere in Nagasaki is a hill, which made the trip really exhausting. On top of that it started raining, so it turned into a full-on hike in the rain.
The church across the way
Apparently it’s some famous church, but I’m not really into that kind of thing.
Up close
I went inside too, and the atmosphere was solemn.
Theme park
Very touristy, I guess you could say.
Keep heading down from the Peace Park and you reach Nagasaki Station. After that come the harbor parks.
The view from the harbor park
It feels a bit like Onomichi, but on a much bigger scale. It was dark and overcast, so the shots didn’t come out well.
More scenery..
A calm, quiet view.
Scenery, continued
Honestly, it made me wonder whether it was worth coming all the way out here.
Last of the scenery
But the Nagasaki champon specialist was further down this road, so I just kept on walking down without thinking too much about it.