Rubbernecks in Nagasaki

Today we walked our legs off!  We started off with a visit to the Ferry Terminal and the Tourist Office to get information about our ferry trips over to Goto and back.  It’s much easier than we thought, as we don’t need to make bookings with the scooters.  Bookings are only required for cars, so we just turn up, buy a ticket and away we go!  We then bought a day pass for the tram (500 yen : $6.70) which gave us unlimited use of the trams for the day.

The port area in Nagasaki

We spied this snazzy scooter in a new 'scooter only' park near the station

Delivery man

Once that was all sorted we went (via a bakery) to the Atomic Bomb Museum.  Having been to Hiroshima last year, the shock wasn’t quite so bad, but it’s still very depressing to see the devastation and the human suffering.  We got a good view of Nagasaki from the viewing deck outside the museum.

View of Nagasaki from the Atomic Bomb Museum

The atomic bomb hypocentre

With very tired legs, we went via tram to Dejima which is an interesting historical part of Nagasaki.  Dejima is a very small artificial island which was Japan’s only ‘window to the West’ during the period of National Isolation.  It was originally built in order to enforce the ban on Christian prosetylizing by Portuguese missionaries in 1636.  When the Portuguese were banned from Japan, Dejima became a Dutch trading post and consequently the only source of Western knowledge and culture for 218 years.  The island is currently being restored – a major undertaking given that what was once an island in the sea has now been surrounded by reclaimed land, roads and structures.  Despite REALLY aching legs, we enjoyed our visit to this very interesting place.

Bridge in the garden at Dejima

Dejima

We then used our trusty tram passes to visit the Hamanomachi Shopping Arcade in the Kanko Dori area. We had been told that this was a good place to find nice places for dinner and we hit the jackpot in no time. We found a very nice underground restaurant which plastic sample food out the front and a huge picture menu inside. I think it might be the first time we’ve eaten with a knife and fork since landing in Japan.

We followed our dinner with a visit to a 100 yen store – all 5 floors of it! If we weren’t obliged to travel with minimal luggage, I’d have had a major shopping fest!

Is there anything that can't be found in a 100 yen store??

That was enough for one day (except for the obligatory ice cream, of course) so we went back to the hotel for washing, TV and resting our legs in preparation for more of a workout tomorrow.