Tag: panorama

A Weekend Trip to Nagasaki Part 2 – Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and Glover Garden

Last time I wrote about the the first day of our Nagasaki school trip and today I want to continue by telling about our second day. This is mostly about the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum which is quite a popular tourist destination, so it might be an interesting read for people considering to visit this museum or the one in Hiroshima (which I have yet to visit).

The next day it was time to rise and shine early in the morning (as always), and I really wonder how some of the guys got up that went drinking until deep in the night. Anyway, I was really excited to go to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. This might sound weird, but I have always been interested in WOII events and stories and I was just really curious to see who they had set the museum up and what kind of stories they would be portraying there.

By my friend Kim

As you can imagine it is a museum with a lot of impact. It starts off with a dark room that replicated the scenery of a broken church facade and other broken buildings while displaying some horrific movies and photos, which sets an eerie tone for the rest of the museum. After that comes a more factual part with information about the Fat Boy (the atomic bomb), how it works, what happened during and after the explosion and what king of material damaged it did. You then move on the the immediate and long term effects of these bombs and the radiation. The part that I stuck to the longest time was the part with stories, quotes, pictures and movies of survivors. It is just so tough to swallow, but so important to see how horrible a thing this is and why we should prevent something like this from happening again. I think it would be good for everyone to be confronted with these stories and information and to start contemplating about what it is to be living in a world of relative peace at the moment and what we humans do to each other.

Anyway, near the museum is a Peace Park so we went there after the museum. While you walk to the peace park you actually walk past the ‘Hypocenter park’ where the hypocenter of the atomic was. That feels very strange. The peace park itself is build to commemorate the 10.000 citizens that died because of the bomb. There are several statues and a big fountain in the park, the most famous ‘Peace Statue’ (which looks like some kind of Greek god to me). I was discussing with my friend about war, peace and suffering because this place really makes you contemplate you know. Other than that, there is not much to see in the park to be honest.

For lunch we ate a place which felt like a massive tourist trap to me haha. We had to wait downstairs until the tables were all set, and downstairs happened to be a tourist shop with many local Japanese foods. In Nagasaki’s case the most famous one is a cake originated in Portugal called Castella. Anyway, these shops are a dime in dozen in Japan because Japanese love buying souvenirs. Or rather it is expected of them to buy souvenirs (usually food) even when they are just on a day trip or weekend trip. So to cater to this massive buying of souvenirs there are many of them. There is even one in my local shopping mall where no tourist would ever come (I think).

But I digress. We were tempted with samples of food but then it was time to eat our Chinese-inspired lunch. Nagasaki has always had good relations with China and even the Netherlands and did a lot of trading with these countries. That’s why there are a lot of foreign influences in Nagasaki, like the Portugal cakes, Dutch traders’ island Dejima, Christian churches and Chinese (fusion) food. So our lunch was one of the fusion foods found in Nagasaki. The food was even placed on one of those Chinese spinning tables.

By Kim

When lunch was finished we moved on to Glover Garden. It is near the Oranda Zaka, or Dutch Slope, and is a very lovely European style house surrounded by a huge garden on top of one of the hills in Nagasaki. The house was built by a Scottish merchant and is another great example of foreign elements in Nagasaki. It offers a gorgeous view of Nagasaki Harbor and the garden itself has a lot of flowers and greenery, and it reminded me a little bit of the garden my grandparents used to have. But Japanese elements aren’t missing either because there is a big koi pond and a statue of a woman in kimono. Just like any place in Japan they commercialized the place by building a little cafe and a tourist shop. The cafe is actually really nice because there are seats outside in the garden which is very unusual for Japan. I really miss the Dutch (or European in general) sidewalk cafes and patios, so I was surprised to see it here.

By Kim

After this day full of impressions it was time to head home and let everything sink in.

Have you ever been to an Atomic Bomb Museum? 
What did you think about it?

Japan Trip, The Mesmerizing Fushimi Inari Shrine and Kyoto Tower

After a few fun days in Osaka it was time to move on to Kyoto, our second stay for our trip. We dragged all of our luggage (bringing a big suitcase was not the best plan) up and down the stairs of the metro station, took the metro and transferred to the JR-Kyoto line for our train to Kyoto. During the ride we enjoyed the picturesque views of mountains and kids in school uniforms. We even saw a few palm trees. What I noticed is that Japanese rivers usually have broad river banks, that usually function as some kind of recreational spot/ park at the same time. You can see people picnicking, playing sports, kids playing…

We arrived in the huge train station of Kyoto. Seriously, it’s massive. There was even a orchestra with ‘Pirates of the Carribean’ music playing when we arrived. And when we went exploring further we also encountered a kimono exhibition and many shops and restaurants. Exiting the station we were met with the warm and humid weather typical of June (minus the rain) and it seemed more hot here than in Osaka. We hadn’t had time to drink or eat anything yet either. Luckily our hotel was quite close to the station and not difficult to find. Our room was tiny, but cheap and clean, and we enjoyed ourselves there. First we decided on our plan for the day, after that we headed to the 7/11 for breakfast sandwiches.
By the way, I plan to write about the hotels I stayed in at the end of this series about my Japan trip, for the people who are interested.

For our trip to Tokyo we wanted to buy discount tickets for the bullet train. So we searched trough the big train station for the shop selling the tickets, which was not an easy task. After asking several people we finally found it. The tickets we bought are called ‘Puratto Kodama Economy Plan’, it allows you to travel the slowest bullet train called Kodama. It costs 9800 yen, about 3500 yen cheaper than what a normal ticket between Kyoto and Tokyo costs for Kodama, and you get a coupon for a free drink, but we didn’t use it. The Kodama takes bout four hours for this route. Just be sure that you buy the ticket in advance!

After that was fixed we went to Fushimi, a small village with even a smaller station. But that doesn’t matter because it is home to the grand Fushimi Inari Taisha (Fushimi from now on). When you exit the station you are faced by a big red torii (gate), so it is hard to miss. We hadn’t entered the premises yet or we were being questioned by a group of school kids, this time about soccer. ‘We like Snidel!’, meaning Sneijder, was their conclusion. Then we finally got to explore Fushimi, undisturbed. I was amazed by the bright colors, thousands of paper cranes and cute fox decorations everywhere. Fushimi is known for the red gates, and seeing them in real life I can say they are mesmerizing. So great. But Fushimi has much more to offer; As I said before there are many pretty decorations and there is a hike along the mountain where you can enjoy the nature, traditional restaurants and a good workout of course! We were really beat after the ‘hike’ but it was more than worth it. It was my favorite place in all of Japan.

Sneaky shot of a Miko priestess
Love the colors

My favorite shot of the entire trip

Before going on the hike there is a small shop. We bought some amulets there for good luck, health for my grandmother and one for a healthy baby for my cousin’s pregnant girlfriend. This is also the place where you can buy prayer votives to write your wish and hang there so your wish can come true. We saw them near the entrance of the temple with pictures of bunnies and temples, but these were even better because they looked like fox heads. And you can draw faces on them!

traditional restaurant on the mountain

refreshment!

Inside the restaurant, you can sit in raised floors.

In the afternoon we returned to Kyoto. We thought it would be a nice time to visit Kyoto Tower to catch the sunset. There wasn’t much of a sunset to see because of the smog or clouds, but the view was good anyway. From the tower you can clearly see that Kyoto is surrounded by mountains. And in between the buildings and street you can see big patches of green which usually indicates a temple. There is also a restaurant in Kyoto Tower and we figured, why not dine fancy for once? But sadly the restaurant was closed. So we ended up at Sukiyaki, a cheap chain restaurants which serves good curry rice and gyudon for a low price. You get your meals so quickly there, I think it didn’t even take two minutes. So it was definitely not fancy, but budget friendly and easy. And we love curry a lot, so no problem!

This reminded me of the snake game on old Nokia phones ;p Taxi Snake!

  • Kyoto station is huge
  • Torii are a typical Japanese sight, and in real life they are just as grand as you’d imagine
  • Fushimi Inari Taisha is a must visit!
  • And don’t miss out on the hike
  • There are several restaurants and vending machines along the way, so no need to worry about dehydration.
  • Make sure you stay hydrated though! Especially in the humid weather.
  • Japanese grandmas and grandpas are so fit. While we were sweating and puffing, they easily passed us during the hike
  • The Japanese use cute napkins to wipe their sweat. It’s a good idea to get one too if you sweat a lot in humid weather.
  • Kyoto Tower gives a nice overview of the city
  • It is also one of the view tall buildings in Kyoto. There are not many tall buildings in Kyoto to preserve the traditional city scape and views of the city. There are actually many restrictions and different kind of zones when it comes to building in Japan, but I won’t bore you with that now 🙂
  • Go to Sukiya, Yoshinoya or Matsuya for fast and cheap food.
  • Curry in Japan is very mild