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The original was posted on /r/japantravel by /u/Dumbidiot1323 on 2024-04-20 12:41:01.
Welcome to the fourth and final part of my November travels. Recapping this month has been the most fun yet for me and in today's report, I will be talking about my visits in Nagasaki, Kumamoto and Kagoshima! Mountain views, horse meat and a small volcano eruption will make an appearance in here - in text and picture form!
As per usual, the other reports are down here:
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8
Nagasaki
Getting from Fukuoka to Nagasaki by train was kind of annoying if I recall correctly. Had to take the Relay-Kamome train first and then switch over to the Shinkansen and I remember being slightly confused by the platform numbers for the different trains coming in but perhaps I was just a bit dumb that day since I never had problems with this before. Nevertheless, I arrived in Nagasaki without any delays, dropped my stuff off at the hotel and immediately started exploring the city! Two full days in Nagasaki were more than enough for me on this trip.
The first place I checked out was Dejima, the district where the former Dutch trading station was located. It was also the only place Westerners were allowed to be in in the country at that time! But as with a lot of places I wanted to see during my year in Japan, some buildings were being renovated and/or covered up so I didn't get to take pictures that were worth it, which was a bit sad. There are a few exhibitions in the individual buildings within the district, showing off some of the Western influence on this particular part of Nagasaki.
From there, I took a quick walk around the port because I am a sucker for ports and the nice scenery they provide. Inasayama can be seen from down there as well. One thing to note is that Nagasaki is incredibly walkable as far as cities go because a lot of the sights are concentrated in a few spots, which made walking from the port to the Glover Garden super easy. The slopes around this side feature a lot of Western buildings yet again. The "Dutch Slope" leads uphill and there are a lot of shops and bakeries around; Castella in particular being advertised a lot because Nagasaki is somewhat famous for it (for good reason!). Glover Garden makes for a nice little walk around, offers great views of Nagasaki and obviously also has Western influenced architecture to boot. A short walk away are Sofukuji and Kofukuji, two Chinese-inspired/founded temples. At the time of being there, they were very quiet and I saw at most a handful of people. Maybe that was because of borders only having recently opened back then or because people just don't go there? Either way, worth a short visit in my book. Obligatory "random photogenic cat" picture here.
Meganebashi is pretty much right next to those two temples and fairly unimpressive. But if you want to have that picture for Instagram and you're in the vicinity anyway, why not check it out? Especially because one of my favourite yakitori places in Japan is next to it. The owners are very talkative, the prices were good and the food was great. Of course, yakitori alone didn't satiate my hunger so afterwards I hit up Ramen Hiiragi because it looked intersting on Google maps, particularly the tomato ramen which I ended up going with. Now, I absolutely loathe eggplant but I couldn't exactly not eat those but they were fried and the tomato broth covered the usual eggplant taste well so it just felt like crunchy something. The ramen itself was amazing, however! I rarely finished ramen bowls completely because it's incredibly unhealthy but I couldn't stop myself from drinking all of this broth. Definitely recommend this spot and if you go there, make sure to ask the staff for a paper apron because you will need it. That was the first day in Nagasaki done - I bought some chocolate castella at one of the shops around the slopes earlier in the day and devoured that in my hotel before going to sleep.
The second day started out with a trip to the Chinatown...however, I do not have any pictures of it whatsoever. I remember it not being as large as I expected it to be and felt quite a bit disappointed even, which may be the reason I didn't take my phone out to take pictures. I've only got one nikuman from one of the corner stores there, it was alright and a bit pricy - so perhaps more of a tourist spot? Maybe someone more knowledgeable about Nagasaki can tell me whether my assessment of it was right and correct me.
I was hungry rather early in the day for once and once again opted for ramen because I found another somewhat unique place on Google maps serving lemon ramen. I chose the tsukemen version and it was decent, nothing super special. Maybe the ramen would have been the better choice. From there, I moved over to the Confucius Shrine - which was one of the most colourful ones I have seen up to that point! There's an exhibition inside showcasing a lot of Chinese pottery and the like and very much worth checking out in my opinion.
Of course I couldn't go to Nagasaki without visiting the peace park and the museum. Compared to the ones in Hiroshima, these were both smaller in scale and I must say I "enjoyed" Hiroshima's museum more, whereas I thought the statues in Nagasaki had more of an effect on me. That being said, highly recommended to check both out if you are ever visiting the cities. As I had seen most of the things I wanted to see by this point, I decided to head over to Inasayama, which is accessible by ropeway from Fuchi Shrine station, which was a bit confusing to find at first. Since it was only about 4:30pm, sunset was a bit off so I stayed up on the observatory for a good while.
I sat down, admiring the view of the sea and the islands in the distance (one of which is the famous Gunkanjima, which can be seen ever so slightly from up there but probably not on photos I took) and sort of started to once again get a bit sentimental. I was sitting on top of this mountain, almost half a year had past since I arrived in Japan, I've had lived there and travelled to Sapporo and all the way down to Nagasaki and it just sort of hit me again that this was, infact, real. It might sound dramatic (and I will have many more melodramatic moments!) but to me, it was a fairly emotional moment because if someone had told me I'd do that sort of thing 5 years before that, I'd have called them crazy.
Either way, the sun started to set ever so slightly, poking through the clouds until it eventually disappeared, giving way to the amazing night time view of Nagasaki. Alongside Hakodate and Kobe, Nagasaki has one of the top 3 night time views in Japan. I'm still missing the Kobe one but I can barely decide between Hakodate and Nagasakis. Right now, I'd lean more in favour of Nagasaki. I wish I had a better camera at the time to capture the view from up there because my phone took garbage ones at night time so this is the best I can provide. Also, the observatory gets really packed around night time so if you want to get a good spot to take pictures from, be sure to get there a bit early and just secure yourself a spot because before you know it, someone with a tripod and the most expensive camera you've ever seen will take it and not move for 2 hours.
I made the mistake of only wearing a sweater that day, which was good enough on the "ground" but certainly not good enough to be on the peak of that mountain after sundown, so once I had taken enough pictures, I made my way back down and walked a long while along the riverside until I arrived back in Hamamachi for my final meal in Nagasaki, which ended up being sara udon at Manpuku. Sara udon is basically a dish consisting of a base of crispy noodles which have another layer of "normal" noodles topped with a variety of vegetables...
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