nagasaki

Since our hotel had a convenience store located near the lobby (there was a "secret" entrance for hotel guests), we decided to pick up some baked goods and have them with some coffee from the convenience store for breakfast.

Before catching the light rail back to our hotel the night before, I spotted this bakery, Pan no Ie.

When you enter the bakery, there is a wall of tobacco, I figured out that this place mainly sells cigarettes to the bars in the area and the baked goods are just around for people feeling peckish after midnight.

We picked up their salad bread, this was supposedly potato salad in a soft roll, I didn't find any potato salad in there and wasn't too impressed with this.

A baked curry pan, and a croquette pan.

This thing called renga (brick). Boy, was it heavy!

Filled with raisins and fruit, this was probably my favorite of all the things we chose.

The weather that was forecast to be rainy turned out to be cloudy...whoo!

We purchased an all day light rail pass for 500 yen and made our way to the Peace Park. (FYI: one ride on the light rail costs 120 yen)

The Peace Park was created with a desire for world peace. The statue sculpted by Nagasaki native, Kitamura Seibou is about about 13 meters high (including the pedestal).

The raised right hand pointing towards the sky symbolizes the threat of nuclear weapons. The flat outstretched left hand represents eternal peace. His eyes are closed in prayer, in hopes that the souls of the victims may find rest.

Near the Peace Park is Urakami Cathedral. The original church was destroyed in the nuclear blast.

There is a remnant of the original bell tower on the side of the church. It is huge! It was hard to imagine a blast so strong it would blow the bell tower off the church! Definitely eye-opening.

Nearby, is Enokijunseido, a Japanese confection maker that has been around since 1844!

They are famous for these...Ikkoko

You'll be surprised if you try these because they are filled with..air!

Apparently, if you eat them as is they are very hard, but if you put them into the toaster oven or into a heated pan for a bit they become a little softer.

I wish we had bought enough to try it once in the toaster...

Simple and not too sweet...86 yen a piece.

Down the road from the Peace Park is the hypocenter.

Seeing this area was also eye-opening and left me with mixed feelings (since I am Japanese-American)...

We then hopped back onto the light rail and headed to Chinatown to drop off our bags at the hotel we would be staying at.

Since the weather turned out to be cloudy with spots of sun, we decided to join a tour to Hashima. This island was abandoned 40 years ago when the undersea coal mining under the island ended.

The island is also known as Gunkanjima because it looks like a battleship.

As we walked to the light rail station, we shared this kakuni manju by Iwasaki Honpo. Love kakuni (shoyu pork)! This one was sweet-salty and the meat very tender.

We caught the rail to the pier. Since the tour would be three hours, we grabbed lunch at Nagasakiko.

Satoshi tried their Ji-ge-don. An assortment of seafood caught locally. I should've tried that too as my maguro-zuke don was kinda frozen in places...

Before joining the tour, you have to sign a waiver and promise to follow all sorts of rules, mainly to stay within the boundaries and to follow the guides directions.

It takes about 30 minutes to get out to the island. From afar, it really does look like a battleship.

The island was used to mine coal undersea. It was also for the coal miners and their families to live on. The island had everything: movie theatre, barber shop, school, gymnasium, swimming pool, shops. They even planted gardens on the rooftop of the school.

The only thing the island didn't have was a cemetery and crematory. Whenever someone passed they were brought to a nearby island to be cremated and buried.

It was amazing to see how much damage weather can do.

The 7-story building (dark grey) is over 90 years old and was one of the first cement buildings in Japan. It was amazing to see that it was still standing.

After the tour, they circle the island twice, once for the people on the left side of the boat and once for the people on the right side of the boat.

We then headed to check out the one-legged arch at Sanno Shrine.

There were apparently 4 arches at this shrine but when the nuclear bomb hit, this was what was left...wow!

Even this huge kusunoki (camphora) was split in half by the blast. The entrance to the shrine passes in between the split tree.

Another eye-opening sight!

By now, the sun was setting but we still wanted to check out a few more places...Sofukuji.

Built in 1629, this temple is a national treasure and holds many cultural artifacts.

We actually arrived here after closing. There is actually an admission fee but since the gates were still open and no one at the gates, we just walked in and took a look around.

We hopped back onto the light rail and headed towards Glover Garden. They normally close at 18:00 but we lucked out because they were having a holiday light up.

On the property are 9 historical western-style houses included the former residence of Thomas B. Glover, a major contributor to the modernization of Japan.

Very beautiful grounds.

We were also able to see Oura Catholic Church lit up too.

Starving, we decided to look for some Nagasaki champon at Kyokaen. Champon is a dish inspired from Chinese cuisine. It is similar to ramen but uses only one pot to make.

Lots of veggies.

I was in love with the kakuni (shoyu pork) in Nagasaki. This was super tender.

Satoshi always orders gyoza whenever we go to a Chinese restaurant, but he said these were...meh!

I always like ordering jin dui, puffs of mochi filled with sweet bean paste. We "had" to order two because that was the only way you could put an order in for them there....sigh! I'm glad that these didn't disappoint.

To end they gave us these frozen lychee. Love lychee!

Bellies full, we walked to the Dejima area, even though our feet were crying.

When Japan was in its period of isolation, this area was the only window to overseas trade for over 200 years.

Another great day, we were happy the weather turned out to be as good as it was and that we got to use that all-day light rail pass to the max!

Tomorrow: Nagasaki-Isahaya-Shimabara

Pan no Ie (UPDATE:2021 out of business)
2-13 Motoshikkui-machi
Nagasaki City, Nagasaki
Phone: 095.895.8011
Closed Sundays
Hours: 12:00-3:00 (Monday-Thursday), 12:00-4:00 (Friday, Saturday)

Enokijunseido
13-21 Hashiguchi-machi
Nagasaki City, Nagasaki
Phone: 095.844.0155

JAL Nagasaki City Hotel
13-10 Shinchi-machi
Nagasaki City, Nagasaki
Phone: 095.825.2580

Iwasaki Honpo
Nishi-Hamamachi Store
3-17 Doza-machi
Nagasaki City, Nagasaki
Phone: 095.818.7075
Hours: 9:30-21:00

Nagasakiko
Nagasaki Dejima Wharf Shop 1F
1-1 Dejima-machi
Nagasaki City, Nagasaki
Phone: 095.811.1677
Hours: 11:00-23:00

Kyokaen
9-7 Shinchi-machi
Nagasaki City, Nagasaki
Phone: 095.821.1507
Lunch: 11:00-15:30, Dinner: 17:30-20:30

osaka-hakata-nagasaki

From Osaka, it is about 3 hours to Hakata on the Shinkansen (bullet train).

Between train rides, we had some time to pick up something for lunch so we got some musubi and chips from Nonobudou.

They were making their musubi on the spot so everything was still warm when we ate them.

The chips are super thick and crunchy. Perfect snack food.

My musubi was filled with fried chicken and a sweet-salty soy sauce. So good!

We decided to also pick up some souvenir food items from Hakata, like this, Hiyoko, a cute little chick shaped sweet, that was filled with a seasonal strawberry and white bean paste.

And this snack called "Menbei" (mentaiko (spicy pollack roe) + senbei (cracker)).

My only peeve is that I've been noticing that a lot of these sweets and snacks (especially the ones sold near the registers of the supermarkets and in these souvenir areas) are starting to use artificial sweeteners like sorbitol, sucralose.

Both of these had sorbitol in them....blah! Sad since Hiyoko has been around since 1912!

Maybe they've been using artificial sweeteners all along, and I've only noticed it recently? I'd like to shout out to them and ask them to "stop it"!

After transferring to another train line, it was about 2 hours to Nagasaki.

We got some maps, directions and dropped off our bags. And then we caught the bus up to Kazagashira Park. One thing you'll notice right away are all the hills! At times inside the bus it felt like driving the hills in San Francisco or on Wilhelmina Rise in Hawaii.

Near the entrance of the park is a tiny building where they make kites. In Japanese the word for kite is "tako" but in Nagasaki, the word for kite is "hata" what most Japanese know as "flag".

If you have some time and are interested in making your own kite, you can learn from Mr Ogawa for a small fee.

Some of the kites we saw.

The Ryoma Sakamoto statue is huge! He was quite prominent in the overthrow of the Shogunate. You can read more about him here.

While making our way down the hills, there were many stairs, narrow passageways.

The views are beautiful, but the stairs and hills do take its toll on your feet!

Since the weather was forecast to turn ugly the next day we decided to see as much as we could.

The Spectacles bridge, built in 1634 is the oldest arch shaped stone bridge in Japan.

Hollander Slope, most westerners seen around Nagasaki during the late Edo period to Meiji period were all assumed to be Dutch, since they were seen going up and down this slope to and from their housing areas, this slope was soon called "Hollander Slope".

As the sun began to set, we decided to check-in at our hotel and head out to see the city lights from Mount Inasa.

The hotel staff working when we checked-in explained that there were many tour groups that go up to see the lights, so if we didn't want to feel "crowded", we should try to go before all the them.

Since it is winter, the sun sets quite early, so we dropped our things off at the room and caught the city bus to the ropeway.

It was a bit confusing finding the ropeway itself, but we and many other people eventually found it.

Round trip was about 1230 yen for the ropeway. The gondola wasn't too crammed but at the top there were tons of people trying to get their picture with the city lights.

If you have some time to look at your feet, you may find a heart. Apparently they have these all around Nagasaki city. We came upon this one by chance as we were leaving Mount Inasa.

We were famished and decided to look for something for dinner. We got a bit side tracked when I spotted this nikuman shop, Momotaro. Buns filled with pork and some green onion that are steamed.

At 80 yen a piece they were the perfect pre-dinner snack!

We walked through Hamamachi shopping arcade and decided to try Shisei.

First came the stuff that we didn't order...tsukidashi (amuse bouche) (chicken skins, some type of shellfish and sweet sour fish)

assorted plate of sashimi

buta kakuni (shoyu pork) so tender!

snapper with skin so crispy! served in a flavorful broth.

And some Nagasaki beef, grilled at our table.

Transportation around Nagasaki city is pretty easy and timely. There are city buses as well as low rail. Just be careful whenever crossing!

It was a full day, our feet were tired and we hoped that the weather would turn around the next day...

Nonobudou
inside of Hakata Station wickets
Phone: 092.292.5201

Momotaro
10-19 Hamamachi
Nagasaki city, Nagasaki
Phone: 095.823.7542
Hours: 10:00-23:00

Shisei
inside of Hamamachi arcade
Phone: 095.822.1237
Lunch: 11:30-14:00, Dinner: 17:00-22:00

Best Western Nagasaki
2-26 Takaramachi
Nagasaki city, Nagasaki
Phone: 095.821.1111

saturday

Saturday we visited MIL.

When we stepped out of the subway station, we were greeted with this...snow! Lots of it.

We gingerly made our way to MIL's.

A neighbor was making snowmen.

While we waited for lunch to arrive, we snacked on some of the osechi dishes that MIL had.

Sushi arrived at about 1-ish and we all enjoyed it.

It was a nice visit with MIL.

If you are interested on what the neighbor's snowman looked like, here it is.

I'll start posts on Nagasaki tomorrow...stay tuned and have a good week!

happy new year

How was the last day of 2014 and the first day of 2015? Hope you had a nice couple of days.

On the last day of 2014, we went to our favorite neighborhood cafe for breakfast. We also picked up some coffee as we were running low.

Lunch was toshikoshi soba, in Japan, you are supposed to eat it at midnight. In Hawaii, we usually eat it for lunch (because our family usually is ready to go to sleep at midnight), and I also thought we shouldn't really be eating soba so late, so we picked up some kakiage (fried vegetable with shrimp and squid) and had it with our soba.

Dinner was an assortment of things you usually find in the o-sechi, the traditional dishes that you eat during the new year. If you are interested I wrote up a detailed post here.

On the first day of 2015, we had ozoni (the traditional soup with mochi in it).

We then went out to various temples in our area for hatsumode (the first prayers of the new year).

Most places were closed so we were really thankful that a ramen shop in our shopping arcade was open for business.

Dinner that night was a combination of bagna cauda sauce, roasted sardines and daikon leaf pasta. Some dried fruits, cheese and other nibbles with some wine.

On the second day of 2015, we awoke to white rooftops. It had actually started snowing the day before in the afternoon, but I guess it continued through the night.

There wasn't any left on the ground, though there were some slippery spots while walking.

We visited a few more temples in our area and then had lunch at a different ramen place.

After lunch we face-timed with family in Hawaii (love technology!) and then spent the afternoon watching another blizzard whizz by our window.

This little snowman was seen while walking to pick up some food after lunch.

Tomorrow we visit MIL. I'll post about Nagasaki after Satoshi goes back to work and I more time "me-time".

I hope your first weekend of 2015 will be a nice one.

Talk to you again soon!