Day 8: Hiroshima to Nagasaki – 2nd April 2023

Firstly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my beautiful baby sister Bek 🙂

In pretty much every city and town we go, we visit the supermarket. Not necessarily to buy things, but to understand more about the location and its culture. The way supermarkets are laid out tells you about the local population’s priorities. A large fresh food section tells me that cooking and eating at home is important. If there’s a large selection of fish, but hardly any beef or lamb, that tells me about the types of meats that are accessible and preferred. Two full aisles of chocolates and lollies tells me they enjoy their sweets. No pet food section suggests that they might not adore their pets as much as we do 😉

Over 1.2 million people live in Hiroshima and since we were there less than 24 hours, we didn’t get to visit a residential area. We did, however, get a good look at the centre of town and had a thorough walk around the shops near the station, since we arrived about an hour too early for our train to Nagasaki.

We caught a taxi to the station rather than perform another bag-drag across the two kilometres of busy streets. Taxis aren’t cheap in Japan, but not horrifically expensive either and we though the ¥1000 (A$12) was well worth it, even just to ride in a 1990s-style Toyota Crown again. No matter how short the journey is, the taxi drivers don’t seem blink an eyelid, which is typical of the level of respect and manners that we have noticed all Japanese people seem to have. Taxi drivers wear white gloves and the doors automatically open for you. Payment is preferred in cash and no tip is expected. This particular driver was also keen to speak English – even though I was trying to speak (very poor) Japanese.

Hiroshima’s large railway station is filled with many shops and is adjoined by two quite large department stores. After having a simple breakfast of a boiled egg, toast and tea at a coffee shop, we spent the next hour looking at many of the shops, including a very large bookstore (with an English section) and a large supermarket. This supermarket was obviously designed for travellers with many options for pre-made meals. Even in supermarkets not near railway stations, there seems to be a very large assortment of premade snacks, meals and desserts on offer. I guess that reflects the busy nature of Japanese lives.

Selection of supermarket pics from the last week below:

Sunday was the seventh day since we validated our seven-day rail pass, and so our last opportunity to use the pass on the bullet trains. We had pre-booked seats on the three trains we needed to catch to get from Hiroshima to Nagasaki. Nagasaki is around 400km southwest of Hiroshima on the island of Kyushu and with a population of around 500,000, quite small by Japanese city standards. .

Again, the train trips were straightforward, although I was a bit concerned that we had a four-minute transfer time between trains two and three at Takeo-Onsen. It turns out that was plenty of time as everyone just moved from one platform to the one right across from it, because the type of train that could go on those rails changed. There is a plan to change it to the same rail type all the way, but that is still being built.

There were two reasons we decided to go to Nagasaki when we planned this trip a couple of years ago.

Nagasaki is known for its volcanoes, beautiful offshore islands, historic buildings and hot-spring spas. Nagasaki was the only major entrance port for foreign countries for hundreds of years in Japan’s period of national isolation, and so its architecture, layout and facilities reflect this.

Unfortunately, Nagasaki, like Hiroshima is infamous for its part in World War II and this is the first reason we came here. Nagasaki became the second city after Hiroshima to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, bringing the war to an end. Japan surrendered soon after the bombing of the city, which claimed a massive 74,000 lives.

After leaving our bags at the hotel, we visited the Peace Park. In the centre of the complex is the Hypocentre Park with a simple, black monolith that marks the explosion’s epicentre. Not far from it a damaged pillar of the former Urakami Cathedral, which was destroyed in the blast.

On the hill above the park stands the sobering Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum where we spent an hour. Included in the many displays was an area where you could watch videos of both foreign and local survivors. We chose to watch a couple of videos that interviewed Australians, who were here as Prisoners of War during WWII. As I sat with tears pouring down my cheeks, I felt overwhelmed at the enormity of what happened here. Both of the Diggers were clearly damaged both physically and mentally by what they had experienced… yet another sobering reminder of the horrors of human hatred and war.

North across the street from the Hypocentre Park lies the Memorial Park that contains the iconic Peace Statue, a large fountain and various other memorials presented to the city by governments and groups from across the world. Slowly walking around the impressive fountain, was an opportunity for quiet refection, with no-one in the crowd making a sound.

My idea of perfect weather, not to be too particular, is sunny and 23c. Today hit the brief, and so it was perfect for a stroll the couple of kilometres back to the hotel. We stopped in a large shopping centre for a late lunch where I had a really delicious and cheap noodle and vegetable dish (A$6) and where Dave chose the less tasty and more expensive (IMHO) hamburger from Maccas!

Our hotel here is really lovely and the perfect place for a couple of hours rest and blog-writing. The biggest bath so far in the biggest room so far was a great spot for reading too, and it wasn’t long before we were considering our dinner plans.

Again, we just took potluck and wandered close to the hotel, easily finding a seafood place that looked good and seemed to be crowded, which is always a good indication of a restaurant’s quality. We both really loved our dinners, Dave enjoyed eating his calamari with chopsticks and loved the taste of it, and I really, really loved my super fresh, straight-from-the-tank seafood assortment which was given to me with cooking implements ready for me to grill on the table’s camping-stove.

What a lovely way to finish our first day in Nagasaki! Tomorrow we will visit the second reason for us coming here – a boat trip to Hashima (Battleship) Island.