Nagasaki, written on train, posted now...

There we go. Fukuoka is done, moving on to Hiroshima right now. Sadly there’s no wifi on the Shinkansen so when I upload this text I will actually already be in Hiroshima. Not that it matters much of course. 3 Nights in Fukuoka translates to 2 days there, which somehow feels abit too little. Saturday was awesome weather, and alot of walking. I went to Marinoa, a big outlet mall to the east of the city, at the sea, as the name implies. The highlight of the place were prolly the cars I saw there, not the actual mall itself. From there I came back into Fukuoka proper, stopping at a big park with a lake. Sun was shining and there was tons of stuff to see there, lots of people, a Japanese garden to the south of it, and then towards Fukuoka, to the west there are the ruins of the former castle.

That brings us to 2 ruins, no proper castle though that I’ve visited yet atleast. But I remain hopeful. There’s one of the best castles in Japan close to Osaka in Himeji, and Osaka itself has a castle, although that one has been rebuilt so it’s not exactly original anymore. It seems most castles and temples and shrines aren’t the original ones, someone at some point seems to have usually destroyed them....

Anyhow, inside the castle, or just to the side of it there’s some sports fields etc, and there some kids soccer team was playing, quite the place to do some soccer at, with high walls and stuff in the background, although I assume for them that’s just normal. From there I walked along the backroads into Fukuoka/Hakata’s central Tenjin area. It’s kinda fun how the place changed really suddenly from the tiny backroads and older houses into what I’ve gotten to accept as modern day Tokyo, 8 to 10 story high shopping malls and department stores, wide roads, and lots and lots of people...

Through Tenjin I got to Canal City, the latest mall in Fukuoka, boasting a canal in the middle of it(Hence the name -.- ). There were even more stores, and people. Back to the Hostel for some sleep and an early morning wakeup.

Sunday starts with breakfast early, followed by a 2 hour train ride on the Kamome Express to Nagasaki. There I almost got off at the wrong station, which as it later turns out would have actually been closer to the sites I was planning to visit than was the actual Nagasaki station. Irony... Nagasaki was the smalles of the cities I’ve visited so far, and unlike Fukuoka or Tokyo it’s not situated in a plain but stuck between mountains along a river close to the sea so there’s no real mass of city where the only thing you see are houses and more houses. At all times you can see the Mountains to either side which strengthens the small town feel. And with smalltown we obviously think of something in the line of 200.000 ish thousand inhabitants...

The first and obvious reason most people come to visit Nagasaki is the atomic bomb that was dropped there by the US in the last days of the second world war. It was dropped in the northern parts of town which meant that the mountains and layout of the city actually saved certain parts of the town to the southeast. In the north however obviously everything died. In the area where it exploded there’s 3 or 4 mayor sites, depending on how you rate a church. A couple years before the war the christians of Nagasaki had finally got their church built, and for some years it was the biggest church in Asia. Until the bomb came. The church was about 500 meters or so from the blast hypocenter and only a wall was left standing. Now the church has been rebuilt so you can visit that if you want to. The 3 more important sites are the Peace Park, built ontop of the Hill next to the Hypocenter, where a prison housing forced labor and criminals was. The whole place was obviously destroyed and today there’s a park with statues from mainly ex soviet block countries reminding us of world peace and unity... Then there’s the obvious Hypocenter which has been made into an open area , with a single black Monolith standing at the spot where the bomb exploded 500m in the air. Close to it is also a single corner from the wall of the church. And from there up the stairs to the east is the museum, with a pretty nice and visual depiction of what happened there aswell as alot of information about what the current situation in the world is in regards to atomic weapons. Heavy stuff, now I’m on the train to Hiroshima, where hopefully I’ll visit the other hypocenter and a larger Museum. Assuming I find a free net or the Hotel has net access I should be able to post this and hopefully some stuff about Hiroshima too. Ttyl.

Oh and ps. : Wizard, no schoolgirl pics for you -.-