Day 1
After Huis Ten Bosch, we took the train to Nagasaki. I made the mistake of booking seats and paid an extra $30 for two people when it turns out there are only local trains out of huis ten Bosch with no seat assignments until you get to Shin Omatchi. Literally, I could have just stayed on the local train all the way to Nagasaki without transferring to the Shinkansen and saved $30. Whoops. Oh well, the Shinkansen was nice, and more comfortable than the local train, just not sure it was $30’s worth of nice for a 15 min ride.
We then took a taxi to our hotel, Fav Lux, and dropped our bags off, and explored by foot around the Glover Garden area for snacks and souvenirs to bring home.
The must try foods in Nagasaki are the Castella cakes, pork belly manju, loquat jelly, champon (seafood noodle soup), saraudon (crispy noodles with gravy on top), and Turkish rice.
And the things to see in Nagasaki are the Peace Park/Atomic bomb museum, Mount Insayama observation deck, Shinchi Chinatown, Glover Garden and the streets nearby lined with souvenir shops, and Dejima Museum. If you go in October 7-9, there will be the Kunchi Festival which is one of the famous Nagasaki festivals.
Yamate pudding near Glover Garden inspired by the nearby Omura Cathedral’s stained glass windows
It’s a super creamy pudding with a fruit jelly on top that makes it resemble stained glass. You can eat the pudding at the benches in front and then return the glass jar. 600 yen per pudding, delicious!
This Greengrocer stand near Glover Garden sells Biwa (loquat) jelly and loquat juice. Nagasaki is the largest producer of loquats in Japan so we had to try their jelly and juice.
Biwa (Loquat) juice. Tasty but there are 3 giant ice cubes in this little cup for 500 yen! Could I have asked for no ice? Ha ha
This Biwa (loquat) jelly was quite nice. Not too sweet and has a whole fruit in each jelly. We enjoyed it for breakfast along with some Castella cakes (famous cakes brought over by the Portuguese). My plan was to buy a bunch of castella cakes to try for breakfast every morning we were in Nagasaki, and then on our last day here, buy the tastiest one to bring home.
Ok, another Kakuni (pork belly) manju shop was along our walk near Glover Garden. It’s so good, but is it good for the arteries? I guess we are on vacation, so all the rules can be suspended…
Plus we need this food to climb up all the hills and stairs of Nagasaki! The city is sooooo hilly just like Lisbon. Bring deet. I got eaten alive by mosquitoes here…9 bites! Eep!
After a long climb, we got to see a fantastic view of the harbor from Ouratenbo Park. The South Yamate rest house is also close by where there’s rest rooms and some history about the unique building material of steel plus concrete for the building at the time. (And if you want, Omura Cathedral is near by. We didn’t go in but did pass by it.)
From the Omuratenbo park, we can see the escalator in the distance. It’s the diagonal structure with circles. We should have gone up that way instead! The escalator is really neat! It’s not an escalator but rather an elevator that travels diagonally. It’s called the Glover Sky Road Incline and is available for free for the public to use. So we came up here later at night using this incline elevator and the regular vertical elevator a few feet away from the incline elevator. It wasn’t crowded, even at night.
After checking into our hotel and dropping off all the goodies we bought, we walked 12 minutes to Shinchi Chinatown, Nagasaki’s Chinatown. It’s the oldest Chinatown in Japan. During Japan’s era of isolation, Nagasaki was the only port open to foreign trade for the Chinese, Dutch and Portuguese. And like the Dutch that were only allowed to live and trade in Dejima, the Chinese were confined to live and work in Shinchi Chinatown. This is the southern gate to Chinatown.
Shinchi Chinatown: Some of the restaurants I bookmarked were full and would not even let us wait. This restaurant pictured was nice and said if we didn’t mind, we could sit and wait for a bit for a table to open up. Arigato!
Shinchi Chinatown: The things to try in Chinatown are the Champon (Chinese noodles in a seafood broth with veggies and seafood), and Sara-udon (thin crispy noodles with a thick white gravy and seafood). These dishes were created by a local Chinese restaurant during the Meji period to provide a low cost but nutritious meal to Chinese students, and ever since then, these dishes have stayed and are loved by local and tourists. Both of these were really good! The “special champon” broth was flavorful and had scallops, shrimp, kamaboku, quail egg, pork, carrots, cabbage, bean sprouts, and bamboo shoots. The regular Sara-udon noodles were super crispy and provided a nice contrast when tossed with the gravy. Since I chose the regular version the Sara udon didn’t have scallops, just shrimp and pork and kamaboku. All this was only 2200 yen ($16).
After dinner, we walked to Dejima Wharf and then walked back to the Glover Garden area via Nagasaki seaside park. It was a beautiful stroll, and we saw lots of locals walking their dogs here. We also saw a lot of food stalls lined up but they were all closed. (Later we found out the food stalls were for the Kunchi festival!)
Fuzzy view of mount Insayama
Night views at the top of the Glover Sky Road Incline
Day 2
On the 2nd day, we took the tram to Peace Park and Atomic bomb museum. The tram system is really easy because there’s only the red, blue, and green trams in Nagasaki. They were built in 1915, so it’s quite interesting to ride these. The seats are long benches as opposed to normal seats you see on trains or buses. But they have IC card readers installed and computer screens that show the next stop in English. Each ride is only 140 yen. We took the tram to the peace park stop. And from there, crossed the street to the peace park. There’s even escalators that take you to the fountain and statues.
This Statue at one end of Peace Park was created by Seibo Kitamura in 1955 where the man has one finger pointed towards the bomb in the sky and the other hand gesturing peace and is seated Buddha style. There are many other statues donated from different countries in their pledge for peace that are located all around Peace Park, and you can stroll around to see all of these for free.
On the other end of Peace park is a fountain, and it was designed to give water to the souls of those that died from the bomb. (Many were burned and begging for water before their death.) You can see the statue of peace through the fountain.
Walking further south, you will arrive at this black pillar that marks the hypocenter of the atomic bomb. Next to the pillar are the remains of a cathedral, a reminder of the power of nuclear weapons.
We took a break for lunch at a Japanese restaurant called Nanbashiyito. It’s across the street from the hypocenter and a bit hard to find, but just follow Google maps. There’s no English on the outside of the restaurant, but I recognized the menu on the front door so knew this was the restaurant. Every day they offer only 2 lunch set menus (Set A, or B) for only 850 yen each and OMG it’s so good. The restaurant is run by a husband and wife team. Pictured above is Set Menu A: sashimi, battered fried squid skewers, salad, miso soup, rice, pickles
Set menu B: chicken karage, omelette, salad, chicken stuffed aburage, miso soup, rice, pickles
Atomic Bomb Museum: open 8:30-5:30PM, 200 yen per person. Buy your tickets at the kiosk, enter through the gates and follow the arrows for the route. The first section talks about Nagasaki before the bomb, and then it shows footage of the mushroom cloud at 11:02 AM when the bomb was dropped over Nagasaki on 09August 1945. The exhibit continues with showing the destruction and some testimonies from survivors as well as a bit of history on what led to japans involvement in WWII.
Atomic Bomb Museum: The later half of the exhibit focuses on a call for peace.
After the museum, we walked about 10 min to the One Legged Torii gate. The blast knocked down half of the stone entrance to the Sannojina shrine, but the other pillar remained.
One Legged Torii gate Before the bomb: This is what it looked like before the bomb.
From the Tori gate, we took the tram to Dejima Museum (open from 9-8pm, 520 yen per person). Dejima is a man made fan shaped island built for the Dutch traders. From 1641 to 1850, the Tokugawa shogunate banned all foreigners with the exception of the Dutch in Dejima. The museum has a mini Dejima model, and it talks about western trade and culture. There are some rooms that show a recreation of a special winter solstice dinner, or the captain’s quarters (where the captain got to stay when his ship docked…his crew would stay on the ship). It was just an ok museum.
Dejima Museum: They played billiards
Dejima Museum : Preparing for special meals
Dejima Museum: Winter solstice celebration
After the museum, we walked over to the Nagasaki Kunichi Festival. It’s a famous Nagasaki autumn festival held from 07-09Oct every year, with influences from many cultures. There’s floats, parades, stage performances and tons of food stalls. I thought Mountain View Obon was big, but these food stalls stretched for blocks and blocks, and there’s sooooo many people!!! There were long lines for these special manju. You can see the ladies in the back stuffing the mochi while the men in front take the uncooked mochi and put them in these metal molds that flatten the mochi to a circular disk and toast and cook them at the same time. We got 5 for 750 yen and ate two right there while they were still hot.
Kunichi Festival : And stalls sold hashi yaki, okonomiyaki that’s cooked and rolled onto a pair of chopsticks (hashi) to form a log so that you can eat it while walking. How clever! These tasted just ok, not great because it’s quite doughy. I think they can’t put too much veggies and other goodies in the okonomiyaki since it won’t hold onto the chopsticks— kinda need the batter around the stick. So the thing was mainly dough plus sauce, so definitely not as tasty as the flat style okonomiyaki
Kunichi Festival : The chocolate covered bananas on a stick were good
Kunichi Festival: Ube over ice cream, but the ube is extruded as long strands. It was unique and tasty
We then booked free shuttles from hotel bellvue Dejima to the Nagasaki ropeway at the foot of Mt Insayama. There’s a free shuttle from 6 hotels running from 7pm to 10 pm, and you can book it on the day of, starting at noon. Here’s the website: here and here. We took the shuttle at 7:30 and arrive at Mt Insayama at 8PM. You then buy tickets for the ropeway to take the gondola up to the observation deck. Tickets are 1250 yen per person round trip. Once you get to the end of the ropeway, you still have to take an elevator up and go through a bright magenta blue lighted path to get to the observation deck. It’s windy up here so bring a jacket. This is a picture of the radio towers up at Mount Insayama.
View of Nagasaki from Mt Insayama: We then walked up some stairs for even better views of the city. This is reported as one of the best night views in Japan. It’s so pretty we stay until 9pm and then took the rope way at 9:15 PM back down. We stayed a bit longer and missed our #2 shuttle at 9PM, but since it wasn’t crowded, they allowed us to get on with group #3 bus folks at 9:30PM. The bus then dropped us off at ANA crown plaza, which is only a few minutes walk to our Hotel Fav Lux. This free shuttle bus is so great, and makes visiting Mt Insayama so easy if you are somewhere near any of those 6 hotels.
This morning, we tried to find the schedule for the Kunichi Festival. My resourceful hubby looked on Google maps and found an area called Central Park where it was reported as having higher than normal crowds. So we took the green tram over to Meganebashi bridge stop and sure enough, there were tons of people lining the streets and we can hear drumming. We joined the crowds and were rewarded with seeing several float dances. We spent the entire morning here wandering from street to street chasing glimpses of these float dances. It was quite fun!
Kunchi Festival Sachi-daiko was created after the great flood of Nagasaki in 1982 so that disasters don’t happen again. This float represents a shrine with an orca (looks like a gold dragon) on top. Those carrying the float would spin it around or toss it up in the air based on the directors calling, and this represents the orca soaring to the sound of “Horai-ko”. I believe this is the whale spouting dancing.
Here is another view of the orca float as it marches along the streets visiting each shop. We are not sure, but shops and restaurants may pay for the floats to come to their shop for good luck? We saw a man with a clip board going to each shop and then tagging them with a sheet of paper.
And just to give you an idea of how crowded the streets really were to see this festival!
Kunchi Festival: This ship float that has the red circle on a yellow flag and is called Yumiyahachiman-iwaibune. It’s of the Suwa shrine (it’s the shrine where the prostitutes used to pray to for stormy weather that would keep the sailors on land for extra days). In the dance, the ship moves forwards and backwards to express the violent sea the priests have to overcome to get to Nagasaki.
Here’s another view of the float where you can see the kids inside and those holding the ship are wearing clothes with a sea pattern.
Kunchi Festival: This float is Jabune, dragon ship. We just saw the ship parade by, but apparently, at one point of the performance, the top is supposed to open up. The roof becomes a stage where music is played. We felt very lucky that we happen to be in Nagasaki during one of the most famous festivals.
Afterwards we ate lunch at Maragame Udon. Yes, I know there is a chain in California too, but we wanted to try the one in Japan to see if it’s better.
Maragame Udon: And yes, it’s better! The noodles have the same bounce, but look at the color of the egg as well as all the ingredients they put in! There are sliced beef and ground pork, garlic, and onions, and then at the station you put in your own green onions and tempura bits.
Maragame Udon: Mix it all up and enjoy! It was really good and each bowl was only 790 yen ($6).
In the afternoon, we took the tram to Glover Garden. (Open 8-6pm, 620 yen per person). It’s where they relocated several of the houses of the wealthy merchants of Nagasaki so that you can see and read about their lives. There are two entrances. The easiest is to ride the Glover Sky Elevator up to entrance #2. Pay and enter and that way you start at the tallest building in the garden, the Mitsubishi building, and then work your way down (rather than climbing uphill) to the various houses.
Glover Garden, fountain
Glover Garden, you can dress up for a fee and walk around the garden
Glover Garden, the former Ringer House
Glover Garden
Glover Garden, madame butterfly statue
Glover Garden, Glover House
Glover Garden, Observatory deck views
At the exit of Glover Garden, there’s a museum exhibit that talks about the Kunchi Festival and has some floats and the dragons on display.
Glover Garden, displays explained the dragon and the moon. We were wondering what the gold ball was this morning when we saw this dragon on the streets.
Dinner at Lekker: Turkish rice with katsu or hamburger. Turkish rice is not really Turkish rice, but a specialty dish only found in Nagasaki, so we had to try it when here. It tasted like fried rice with curry powder, and was pretty good.
Omiyage from Nagasaki
