Day 2 Japan - tatami mat 1 - James 0

24 August
Day 2 Japan

The tatami broke me.  Apparently tatami floor + futon is harder than the Mongolian ground.  I woke up in agony this morning!  I did something to my right hip and it was incredibly bruised or something.  I can only assume my fat ass slept on that side a lot last night and caused a problem.

Oh well.  Onto the tourist trail!

I limped down to the nearest tram stop (10 min walk - 20 min limp) and got the tram to the train station.  Grabbed some breakfast from the one of the stores at the train station and headed to my platform.

The takeaway options in convenience stores are fantastic here.  So much better than Australia.  So much choice and it all looks really fresh and well presented.  I'm going to enjoy this country!

I had to change trains at some point to get to Nagasaki and that went without a hitch.  On my new train I was in the very front carriage in the same compartment as the train driver.  The train was older and the carriage was not as nice but it was pretty cool being up front and seeing the tracks in front of me.

After arriving in Nagasaki I went straight for the ABomb museum and peace park.  The tourist counter at the train station was very helpful with providing a map and information about public transport.  Nagasaki was the site of the second bomb that was dropped.  I think it was the day after Hiroshima.

It was quite a good museum for its size I thought.  It was not huge but they had some interesting exhibits and I thought they told the story of the blast well.  It was a sombre experience ... not the sort of museum you run around taking selfies in ... but I quite enjoyed it.  There were not a huge amount of people there as I gather it's far less well known than Hiroshima.  I will be interested to see how this compares with the Hiroshima memorial as I'll be there in a few days.

I did take some photos but I have lost them somewhere in my Google Drive account.  I'll have to update later.

After I had limped around the museum for an hour or so (huge for me given its size!) I went and wandered around through the peace park across the road.  It's a small park with a few sculptures and memorials dedicated to peace.  Some were quite nice.  They also had a sculpture there that was the hyper centre of the bomb blast.  Interesting walking through that area.

I've heard people say they are quite emotional about this topic when they go to these museums.  I don't know if I'm emotionally crippled or what but I didn't feel anything other than "huh; Interesting" to anything there.  Regardless - I'm glad I went and I think that if you're visiting Japan it's important to visit at least one of the memorials just so people don't forget.

After the museum I jumped back on the tram in the opposite direction and headed toward a restored trading town.  The Danish were the first big traders the Japanese had in this area and they all used to live in a particular part of town.  The town had been restored and all the old buildings rebuilt.  Again - interesting - but nothing particularly exciting.

It was kind of annoying having to take shoes off and put them back on all the time.  Half the buildings required shoes off to go upstairs and half of them didn't.  I wore my hiking boots so it's not like I can just slip those bad boys on and off.  I think at the end I got to the point where I didn't enter any of the buildings where I had to do shoes off.  They had a couple of dudes wandering around in old-timey outfits acting as tour guides and photo opportunities if people wanted them but this place wasn't very busy.  Too damn hot outside to be doing this.

After I was done there I took a selfie in front of a Lawson convenience store and got a drink.  I think that was the first Lawson store I noticed in Japan.  Only interesting if you're an Ingress player.  I did not get a power cube from the portal :(

I wandered down to the harbour that was nearby after that and had a little walk around.  I contemplated lunch but I was still pretty full from the ramen last night and bento for breakfast so decided against it.  I had thought about going to the local art gallery which was around the corner but ultimately I decided I just didn't care about contemporary Japanese art so decided not to.  I think airconditioning was my main driver for visiting there.

A lesson: I had pre-booked my train ticket back to Kumamoto but I was actually ready to go about an hour before that.  Next time I will just go reserve a ticket when I'm ready to go.

I got on my first train without a problem.  However - when I transferred I got on the wrong damn train because I wasn't paying attention to my ticket.  I ended up back in Fukuoka.  Whoops!  So I jumped off and found a ticket counter then jumped on a train back to Kumamoto.  Idiot.  I didn't get back until about 9.30 and there was nothing around my hostel for food so I just went to bed.