From Kumamoto to Nagasaki - Japan at Cherry Blossom 2023 - 17
01.04.2023 - From Kumamoto to Nagasaki
Weather: sunny in the morning, cloudy in the evening
Walking distance: 12,5 km
The trip is slowly but surely coming to an end. My suitcase is going to Osaka from where our flight back home will depart, while we have one last destination: Nagasaki [↗].
Nagasaki is easy to reach from Kumamoto, so we leave at 10:15 and will be at the hotel in Nagasaki by early afternoon. Again, it is not a through connection. This time we have to take a total of 3 trains.
Arrived in Nagasaki, I go together with another of the group directly to the information center inside the train station. We want to go to Ghost Island [↗] or (semi-)officially Gunkan-Jima Island (the official name is Hashima) tomorrow. What we know is that the tours are usually sold out and you need a reservation. I tried to figure out the details at home but the information was confusing at best. The lady at the information knows what we want and tells us where to go and even gives us a voucher for 10% off. Unfortunately, they don't do the reservations straight away.
Our hotel is far away from everything. It is located halfway up the local mountain and can realistically be reached by taxi or shuttle bus only. There is no other restaurant or convenience store nearby so you have to bring everything with you or buy it (at high prices) at the hotel.
After checking in and leaving our things in the hotel room, we take the next shuttle back down to the station. We walk to the nearby harbor, as the lady from the info desk described it to us. We have to go to the second dock south of the station, which takes us about 15 minutes. The shipping terminal is at the end of the street. There are a number of tour operators on the first floor and we have to look for Yamasa, which is at booth 7.
Our booth is already closed as the last ship of that company already left. We ask at another booth and they tell us to knock at the window. Ok, we would not have expected that now here in Japan, but if they mean. And really, they open and we can make a reservation for tomorrow 9am.
As a group of three we walk a bit through the town and pass Dejima [↗], a former Dutch trading post on what was an island in the past, but that is now in the middle of the town. We want to go to the Nakashima-gawa Bridge and so we follow the riverbed. Of course, there are many tourists in the middle of the day, making it hard to get an undisturbed shot. This would be an early morning destination, but the location of our hotel makes this impossible.
Our last stop of the day is the local mountain, the Inasa-yama Mountain [↗], to see the sunset. Again there is a ropeway that takes us up the mountain. Over time we meet most of the group here. After sunset, it gets cold and windy, but I stay a bit longer than the others to take some blue hour shots. Finally, I decide that I have taken enough pictures and leave.
I walk down to the hotel as it would be more complicated to take the ropeway to town, than the bus to the station and then the shuttle up to the hotel. It's just half an hour down and the way is along the road, so not really pleasant, but on the other hand without risk of getting lost.
