Kyushu 2023 - Nagasaki Approaching Gunkanjima/Hashima

Ladies and gentlemen, Hashima Island. I prefer to call is Gunkanjima a.k.a Battleship Island, cause surely this can only come out from a sci fi fantasy story! So, the wonderful thing that I love about my travel is, it's like a fast track to learning history and culture of a country. Hashima Island was indeed a futuristic island long time back when coal was a thing. It was a high revenue generating place, and many people came here to live and work here. It was a whole town on that concrete piece of land. But soon, the coal ran out, or the demand went down, and soon it was abandon, with all it's buildings still intact. Like a zombie invaded land. Time stood still since then. Who knows how long it will remain like this. 

Our boat approaching the island. This was the most exciting part of the trip. Cause the captain has to judge whether it was safe for us to land. And I bet everyone of us wanted to land and set foot on that island! it was nerve wracking as the boat gets closer and closer to it.

Everyone was outside the boat, taking photograph, just in case the captain decided that nope, today was't the day! Hahaha. So close yet to far!

Here's a selfie of me, praying that we can land! 

I do think the island is so beautiful. I mean, it's all concrete and without any colour. But there is just something very surreal about it. Something mysterious. Something sad and haunting. 

Our boat went closer and closer, and we could see the building clearer. Clearly abandon. Stones and metal could be seen exposed. Streets empty. Not much vegetation on the island. Windows, dark and hollow..... 

Imagine..... there once was a vibrant community here....

Kyushu 2023 - Nagasaki Gunkanjima/Hashima Via Jupiter Boat

This is Jupiter, the boat that was going to take us to the cool island. I saw people boarding it, so we went to ask how to get tickets. The guide there told us to walk to the digital museum just a short distance away to enquire about tickets, so we did. This was the boat I wanted to take to Gunkanjima! Which translate to battleship island, or it's real name Hashima.

Lucky us! We got the last two tickets to board the morning boat ride. I was actually ok to wait for the afternoon ride, but the lady at the ticket counter told us that we can make it, and that the weather was good in the morning. So the thing about these boat ride is, they only sail if the weather is good. And to actually get to land on the island to explore it, you have to have good weather without strong wind or tide. So she told us we should go now since the weather in the afternoon trip is not guaranteed. So we got our tickets, and ran all the way back to the pier to board the boat! Yay! I was so high on adrenaline! I was gonna get to see the cool island I wanted after all! The ticket price wasn't cheap either, almost 30sgd? But it was one of those places that only exist here and now..... so YOLO!

As the boat sailed out from the harbour, we were allowed to wander outside the boat to look at the view. 

We saw the cool bridge that we saw early on our morning walk too.

As well as some Easter Island looking figurine at some of the land area. I thought that was rather hilarious and freaking cool! 

But I thought these shipyard was really cool. I've never seen so much metal on the water before. And we get to see them quite up close too. When I saw these, my mind was racing on about sci fi anime. So this is where it was all based on! Imagine watching an anime, or reading some Japanese fiction where you can only imagine it in your mind, and then finally getting to see something similar to it in real life. It was like fantasy coming to life! A very surreal feeling, at least for me :P

The shipyard forms a very large area, and has been there for a long time.

Some of the ships kinda looked like battleship. So fitting since we were headed to battleship island! All the metal and fire going on out there to build all these gigantic floating tin cans! Lol. Almost Lord of the Ring vibe where the Orcs were building an army, with weapons from fire and steel!

It was just a short ride, maybe 40minutes? And we soon spotted the surreal island. 

Kyushu 2023 - Nagasaki Port Morning Walk

 

Nagasaki first morning, waking up to this view from our Dormy Inn Hotel. I didn't have much planned, except to walk to the harbour area, and maybe try getting a ticket to see a cool island. I have been trying to get tickets to the cool island, but there was no reply to my email or messages. I guess in Japan, they still prefer people calling. Anyway, let's go try my luck.

It was a nice morning for a walk, the weather was quite cooling and not much sun in the sky. I walked towards the sea side and went pass Nagasaki Bizport. Saw some yellow tulips growing there that they looked almost unreal.

Reached the harbour area in good time, so we admired the view and read up a bit about the history of Nagasaki port, especially during the industry revolution of Japan.

We could see views of another town just cross the waters. It looked kinda like Urakami too. Perhaps all the town in Nagasaki is on a slope like these. It does made a very memorable landscape.

Saw this cute little train on the pedestrian path at Nagasaki Bizport. I thought that with all the train spotting and train rides that we have been doing, it was appropriate for me to include this in my collection of train photos too! 

Walking further along, we saw some cool buildings in front, with cool waterways along the path.

I really like the vibe of the place. The architecture of the place was very neat and concrete, yet there were flowers and water surrounding the area. It was industrial chic, yet oddly natural. A very unique Japanese style which I am totally in to! I guess it was the use of space. It wasn't overly cluttered. Everything was neat and clean line, modern yet traditional. 

I love the use of glass in their buildings too. And how some of the buildings were built across the waters. I think that was one of the museum or art or something. I didn't visit it. I'm particular about the museums I visit since it takes so much time to really enjoy a good museum. 

Here is a closer view of the architecture. Even if you don't appreciate buildings, surely you can appreciate the beauty of your surroundings?

A great balance of water, nature and concrete in this space.

There were stone steps where you could walk down to the waters too. This was roughly the end of the seaside walk, as we later turned into a small town area near Chinatown to look for my ferry ride to a cool island. How cool? Wait and see in upcoming post!

In case you would like to replicate my walk, here is the map I used. It was quite a short walk, but seems longer when you stopped and admire everything you came across. When I travel, I don't really spend a lot of money on public transport, especially when it's such a pleasant area to walk in :)

Kyushu 2023 - Nagasaki Dormy Inn Hotel

 

Ta-dah! Dormy Inn Nagasaki! There's my free coffee from the hotel lobby to welcome me. I super love this hotel chain! It's slightly more expensive, but it comes with it's perks! Like the beautiful take-away cup you can take for free to get your free coffee from the lobby. The view is from our hotel room, overlooking Nagasaki station, which was  under huge renovation while we were there. 

Even their complementary water in the room came with a cute bottle. I love their logo, the pek-chek bird face, hahahaha. I mean, this is a hotel, yet their logo looked so pissed all the time. I thought the logo was hilarious, and you can find it almost everywhere around the hotel, especially in the lift area with all the notices from the hotel to their guest.

After checking in, I went and explore the onsen.

The ladies onsen. It was a modern hotel, and I can't remember if there were a outdoor onsen. Probably just a balcony type overlooking the sky. I remember it was quite cooling, yet I opened the door/window of the connecting indoor/outdoor partition so that I could enjoy the cold breeze while still soaking in the hot bath. Since it was dinner time when I went, there wasn't anyone in the bath so I could really enjoyed it on my own. 

Here's a pek-chek bird notice telling you of the free things you can get around te hotel. There are ice cream for you after your onsen, and vitagen in the morning to help with your bowel movements. There is also free night time ramen. Needless to say, we helped ourselves to everything. The opening hours stated was kind of a suggestion as the fridge was still there unlocked at other hours, so we just helped ourselves. Of course this doesn't apply to the ramen, which is only served in their restaurant at night time. By the way, even though the ramen was free, it was pretty delicious! That's why even though I was full, I would still at least eat it once during my stay here. 

Pek-chek bird guarding the ice cream freezer. So many flavours! Sometimes we just go take some as desserts, or whenever we were in our room and wanted something sweet to eat. And this is why I love their hotel chain so much! The other two chains that I started loving is Tokyo Stay chain, and Hotel ACTEL at Nagoya. Lovely place to stay. 

Kyushu 2023 - Nagasaki Shinkansen and Local Trains

 

Taking the local train back. The train was not very frequent, so we did have to wait a bit. Same as when we came to Urakami, the station lady told us to walk around first since we had to wait almost an hour for the next train. 

Inside our train. Look at the shinny and patterned floor! I wasn't even sure if I was on a train! I felt like I was in a studio with a dance floor! The train was practically empty, so I had fun just looking around it. Even the chair was like some art piece in an art museum!

Hardly anyone on the train while it was waiting to leave the station. It was SUPER CLEAN!

Urakami was just a short ride from Nagasaki, so we reached there quite fast once the train started moving. When we got to Nagasaki station, we saw a bullet train parked there. So we decided to spend some time admiring it. Here are some of the photos I took of it.

Doesn't it look futuristic? Ok, so I was already living in the future here! Japan is in a world of it's own!

Finally, we left Nagasaki station and walked to our hotel. It was dark by this time. A great time to check in and relax in the onsen! I'm staying at one of my favourite hotel chain for the last leg of my travel!

Kyushu 2023 - Nagasaki Urakami Town Dinner

 

View of Urakami town. It's such a nice view! It's not what I imagine a Japanese town would look like, lol. And since we were still at the early evening time when we walked back to town, we decided to explore the town and mall, have some dinner here before headed back to Nagasaki. 

For dinner, we chanced upon an empty tempura shop with attractive pricing, and it was manned by a solo old uncle. That's usually a good sign when it comes to food. Granted that we were super early for dinner, like 5pm? So it was understandable the shop was empty.

Here is the uncle at the shop. And the shop looked very organised and unique. So we went and sat ourselves down and ordered our dinner.

The pre-set was immediately placed on our seating area, as we waited for the main ingredients to be cooked and served for us in that little silver tin plate.

Here is a sample of our set meal. First came the vegetables.

Then came the seafood, all served hot, immediately out of the oil.

I really enjoyed such a meal. Tempura is something hard to cook at home cause I hate using so much oil to cook it. Plus, it usually consist of a variety of vegetables and seafood, so it's insane to shop for the raw ingredient for a one or two person meal.  So I don't mind paying to eat this at a restaurant, especially in Japan. 

After our light dinner, we explore the mall, and I found a Moomin pop-up store!

Everything is so cute and pretty, but also expensive. 

I also found a Mr Donut at the ground floor, and it sold Houjicha cream donut. So I got one for myself as dessert. Mr Donut has a special place in my heart as I once just survived on Mr Donut and fresh milk  for dinner in Japan in one of my earlier trip when I just started working. I lost so much weight just having that for dinner! Lol. 

The view before we went to take our train home. What a lovely romantic view. I felt like I was perhaps in some little Italian town in Europe. Lovely way to end a day of travelling and exploring. And we haven't even checked into our hotel yet!