2nd August – 770 miles on Japans Rail Network
So, a few days ago I got my first taste of a bullet train as I can say, flipping heck, they don’t half go fast. To put things in perspective, Motorway speed in the UK is 70MPH which equates to about 1 miles every 51.4 seconds. Now the bullet train I was on was doing about 170MPH which is 1 mile every 21.2 seconds which is insane. Now they are also developing a new Maglev Bullet train that will cut the time from Tokyo to Osaka down from about 2 hours 30 mins (150 mins) to just 1 hour 7 mins (67 mins) which is insane. It goes about 310MPH which is about 1 mile every 11.5 seconds!!!
I travelled from Tokyo Station -> Shin Kobe -> Shin Tosu -> Nagasaki Station and including about 45 mins of stops that was a 770-mile journey in 7.5 hours. It like going from Wick Station (at the top of Scotland) all the way down to Newquay Station (North Coast of Cornwall) which is a 784-mile slog, and you’d be lucky if most of the trains turned up on time. Come on we are all used that in the UK aren’t we.
One of the best bits about Shinkansen travel is getting some ekiben from the station. What is ekiben you might be asking right now, well this is ekiben.
Ekiben translates to Eki – A Japanese Train Station and Ben which is short for Bento – A traditional Japanese boxed lunch. The steak one which I got from Shin-Kobe station was amazing and even contained some Kobe beef.
When I got to my new hotel at Nagasaki, it was a nice building with character, a Family mart convenience store build into the side of it with a door directly from the hotel to it and on top of that it was a 4-star hotel as well. All in with breakfast only cost me about £130-140 when I paid for it (rate has gone down now due to GBP to YEN exchange rate).
After I got settled, I went down to the desk to inquire about a free shuttle bus to the Mt Insasayama ropeway which is a cable car up to the top of the mountain, this was supposed to be on the 3rd, but they had free spaces that night so it was a good shout to go up that night and oh boy, the views were amazing.
3rd August – Day out in Nagasaki
Time to start out the day and grab some breakfast which was lovely. First on my trip around Nagasaki was to go to the Museum of the 26 Martyrs. The history surrounding this I did find quite interesting, like how they came about over here. Now as much as people got converted and even local officials and shogunate got converted, there was a rebellion in 1637 and because of that and the fact that the Christian’s were tearing down Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines (the main religions of Japan) this led to an outright ban in Japan under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa Shogunate after him. It Wasn’t until 1871 that Christianity was allowed back in Japan with the Meiji Restoration.
After this I went on my way down a hill towards Dejima. Dejima was a trading outpost build in Nagasaki for trade and was the only point in Japan that could trade with anywhere else in the world including the East India Company. Dejima to me had quite an interesting past as it during the samurai feudal age. The main thing that was exported from here was Copper.
After this I went for a walk around the seaside park whilst talking to my Auntie.
After that I caught the streetcar all the way up to the Nagasaki Peace Park, Hypocentre and museum.
After visiting the Hypocentre and peace park I stated heading over to the Museum and it was well worth going to it. It was not a slander against the west of anything like that. It showed you pictures of what Nagasaki looked like before the bomb was dropped, pictures of just after it was dropped and pictures and videos of what it was like several days and years later, plus people’s testimonies.
They have a replica of the original bomb that was dropped. It was detonated about 500-600 metres above ground zero.
Here are some of the exhibits which speak more than 1000 words. I am trying to be careful exactly what I put up as I don’t want to make this a very graphic blog. Looking at some of the photos in the exhibit they did include photos that had the destruction, death and devastation that was caused by the bomb.
The even more sad thing is that after the war there was a US Strategic bombing survey conducted, and it was the opinion of the survey that Japan would have surrendered by the end of the year 1945 even if no nukes had been dropped.
After I went to the memorial section after this to pay my respects to those who had fallen due to the atomic bomb. This pillars of light contain books with all the victims’ names on them.
I hope this has helped give you some though on the use of nuclear weapons. I certainly find them extremely bad and hurtful. Yes, there was military personnel and targets in Nagasaki, but then there are loads of innocent people that died as well due to the actions of dropping the Atomic Bomb. Should we ever repeat this? In my opinion no, this should never have to happen again.
Thank you all for reading and next time I will be blogging from Hiroshima!
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