retrospective
Hey, so it’s been a while. i mysteriously stopped posting after visiting hiroshima, and never really wrapped up my trip on the website. this was for a couple reasons, which i will outline here.
first, hiroshima was quite sad. i’m very glad I went, but the peace memorial park really messed me up psychologically for a few days. and it didn’t help that my immediate next destination was nagasaki. it’s funny, these two cities didn’t even get put on my destination list for… those reasons… at all. i chose hiroshima because i originally intended to use it as a springboard to visit miyajima island, which is off the coast of hiroshima. but that never ended up happening. and i chose nagasaki because if you google “travel destinations in japan other than tokyo and kyoto”, a regularly mentioned one is how beautiful nagasaki is and how awesome the night life there is. theres also a ropeway you can ride and see an incredible view.
after nagasaki, i went to an onsen town called beppu. that was one of the best parts of the entire trip. i stayed in an extremely fancy 5 star resort with an in-room open-air private onsen, it was truly magical. However, a lot of the experience in beppu was sitting naked in a hot spring with my eyes closed. not the most photography-website-worthy content in the world. and it rained for a lot of the time i was in beppu, so the camera didn’t get taken out very much. i did get some photos, which i will post here to cap it all off at long last.
Nagasaki 4/11
The place i booked on airbnb for nagasaki was really interesting. i didn’t connect the dots on how it was so cheap until i had arrived. the city of nagasaki exists in a big valley, and its surrounded by mountains and hills. and because it was a booming port town (it was the only port foreigners were allowed to trade in for centuries), they clearly had to adapt to the environment. much of the housing is encroaching up the mountains. what this meant for me was an extremely long uphill walk followed by a ton of stairs to get to the house. on arrival, with a 50 pound backpack and a huge suitcase, this was a lot. so i mostly stayed in the day i arrived, since it was a long train ride there and a very long walk with all my stuff.
the house was massive for a solo traveler. i think a family of 8 would have been plenty comfortable here. i didnt get many photos of the upstairs area, as it was just a bunch of very comfortable futons laid out, and a huge balcony that wrapped around 3/4 of the house. the night photos at the end there were taken from that balcony.
nagasaki 4/12
i didnt take many pictures on the 12th. at this point in the trip, i was beginning to feel burnt out, and got the camera out significantly less. i spent a few hours exploring the city. i tried to book the ropeway, but couldn’t figure out how to do it and was kinda exhausted anyway.
Nagasaki 4/13
I spent the day indoors and then went out at night on the 13th. I went to an awesome but very packed bar for a few hours, and got lost in the city. Took very few photos, as i was really just enjoying being lost. The next day it was on to the last city of my trip, beppu. it is quite far from nagasaki, about 4 hours by several trains:
beppu 4/14 - 4/16
beppu is an incredible city. i will definitely be going back. it was such a wonderful capstone on the trip, to just sit in a natural hot spring and relax for a few days.
I did go on a few adventures outside of the resort while i was here, but most of the time it was pouring rain and i couldn’t get the camera out. however, i did get one amazing photo, right at the end in the above gallery.
im going to post one more time, probably tomorrow, about whats next for this website. im going to japan again in a few months, and i have some exciting plans for that.
