Hi, everyone!
How are you doing?

The below huge sailing ship from Russia came to Nagasaki in the end of April as an annual festival of Nagasaki called “Sailing Ship Festival”
Seeing that huge sailing ship just in front was so dynamic and overwhelming.

Nagasaki city is having a rainy season right now.
Everyday is rainy and cloudy, but these hydrangea flowers bring you a smile.
You can see these beautiful flowers along the river side, it’s also neighborhood of the hostel.

It was a sunny day a few days ago, so we decided to take a walk with our guests.
These guests are from Netherland.
We talked about lot of things like music, art, Japanese culture and so on.

We came to the main shrine of Nagasaki called “Suwa Shrine”.
It’s about 10minute-walk from the hostel.

We luckily saw Japanese wedding ceremony at the shrine.
It was so beautiful.

This shrine has small guardian dogs with interesting gimmicks.
This dog make your dream or wishes come true if you roll the dog like this.

After the shrine, we went to a local market.
We saw a dragon dance which is one of main performances in the festival “Kunchi” that takes place in October at Suwa Shrine.

We had a lunch at the market with our friends 🙂

It was a nice walk!
All we have to do is waiting for Summer while watching beautiful hydrangea flowers.
Thanks for reading!
Have a good day!

Hi, everyone.
It’s getting colder and colder in Nagasaki.
Looks like winter is coming.

We took a walk to Japanese garden with beautiful Autumn leaves.
It took about 15minutes to get there.

On the way to the garden, we saw this stone bridge covered with leaves.

And we had Champon for a lunch.

And kept walking…

Here we come.

This is a traditional gate for the garden.

In the garden, we saw these beautiful Autumn leaves.

There is a Japanese traditional house. Inside the house, you can enjoy some Matcha.

Had a look at the garden.

Green trees, blue sky, red leaves. What can we get more?

There was Koto playing inside the house.
It feels so good to hear Koto playing while looking at Autumn leaves.

We headed back to the hostel.
We encountered these stone buddha statues.

Somebody was drying these Japanese persimmon. Looks so yummy but we never touched them because we are not allowed.

The weather was so nice this cat felt asleep.

Nice characters.

We came across this shrine.

If you touch a part of this god caw, the part of your body gets better according to a traditional history.

We had a cake after getting back to the hostel.
It was a nice lunch break.

This dog like our entrance so much he doesn’t want to stand up.
He was there for about 10minutes.

Thanks for reading!
Have a wonderful Autumn day!!

Hi, everyone.
It’s getting colder in Nagasaki city.

If you have visited Nagasaki city, some of you might have visited Gunkanjima, a.k.a Battleship Island.
Gunkanjima had been known as a coal mine island until 1970.
Now it’s famous as an abandoned place with buildings that look like they are about to corrupt and rusty big machines used for coal mine.

There is another island similar to Gunkanjima.
It’s called Ikeshima island. In Japanese, 池島(いけしま).
Ikeshima was also coal mine island and you can still see abandoned buildings and machines.
But there are still people living there, so the island itself is not exactly abandoned unlike Gunkanjima.
It’s a quite interesting island, so I took a walk around the island the other day.
**Everybody can enter the island without permission or fee.

The port for ferry to Ikeshima is not easy to access unless you have a car.
It takes about 50minutes with a car to get to the port.

I bought a ticket first.
It cost 410yen one way.

It was 15minutes-ride on the ferry.

As I reached the island, I started walking around.

There was a broken motorcycle.
It reminded me that I was on an island with very few people.

The island is also famous for having many many cats.

Many drum cans….

You can see views like this on the island.
Rusty facilities like this one with beautiful sea and field.

Keep walking.
Slopes made me tired.

It’s an area where shops were concentrated.
Now none of them are open…

This one is a school with a big field.
I imagined there were many students playing on this field back in the day.

If you go more forward the school, you will see the apartments area.
This building is covered with leaves, which made it photogenic.

Some pieces of windows are fallen.
There are people living near the port, but in these apartments, nobody lives anymore.

Looks like one scene or set in a movie.

It’s a corridor that made people easy to get across the building.
People didn’t have to take stairs inside the building, but they just came there with a micro bus and go directly to 3rd or 4th floor.
This is because there was no elevator at that time.

I came across this small compartment what looks like it’s used to be an office.
They drew their slogan on the wall in Japanese.

This is a belt conveyer to bring mines to a ship.
But it’s cut halfway.

This one is a machine that carry mines and bring them to the conveyer.
It’s so huge.

There are still cranes and railways without taken care of.

You can see the railway running from the right to the left in the picture.
It used to lead workers to inside coal mine.
There is a sightseeing tour where you can ride a tram and go inside the mine, and get a explanation from tour guides.
In the tour, they let you operate some machines used for digging coal mines.

This one is a tram, but it’s not used anymore.

The island is not that big, so you can circle the island on foot with about an hour-walk. You can see cute goats below.

On the way back to Nagasaki city, you can see this beautiful sunset.
This observatory is located Sotome.

All the places above are a bit hard to access without a car.
But if you have a chance to be in Nagasaki with a car and haven’t decided where to go or want to go somewhere interesting, this island is one of your options.

Thank for reading!
Have a good time!!

[The course I took]
長崎駅=Nagasaki JR station
神浦港=The port
池島=Ikeshima

Okunchi festival was going on in Nagasaki city for three days, 7th, 8th and 9th of October.
We saw many performances in the festival.
Let’s take a look at each performance.

This one is Japanese dancing. These Geisya danced to Nagasaki traditional song.
It was so beautiful.

This one is Portuguese ship. Why Portuguese? Because Nagasaki used to have a business trade long time ago back in 17th century.

This one is a ship with a red haired dragon. It was so cool.

This one is a Japanese ship that captures fishes. It’s also beautiful and exciting.

It’s held at the same dates every year.
So if you plan to come to Nagasaki and want to have a look at this festival, choose to stay on 7th, 8th and 9th of October! The city becomes so lively and exciting that you don’t want to miss it!
Thanks for reading. Have a great day!

Hi, everyone.
It’s getting cooler in the morning and evening in Nagasaki, but it’s still hot at daytime.

Here’s a Mongolian girl ANO who help us cleaning and at the last day of her work, she kindly gave us Mongolian chess.

It’s very unique because pieces are made based on something related to Mongol.
For example instead of normal pieces, they put yurt, camel and Genghis Khan.

We went to art museum to have a look at an exhibition by an artist who stayed in AKARI.
It’s Chilean art called Arpilleras. It was not only cute but also interesting, because these art works are reflecting severe political situation when military took control of the country.

On the way to the museum, we saw this beautiful scenery.
It’s one of the old western houses in Dejima, and on the back Inasa mountain, which is famous for its night view , is in the sight.

These leaflets are guesthouses and cafes that AKARI staff has been to during a trip to islands in Nagasaki prefecture.

This is new paper cranes’ board.

They are about to go and have a walk near the hostel.
On the left our volunteer guide and on the right they are our guests.
Our short walk program is where you can hang around with Nagasaki locals.

Enjoy the walk!

Autumn is just around the corner.
Enjoy reading, exercising, and don’t forget eating delicious foods!