Hi, everyone!
It’s cold in Nagasaki city.

In January, we had guests who are college students from USA!
They were so nice and we had a great time with them 🙂

On the last day, each student had a presentation about what they discovered or learned about Japan.
It was interesting to know how American students feel about Japan and what is interesting about Japan for them.

After the presentation, we threw a farewell party.
We served them Sara Udon which is one of Nagasaki specialities.

We had a really nice time with them!
We hope they also enjoyed their stay in Nagasaki and come back to Nagasaki again.

In the middle of January, we had heavy snow.
This is a neighbor of Hostel AKARI.

As February starts, they already started preparing Lantern Festival that is going on between 16th Feb and 4th Mar.
We’re so excited.

We made an original information board.
If you have an opportunity, please have a look at it and enjoy the festival.

Recently, we have many family guests.
This cute family is from Spain.
Look at baby’s face, he is so cute 🙂

This family is from Taiwan.
They went to Bio Park, which is a zoo in Nagasaki,
They enjoy the zoo!
Thank you for your stay!

It’s getting cold in Japan.
Take a good care of yourself everybody.
See you soon!

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

Hi, everyone!
We are enjoying breezy Autumn.
There will be Autumn leaves season very soon.

We had a festival where two guys with fox maskes make acrobatic moves on bamboo polls which is 10m high.
It was held in Wakamiya Inari Shrine and the festival is called “Takengei”.
It was exciting although it was raining a bit.

This is a main building of the shrine.

Fox is a secred animal in the shrine.

This is a shrine gate with a good night view.

We saw fireworks after the festival. It was lucky.

This is a nice, friendly and wonderful couple from England!
It’s their second time to come to our hostel.
They have cool tattoos everywhere on their bodies!
Thank you for your stay!!

This is a tattoo of a famous ghibli movie called “Ponpoko”. He has to put colors in it. Wow, we are sure it’s going to turn out to be an awesome one!

Here’s a cute family from Belgium.
Look at cute smiles of the kids!!

By the way, there are two bridges to go to our nearest tram stop from our hostel.
One is a stone bridge which looks beautiful and you need to take stairs of it.
Another one is just an ordinary flat bridge which is easier to access the tram stop than the stone bridge.
We just found out that many of our guests choose to take the stone bridge.

For example the couple from England,,

Then the family from Belgium,,

It’s a fun way to make your journey more attractive and exciting 🙂
There is a tiny differences between those two bridges, but we want to take more fun and exciting way during we are travelling. It’s very interesting 🙂

Enjoy Autumn! Don’t get cold.

It’s the end of August.
Time flies so fast.

Hostel AKARI is running our hostel keeping our pace.
We are growing vegetables outside of the hostel.

We baked scone using basil that we are growing.

On 19th and 20th, there was summer festival along the riverside.
There were some people wearing Yukata that looked beautiful.
Spectacles bridge changes its face in every season.
It amuses us every time.

We had guests from Korea.
Kids were happy to stay in a bunk bed.
We were happy to see that 🙂

This is handmade instrument called cajon, we named it AKARI CAJON.
You can play it in the hostel.

This is an object sold at a shop nearby hostel.
It’s inspired by Nagasaki festival called Takengei, 竹ん芸.

Enjoy your summer!
Hasta la vista.