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.

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!

Breezy wind is blowing in Nagasaki.
Autumn is coming.

These two guests met here and became friends.
They look so alike.
Their smiles made me smile 🙂

This is a souvenir from guests from Czech Republic.
Its design is very nice 🙂

This is a ship used for Nagasaki festival called “Okunchi”.
It’s going to be held on 7th, 8th and 9th of October.

This picture was taken from inside tram that runs Nagasaki city.
It’s near Dejima.

We threw a takoyaki party.
We cooked so many takoyaki!

Looks so yummy!

We’re glad everybody was happy with the party!
These guests, also our friends :),  are from Switzerland.
Thanks for coming all the way to Nagasaki!

We hope you have a good time in this Autumn!
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!

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.

Yesterday was 9th of August, which is Nagasaki Peace Day
Yesterday’s morning, we headed to Hypocenter and donated thousands of paper cranes folded by our guests who visited AKARI.

You can see how it went from below page.
https://nagasaki-hostel.com/archives/peace/wish_for_peace_2017.html

We pray for peace no matter what.

It’s now August.
Time flies so fast we can’t catch up sometimes.

We have some hydrangea flowers in front of the entrance.
It starts blooming finally.

There is Peace Ceremony on 9th August.
We are making thousand of cranes to donate at the ceremony.

The end of July, there was a festival and we saw some fantastic fireworks.

This one is ship for Nagasaki ceremony called”Syourou Nagashi”.
They make it to commemorate the ones who died in last year, normally built by their relatives.
And they bring them to the port and leave them flow in the sea.
The ceremony takes place on every 15th of August.

AKARI staff is building a musical instrument called “cajon”.

It’s hot everyday in Nagasaki.
Enjoy the sun!
Waiting for you in AKARI hostel!

S.HONDA

The other day, I went on a trip to GOTO island and some other islands.
I brought my scooter inside a ferry so that I use it on the islands.
I said Good bye to Nagasaki city for a while inside the ferry.

It took about 3hours to get to the island.
As I arrived at a port, I started riding my scooter to and went around the island.
There are many beaches there, the sea is so beautiful.

I saw many churches there, the island is famous for many churches.
The reason why they have many churches is that the people who believed in Christianity, which was banned in that era, used to live on that island to hide from Japanese government.

I also saw many fishing ports.

This one is a guesthouse I stayed.
It was very nice friendly guesthouse.

I finished the day enjoying the sunset and taking hot spring.

This one is a bus that runs around the island.

I found something interesting.

Oh, it’s a Lourdes. Even though I am not a Christian, it was interesting.

I reached to a viewpoint.

You can see many cliffs like this on the island.

This is a meat shop called NIKUKATU.

I came across a beautiful beach.

You can reach to the island by taking a ferry or a speed boat.
It takes about 3hours by a ferry and 1 and a half hour by a speedboat.

S.HONDA