Nagasaki

There was no railway bridge from Western Shikoku to either Western Honshu or Kyushu and any ferry would be time-consuming. So we had an uneven ride on a limited express back east to Okayama before turning west for a two-hour Shinkansen past Hiroshima before changing on to the local Kyushu service before changing again on to a Shinkansen for the final 30 minutes into Nagasaki. The intention is to extend the Shinkansen so there will be a complete service from Honshu to Kyushu and on to Nagasaki, saving the necessity for the quick changes between trains.
We had a snack lunch on the train and, when we arrived at Nagasaki, we took taxis to the Dormy Inn.
We walked down to the marina and had dinner, a speciality being Nagasaki noodle soup.
The Japanese don't look stressed despite rushing around in the cities and at the enormous stations. The children seem happy.
On the rail journey, I saw more solar panels but no wind farms. Japan has many nuclear plants.
As elsewhere, the countryside was very green with densely-forested hills. Czytaj więcej