Nagasaki

In the afternoon, I took a tram to Oura Catherdral, built in 1864 and the oldest in Japan, dedicated to the 26 martyrs crucified in 1597. The adjoining museum had details of the Christian communities which were suppressed but survived in the centuries which followed.
I walked up the Dutch Slope and went in one of the colonial houses which survived in the atomic bomb due to the geography of Nagasaki and its hills compared to the flat land around Hiroshima. I had a local cake, castella, and a coffee in one of the houses.
I took the lift and a moving walkway up to Glover Garden, named after one of the western industrialists, shippers and traders. His house was one of those which had been relocated to this site together with a number of others. The Garden had been landscaped with friezes and waterfalls. as it went down the hill to a museum which housed some of the floats used at festivals.
I took a tram back uptown and walked across the river to the ropeway up Mt Inasa to see Nagasaki at night, selected as one of the great viewpoints at night in the world. The view was enhanced by a full moon.
I retraced the route back across the river and caught a tram back to the hotel at the end of a very full day.
Nagasaki and Matsumoto later in the trip were examples of cities which weren't overburdened by their size and skyscrapers unlike Tokyo and Osaka, and therefore more pleasant and manageable.Read more