Thursday 1st March, 2012
Nagasaki today was wet, wet, wet. We decide we needed to be adventurous and travel further away from the city. We bought all day tram tickets again and caught a tram to the train station. By using our tourist map we were able to indicate by pointing where we wanted to go and bought our return train tickets to Shimabara (Cost 5800Yen). We only had a few minutes to get to our 8.33 train to Isahaya, our transfer point. This is a quick train and has many tunnels, it was supposed to be a 26 min ride but a school girl directed us off a stop too soon at the 24 min mark. Now we had to get to the next station in fewer than 22 mins to make our connection. By the way the train we got off only runs hourly, so we did not wait for the next one. TAXI... Yes... no English......more pointing and much gesturing got us to Isahaya station with 5mins to spare. The train ride to Shimabara was over an hour but we got to see so much of the countryside and agricultural areas.
Now the reason we wanted to get to Shimabara was to see the Shimabara Castle and Samurai Village. The ship tour was $179 pp we ended up spending less than $100 for the both of us. Granted we did not get a lunch served to us, but if it was anything like the Chinese one provided for the Wall tour, we did not miss much.
The Shimabara Castle was visible from the train station so we made our way to it. No photos were allowed inside so we only have outside shots.
Fuedal lord Shigemasa Matsukra built this castle in 1624. It is now an historical museum displaying Christian relics and swords, armour and cultural artefacts.
Not too far from the castle the houses of the low ranking samurai can be found. Here there is a stream flowing down the middle of the street.
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| Wet wet wet!!!!! |
We made it back to Nagasaki before 2.30pm and used our tram pass to further explore the city area.
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