Japan: Part 4. Nagasaki.

After Kyoto we headed to Hiroshima where we spent time in the Peace Park and wandering the streets of what is an incredibly hip and cool Japanese city. We had a lovely time there and saw some of the best cherry blossom action of our entire trip. The park surrounding Hiroshima Castle was incredibly beautiful with all its trees in full bloom. Unfortunately I was sick of carrying my 'good' camera around and I didn't take it out in Hiroshima, so I have no images from there. But I made up for that when we visited Nagasaki!

Nagasaki is in the south of Japan, on the island of Kyushu. It's a harbour town, a major Japanese port, and as such its architecture and culture has been heavily influenced by traders from around the globe such as Portugal, Spain, China, the Netherlands and Britain. For this reason many of the sights in Nagasaki have their roots somewhere else.

We stayed right next to one of Nagasaki's major attractions - Glover Garden, originally created to surround the home of a Scottish Merchant who played a central role in modernising the Japanese shipping and mining industries. The gardens overlook Nagasaki harbour and combine both Japanese and English gardens which were flowering with gusto while were there.

We also visited the Confucious Shrine, built for the local Chinese community. This temple, with its rows of imposing confucian statues and elaborate central shrine is actually Chinese territory. We spent ages wandering around the grounds soaking up the serenity of the space. It was one of those things that we stumbled across, which turned out to be an absolute gem to visit.

For the rest of our time in Nagasaki (we had three days) it mostly rained so we just took to walking the streets when we could and exploring, soaking up the local ambience and enjoying being somewhere quiet (compared to other Japanese cities we'd visited). I took lots of snapshots along the way...

Japan: Part 2. Snow Monkeys!!!

I don't believe in bucket lists, they're so morbid. I believe we have to enjoy the things that life brings to us rather than seek out things to make us happy. Having said that there are of course things that I dream of experiencing - things like going to Antarctica, seeing the northern lights, swimming with whales and spending time with snow monkeys. Oh wait! I just did that last one! 

I have been intrigued with snow monkeys since reading about them in an old National Geographic. They are simply the most fascinating and hilarious creatures. Most monkeys live in tropical climates, but not these cheeky critters. They are Japanese Macaques and are the northern most residing primates (apart from humans) in the world. Their fluffy coats make them super cute but don't be fooled, they're feisty when they want to be. We saw heaps of monkey scraps while we were there. We saw lots of monkey grooming too, and monkey bathing - in their very own monkey baths! 

The snow monkeys are located in Yamanouchi, an onsen (hot baths) village, about an hour's journey away from Nagano in central Japan. We took the trip on a lovely spring day, training it, bussing it and then walking to the monkey baths. I took somewhere in the vicinity of a million photos! Not even kidding. See? ...

Phew. That's some epic monkey photo taking right there! Haha. But I wasn't alone in that frenzied activity, trust me! While we are here I'll throw in a few pictures of Nagano too. We really only visited it as a portal to the snow monkeys, but it's a lovely town in its own right and I kinda wish we'd had more time there to look around. It's a ski resort town and I imagine that it is bustling in ski season, but while we were there it was fairly quiet which made it easy to explore the local sights and temples. Here's a few shots from our time there: