Turns out I still suck at updating.

I think we may be sharing the annex with a stray cat. It's hard to say though. Maybe leprechauns are eating bowls of left over fat. Or maybe it's a neighbourhood bands of rats with a taste for raw dough. Who knows.

I'm so far behind, that I haven't even gotten to my birthday yet. Which means that I haven't even talked about the awesomely amazingly perfect present I got from my loving husband. Although, if you are reading my blog you probably already know about that since you hopefully know me and it's all I talk about these days.

Ok, where did I leave off? Nagasaki. Ok. So, we got to Nagasaki and dropped our bags off at our hostel before heading out in search of a bakery that Dylan had been to the last time he was in the city. It was sadly closed, so we stopped at this small restaurant that had delicious coffee. I'm sure the food was lovely too, but I was sleepy. Happily fed and caffeinated, we headed off to the Atomic Bomb Museum and Peace Park. I really don't know what to say about that. It was depressing and amazing and horrifying and beautiful and gah. It did everything that a place like that should and it did it very well. I don't have any pictures since a lot of the museum was people's belongings from their day-to-day life that had been saved and treasured for this long and it seemed kinda disrespectful to reduce that to a souvenir from my summer vacation.

It's hard to go straight from that to something else, so we headed back to the hostel to actually check in and relax for a bit. After we went to check out some shrines and a fancy-looking bridge (that's kinda popular since it and it's reflection together look like a pair of glasses). It was still kinda early, so we slowly wandered back to the area of the hostel and stopped for dinner on the waterfront. Dinner was actually one of my favourite parts of our time there. We ate on the patio of a restaurant on the wharf and every table was full at our restaurant and all the surrounding restaurants, people where laughing and drinking, there was music playing in the distance, boats where coming and going. Exactly how you would imagine any summer evening in any port city. It had such a different feel from our afternoon and I found it very hopeful.

Not really relevant to anything. But I thought it looked cool and it was in Nagasaki.

 

The next morning meant another bus as we headed off to Kagoshima. First thing was first - we did some laundry at the hostel. Did nothing for a while. I think Dylan napped a bit. Probably found some food to shove in our face-holes. Then we hopped on a train and went to a bath house that specializes in sand baths. Sounds weird, but it was actually pretty amazing. Basically, we were given a full-length light bathrobe, sent out to the beach where we lied down and staff members buried us except for our heads. I think most people stay for about 10-15 min since the sand is freakin' hot. We stayed about 15-20 and were happy to get out. We got there after sun set (since it was a long train ride to get there), so it wasn't that hot out anymore. I'd imagine it would be significantly more unpleasant during the day since I doubt their tarp-tent-thingy does much other than make it so that you aren't staring directly at the sun. Then we rinsed off (both the terribly invasive sand and the buckets of sweat) and went to the indoor bath room. Another benefit of going at night - it is much less crowded and I only had to worry about being naked in front of our friend as opposed to our friend and a bunch of strangers. Finished up and caught the train back into the city. Had dinner at this amazing Indian restaurant. The worst thing about traveling is that the best restaurant are always so far away!

Fun side note: Kagoshima is near an active volcano that had been acting up a bit around the time we were there. So the entire city was covered in ash - to the point where there were designated areas on the side of the road for people to put the bags of ash that they had collected from around their houses. There were a lot of designated areas and a lot of bags.

I'm done talking now. I'll finish up soon. Maybe. Hopefully.