From Fukuoka we took the local train (no more Shinkansen's down here :-() to Nagasaki - which took 2 hours. Even this train was pretty nice - like a Virgin train at home.
We arrived in Nagasaki and our intial thoughts were that the city looked a lot prettier than the majority of big cities in Japan have. First stop was obviously the epicentre of where the 2nd atomic bomb was dropped, this actually wasn't in the centre of Nagasaki at all. The bomb nicknamed "fat man" actually missed the target by over 2km and exploded over the residential area of Urakamiekimae, a few metres from the largest catholic church in Asia. Although the Bomb succeeded in ending the war and destroying a third of the city itself, we were not aware that it missed its target. The other facisnating fact was that Nagaski was not even on the final list of cities that could be targets, it was added last minute due to the ship building factories. And even worse it was the secondary target that fateful day, the primary target was covered in cloud. Its all very sad.
Anyhow we visited the Peace Park which to be honest we didn't think that much of, with a statue that just looks like something you would find in Athens or Rome. Its also mainly paved which unlike Hiroshimas park made it look less inviting. Just down the road is the epicentre of the explosion, which we found to be very interesting as it has excavations of the ground, and its full of china other household remains. The statues here are also a lot more in tune with the message the park entails.
The museam we also found to be very graphic - and not as easy to read and navigate as Hiroshima. One of the most haunting things here is slabs of pavement which have people's shadows burnt into them, from the flash of the blast - seeing that is truely horrific! Overal we prefered Hiroshima, as the park is much more inviting (colourful and interetsing), and the museam we thought had more impact on us (but maybe because it was becuase we did that first). Personally we were a little disappointed with this memorial, and museam.
The rest of Nagaskai is actually quite beautiful. As a city itself its very easy to walk around, with hills covered with houses surrounding certain parts. We also did a great walk into the residential part which had houses built in between gravestones and tombs - very strange but interesting to walk.