I wasn't totally sure as to what to do with my day but the guys had talked about Glover Garden. So I thought I'd go check the area out!
There's another section of the harbour called Dejima that I was curious about as the history sounded quite interesting so that was my first port of call as I knew I could walk from there to the garden.
I got a bit lost on the way but a lovely man showed me the way and had a long chat with me about his life and that he knew someone who was caught in the atomic bomb and apparently never talked about it. Once there it was almost like a museum but they had recreated the buildings as well so the information was spread through the buildings and garden. The history was cool, it was from when Japan shut off trading with foreign countries, apart from a Dutch ship that would come twice a year so they built Dejima -an artificial island just off the port, they built houses, gardens and places to keep a small amount of farm animals. It was quite cool to walk around and they had a model scale of what Dejima was like as now it's part of the mainland.
Then wove my way to Glover Gardens -realised I could've walked from the hostel to the garden and Dejima.
The garden is where a Dutch man (Thomas Glover), his family and others made their houses and gardens.
To give a brief summary of this history of all of this, Japan shut off its trading to the rest of the world, and no foreign trades allowed on Japan. That's why they made Dejima, as a place to do trade with the one Dutch ship allowed to do trade with them. But they soon built houses there and some of the Dutch men stayed there during the rest of the year as well. Slowly they started communicating with the Japanese more, teaching them science, medicine and all sorts. Then Glover taught them trawling fishing which was completely different from the Japanese fishing and revolutionised Nagasaki into a booming town.
You can take your time walking around the gardens and houses which they've kept the same since Glover. It's kind of funny that the insides of the houses are like my nans house. I had to remind myself that I was still in Japan! It was very beautiful with all the trees coming into blossom and it was high up on the hill so it gave amazing views of the city.
Over all, a lovely day. Hiroshima tomorrow though!!