Saturday 30th March

Set out at 8am today on a long ride on the bus to Matsuyama where we visited the castle. As before, the road was largely elevated & went again through numerous tunnels often fairly close to the coast. It is amazing to see so many industrial buildings interspersed with houses, blocks of units & small fields of various crops. Not once did we see any animals, domestic or wild.

The 17th century castle at Matsayama is quite magnificent standing on a hill which dominates the city. We went on a cable car up to it & then wandered around its various turrets & defences. It is in relatively original condition despite having been fire bombed in July 1945, which damaged the keep. The defence design was quite similar to a European or Holy Land version built to make attackers face a series of obstacles. Complementing this there were many cherry trees in blossom around the place & the effect was quite impressive. I descended via the chair lift next to the cable car & had a great ride down.

On we went to catch a ferry west fromTokuyama across to Tenmanqu on Kyushu the southernmost major island. We were only just in time when we arrived at about 5.20 as at 5.30 it left harbour. From there we drove in the dark to Beppu arriving just after 8pm, quite tired. We ate our bananas & a couple of biscuits each & went to bed, exhausted.

Sunday 31st March

Up early & after breakfast walked past the local yacht club which has 3 miniature single hand mini America Cup boats similar to those at Royal Perth. It was cool at about 12C with a sharp wind. After an unusual set menu breakfast we set off at 9pm for Beppu's Blood Pond Hell, a steaming, rusty coloured, hot spring of water about 15m across, set in a fine garden on the edge of a hill. The whole town is full of hot springs which are used as spas & also for geothermal power & there are many steaming pipes venting along the hill sides.

From there we drove to another garden, Umi Jigoko, an ocean blue steaming pool set in another fine Japanese park, the second of Beppu's Hells.

Leaving there we drove across the hills towards Nagasaki, our main attraction for the day. Once again, we drove through tunnels & across high bridges for quite a way passing a varied range of towns & countryside. We caught a glimpse of some cattle way down in a valley, the first animals we have seen. After a lunch stop at a very well set up service centre we arrived at the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki. This was where the 2nd Atom bomb was dropped on 9th August 1945.

Apparently the city wasn't the primary target but cloud over the first choice made visibility too poor so Nagasaki was the unlucky winner.

The museum tells the story of the disaster & has exhibits from the day together with the memories of survivors. It was all very moving & sad. We moved on to the Peace Park & then walked down to the hypocentre where it exploded 500 metres above the ground. All in all, a very salutary experience.

Our hotel was quite close by & we checked in at 6pm.