Sasebo is a city in Nagasaki Prefecture about an hour and a half up the peninsula. The thing about Sasebo is that there's a US Navy Base there, so there's a few more American people running around town than your typical Japanese small city.
When I got there I decided to explore the area around the station on foot. (Of course, I spent 3 hours last night looking up sights, prices, bus routes, and maps, re-sizing and printing out 3 maps, writing my itinerary, calculating my expenses, and preparing my food.) I went to the shopping arcade called Yonka Cho/Sun Plaza, the longest arcade in all of Japan! I walked it twice and noticed a lot more white people than in Nagasaki. A.k.a. more than just me. (I think I've seen another white person in Nagasaki twice ever, and once it was Guy's teacher friend.) I ambled around the dock area, half-heartedly searching for Sasebo Park. I found a really pretty little tree-lined neighborhood and a run-down dockhouse that looked creepy in the fog. Yay for finding things! Then I ran into the park, across the Sasebo river, connected by the Albequerque bridge which commemorates their sister-city relationship. I HEARD SO MUCH I ENGLISH I CAN'T EVEN. First, it was 3 adolescent boys crossing the bridge at the same time as me, then 3 teen girls in the park, then a white family. All American English. It was kind of a crazy surreal reverse culture shock. In Europe I was used to it because there's tourists everywhere, but white people don't tourist in Nagasaki and especially not Sasebo. It almost made me feel threatened. Get off my territory! I am the outsider here! No not really. And then I was looking for a bus stop and I asked a girl who was just sitting there in Japanese and she looked at me bewilderedly and it turns out she didn't even speak Japanese! So weird.
So I walked back to the station to catch a bus for the Pearl Sea Resort and the Kujuku Islands. The Kujuku Islands (it means 99 islands but there's really 208 of them) are a chain of small islands along the coast of Nagasaki and Saga prefectures. They are uninhabited except for the 4 biggest ones. I took a cruise on some wannabe pirate ship which weaved throughout the islands and pointed out the features of each one, including flora, fauna, and industry (pearl cultivating.) It was actually really cool. I said this before, but I love that I'm getting to the age where I can appreciate stuff like that. The ship was mostly Japanese families with young children but there were two Americans on board who lived in the Navy base, one from Pennsylvania (but she had a Southern accent?) and one from Texas. They were kind of annoying though. They're the Americans that give Americans a bad name. Talking loud, overweight, badly butchering the Japanese, don't know any Japanese at all, complaining/not appreciative. But I think I'm overly critical of all Americans in any case.
Oh and because I bought a day bus pass I got Y200 off the price of my cruise ticket! Yay!
After the cruise I was able to explore some of the coastline on foot, not part of my original plan, but it was AMAZING and the best part of my day. It was low tide, so I was able to cross over a land bridge onto one of the islands (just like in France at St. Malo!!) There was an old Japanese couple swimming in the small bay next to the island. I was so excited that the receded tied revealed a wealth of tidepools! There were starfish, crabs, little sandbugs, oysters and shells galore, and a (dead) jellyfish. I picked up a few shells as "presents" for Carley, Mai, Guy and Yoko. :) There was a torii and a shrine on the island and a small precipice with really pretty ringed orange-brown rock, having been worn smooth from so many years of tides. I sat there for a while and thought about how lucky I was to see this place and be there. That's one advantage of traveling alone--time to think.
After I left the Kujuku Islands area my plan was to visit the multiple panorama/viewing spots hoping to get a good aerial-esque pic of the islands. However, I got on the wrong bus (I realized it right after boarding too) and ended up riding all the way back to the station. Then I waited around for a bus to come for 20-30 minutes and it never came. (Let's just say the bus system is a little confusing, especially with all the kanji.) So I finally got my bearings and figured out which buses I needed, but by that time I only had time to go to one of the vista points instead of two or three like I planned.
This vista point, Yumiharidake, is an observatory at the very top of a hill. (Ya think?!) Everyone slowly got off the bus at their respective neighborhoods, so by the time we reached the top it was just me and the bus driver. As I was getting off I asked him: "What time does the last bus come?" And he was like "...this is the last one." (Wtf, was he just gonna leave me up there if I didn't say anything?) So while I was sputtering and trying to put together the right Japanese question, he just said "10 minutes." ten minutes?I immediately got it and burst out "Thank you, thank you so much! I'll come back in 10 minutes!" How nice of him to wait for me instead of abandoning me up there!
It only took my five minutes before I had my fill. I knew it was a cloudy day, but I didn't know we'd be so high we were literally IN THE CLOUDS. Just for reference here is what it is supposed to look like on a sunny day:
And here is what my view looked like:
Yay! -_____-
So After 2 seconds of looking at that and the other parts of that rest-stop-of-an-observatory, I went back on the bus and me and the bus driver went home. To the station that is.
Here are some more (out-of-order because Blogger is stupid) SASEBO PICS ^^
No comments:
Post a Comment