Not a lot to say today. Pretty uneventful journey from Hiroshima to Nagasaki in 2 trains. The first part is the good old Shinkansen to Hakata, then it's onto a "Limited Express" Kamome service to Nagasaki. Unfortunately, whoever designed the interior of the Kamome trains went for style over useability! The interior is very nice in a bit of a modern-meets-retro style with a lot of wood for the floor and panels. Unfortunately, they went for leather seats which, while looking very plush, are at the sort of size where you find a comfortable position, but instantly slide into a less comfortable one. They've also gone for airline-style overhead luggage racks which have a door on them. This has the effect of making them smaller than the ones on other trains and means that anyone with luggage is in trouble! Coupled with the general lack of carriage-end luggage racks like you find on most long distance trains in the UK on Japanese trains, and you really struggle to find somewhere to leave suitcases. Luckily, I was right at the front of the carriage so was able to leave mine in the rather large vestibule area while still managing to keep an eye on it.
I'm not overly impressed by the hotel. Room is tiny, bathroom is, if you ignore the midget-sized bath, probably smaller than a British Rail train toilet. There is also a fairly strong smell of smoke when you walk into the room which no amount of spraying everything with the air freshner stuff gets rid of. Once you've been in the room a while you stop noticing it. I was also looking forward to a good steak in the hotel restaurant, but found out when I went down there that it's not open at the moment for some reason. The only wi-fi is in the lobby, and it's not exactly the most stable connection in the world. And now the aircon seems to have a strange idea of what 20degC is! Unfortunately, the one thing you notice about Nagasaki is the level of translation of things decreases a lot!
Anyway, think it will be an early night tonight as tomorrow will be a long day. I leave Nagasaki at 07:30 and I'm not scheduled to be back till sometime after 21:00. It's also the day of most trains with something close on 10 in order to do a trip on the Hisatsu line. This line was covered on the original Microsoft Train Simulator, and is also said to be one of the most scenic in the country. It's also incredibly challenging on the trains and drivers due to the steep inclines as it traverses the mountains on the island of Kyushu.