Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
The overall structure of the trip was to travel eastward across the country by train, stopping off at points of interest en route. The three timing-constraints were: Tuesday-1 in Nagasaki to meet my friend for Chinese New Year, let's call him "E-san"; Friday-1 in Osaka for a meal out with E-san & other acquaintances; and finally Saturday-2 in Tokyo for my flight home. And so I flew out from Heathrow with a few hotels booked, a rough travel plan, and a 30L rucksack.
^Fuji-san just visible through the haze from the air.
My plane landed at Haneda early on Tuesday morning, with my having booked a connecting flight to Nagasaki at midday. Events which occurred on the flight will be relevant later (I think), but I'll explain them retrospectively when it comes to it. I went with this later Nagasaki flight due to a significant cost saving (only ~8000円 for a single ticket), but this left me with several hours to kill in Tokyo. So I took the Keikyuu line a few stops out from Haneda Island to Kamata Station in Ota City. My mission was to buy an IC Card (like an Oyster Card), buy a hat (I brought a woolly hat but no cap), and to get something to eat. Ota City is a very average Tokyo suburban centre, there's almost nothing of note here as far as I can tell, except I suppose that its the southernmost township in Tokyo Prefecture (if you exclude the Seven Islands of Izu). But I didn't mind, it was good to be back in Japan and just exist in this strange alternate universe. As I walked around I quickly remembered the little points of living in Japan I picked up on my first trip in 2024. Always waiting at pedestrian crossings, taking your backpack off in shops, the little dance of nodding at passers-by. It was exciting to be back.
I quickly ran into two very Japanese problems however. First off pretty much everything was closed. The shops of the shoutengai (covered streets) were all shuttered, and the cafes were all locked. My only real option for food was therefore the ever-present konbini (corner shop), so I found the nearest Family Mart (which is obviously the best of the big-three konbini) and bought a healthy breakfast of a melon-pan and sweet-tea (Duchess-style). But after this I ran into problem 2: there are no litter bins anywhere. With my rucksack stowed away in a coin-locker in Kamata, I had no choice but to carry it around for the next hour. Next was the hat, whichever the only option for was the dreaded Don-Quijote megastore, which was blasting out a not-very-7AM song and flashing red sirens into the street. On the other hand the cap I got there only cost 800円 which is hard to argue against.
After wasting a few hours exploring the area, I returned to Kamata Station and purchased a Suica IC Card from the machine, and used it to take the short hop back to the airport. I arrived 1hr45 before my flight, which I imagined was cutting it a little fine, but au contraire, they wouldn't even let me through security yet. It seems the Japanese leave as much time for (domestic) flights as they do for trains: about 15mins. To be able to trust the efficiency of infrastructure that well is of great merit to their system. While waiting I bought ramen for lunch at the kiosk: one of the ones where you select your options on a big panel of buttons then pick it up at the counter. Fortunately after this I was permitted entry and took my flight to Nagasaki.
As in the norm for appreciable longitudinal travel, jetlag had set in so I slept for the solid 2hr flight. Which is probably a good thing as a particularly nosy American guy was sitting next to me who seemed eager to chat. Nagasaki Airport is situated on a reclaimed island in the middle of the enclosed Omura Bay. Such fake-islands are common in Japan as a way to expand their limited flat-land. Annoyingly however, there is no rail link between Nagasaki Airport and Nagasaki City, so I had to take a packed and overpriced bus into the centre (it was called the "Super Airport-Liner Limousine" in some sort of mocking parody). But once in Nagasaki-proper I checked into my hotel and met up with E-san who had already been in Japan for several days. This day was, as I already mentioned, Chinese New Year, and Nagasaki was holding a festival.
Nagasaki is a very outward-facing city, in contrast with most of Japan; for a very long time it was the primary port through which the country conducted international trade, particularly with China and Korea. It was also the sole port of entry through which Europeans were allowed to trade until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. It therefore has a lot of foreign influence, and a lot of history which I will describe as I reach the relevant landmark. The festival comprised of hundreds of wireframe and paper statues which were lit up from the inside at night. We also watched a dragon performance with taiko drums before escaping the thronging crowds (you could hardly move) to get dinner. We ended up at a classic little izakaya where we had soba noodles and (several) beers. My Japanese skills were put to limited but effective use in placing orders with the barmaids, but there's still a lot I have no idea how to say. We met a family from Hong Kong visiting for the New Year Break and talked about various things like horses and the olympics.
Back at the hotel I was excited for the reason we picked this hotel at all: the bath. On the roof of the 20-off storey building is an open-air bath with views across the city. I love the Japanese bathing ritual anyway so I made sure that most of the places I'm staying have them. Needless to say it was great and took away some of the lingering jetlag nausea.
^The view of Nagasaki-shi from atop Konpira-san. The Atomic Monument is by the red-brick structure in the centre of the image.
Not-so-bright-and-early the next morning I got up and left the hotel. E-san had left before me to find breakfast, and bought me azuki-filled manjuu, with azuki being the always unappetisingly translated "red bean paste", and manjuu being a sort of bun/doughnut. It was pretty good.
First we visited Dejima Island. This was the Portuguese and later Dutch colony which was the only port of entry for Europeans goods allowed into Japan for 218 years. Any original buildings were, of course, destroyed in 1945, but the faithful reconstruction and museum were interesting nevertheless. We also bumped into the Hong Kong family from the previous night.
Today we had decided we'd go on a hike, so we picked out Mt Konpira as it meant a walk up through the hilly suburbs. The path took us through a cemetery and past houses built into nooks of the hill without any road-access. Once we were above the settlement-line it quickly gave way to dense woodland and bamboo thickets. Near the summit was a shrine, apparently enshrining two kami: primarily a Chinese deity who travelled to Japan to bless the maritime trade between the two countries in 810AD, who in doing so displaced the older kami who seems to have been a wild-boar spirit. The shrine has a recorded history since 810AD, and is indeed probably much older.
There was actually a lot of wild-boar activity to see, the pigs had dug up much of the paths with their snuffling, and pig-tracks were evident everywhere. As we kept on walking we found a few oddities, such as a triangulation point from which the 1874 transit of Venus was observed, the first scientific astronomical observation made in Japan. Additionally at the summit was an observation platform where you could view the city centre into which we were about delve.
The descent was a seemingly endless set of stairs which would their way around bamboo and boulders, emptying us out into the bustle of the city's business district. We visited the Atomic Monument, which marks the precise spot at which the bomb landed in 1945 with a garden of remembrance. The city is built along the width of a isthmus, surrounding on two sides by mountains. This meant that the blast of the bomb was funneled along the valley floor, causing more destruction than even anticipated and burning the entirety of the axis of the city from coast to coast.
Nearby was also the monument for another tragedy, that of the 26 martyrs. These were 6 European evangelists and 20 Japanese converts who were executed for their faith by the Shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi (the successor to Nobunaga) by crucifixion in 1597, and are venerated as saints. Nagasaki-ken still has the highest proportion of Christians for any prefecture and serves as the principle destination of pilgrimage in the country.
For lunch we had tonkotsu ramen at a local joint, before catching the tram down to the station and crossing over the Uragami River. Obviously not satisfied with just one summation, we then climbed Mt Inasa on the other side of the city. On the way up I was told off by an old guy for trying to use a public toilet (I still have no idea why), and found an abandoned shrine along a disused road. The view from atop Inasa was amazing, as well as the expanse of Nagasaki to the East, you could also see out West to the islands of the East China Sea. From the viewing platform we could pick out our exact route across the city that day which was pretty satisfying. We made our descent not by foot, but via the ropeway, cable cars are surprisingly common here, which took us back down into town in time for dinner.
And for dinner we hit up the "Maid in Nagasaki" maid cafe where I got the standard omurice set, which was actually really well made. With the date being as it was, naturally "Ran-chan" was in Chinadress cosplay, which did make me a little disappointed I have to say, but it was fun all the same. After a frankly exhausting day of walking, we retired to the hotel and to a well-deserved bath.
^Very tasty!
