My mom and bro came to Japan last week, and for the weekend, we decided to go to Sasebo. Our main purpose was to go apartment hunting, but we managed to squeeze in an afternoon of touring! And due to the many, many photos, I’ll be splitting the post into two parts – Part 1: Kujukushima Tour.

If you take the JR train to Sasebo, you can go to the Green Window (みどりの窓口; Midori no madoguchi) to get this cruise (on either the Pearl Queen or Mirai) + bus pass set. It’s quite worth it, but if you’re planning to take a different type of cruise (there were a few, some require advance reservation), then I would just get the bus pass.

So we got on the bus and headed to Pearl Sea Resort. It’s about 25 minutes from Sasebo station. There, we managed to board the Pearl Queen.

The Pearl Queen is the boat on the right:

The boat on the left is the Mirai, which has a fake pirate captain on board!

And this is the Pearl Queen:

The lower decks are basically filled with tables and chairs, and there’s a screen which will play a video of the outside (I didn’t really look at the video since I was up on the top deck for most of the time)

We had some time before the boat set sail, so we decided to head to the food stand and get some of the original ice-cream.

This is a biwa sorbet and it’s pretty nice! My mom says it tastes a bit like sour plums.

Oh, and there’s a lookout point on the top deck!

And this is what the ship looks like:

And a panorama from the lookout point.

Kujukushima is actually the name given to a collection of 208 islands. In this case, the “99” means that there are an uncountable number of islands, not that the ancient Japanese miscounted.

This tour was actually really good. They have Japanese and English narration, so it was easy to follow along.

This island (above) is supposed to resemble a sleeping lion. But when I sent it to my friends, no one could see the island! My family and I saw it, though. Do you see it? (I had someone tell me it looked more like a chihuahua. And another thought a different island looked more like it)

Oh yes, and I’m obviously late but beware the incoming picture spam!

These black circles bobbing in the water are for pearl farming! Apparently this area is great for oysters, and it produces over 2 million pearls per year! (And you can buy pearls at the shops nearby)

And this rectangular thing is for oyster farming. We actually had really great oysters after this – definitely something you have to try if you’re ever here!

I have a combined zemi going on tomorrow, so I’ll come back with Part 2 (the aquarium and food we had) on Wednesday!