We exited the airport bus at the Huis Ten Bosch stop, which not surprisingly was right by the amusement park’s main entrance. There were small signs for the Henn na Hotel, so we followed them for the five minute walk to the hotel.
JT’s wrote up our time at Henn na Hotel as a hotel review on The Points Guy. Definitely check out the review to see the robots staffing the check-in desk, the lawn mower robot, and Chur-ri our in-room robot. There were frustrations as well, but overall we really enjoyed our stay.
After we got to know the property more, we realized that our room was most certainly the best of it’s kind on the property in terms of view. After becoming annoyed by the programmers working in the lobby debugging various technology at the hotel, we spent most of each day working in front of our room’s window. As such, we had plenty of time to enjoy the view over Huis Ten Bosch and it’s zip line.
We ate breakfast at the hotel’s buffet each morning since it was included in our room. We ventured to the closest town, Haiki, each evening for dinner. We could take an infrequent train part of the way, but the train timings only worked out once – we walked the 55 minute walk the other five journeys.
On our first and third trips to Haiki, we ate at Shiba Indian Cuisine (インド料理 シバ). Shiba Indian Cuisine is a well-rated Indian restaurant that Katie found to have amazing vegetable curry. The naan was huge (and had a slightly sweet taste) and the lassis were tasty. The set meals are good and they even have the set meal in English. The only downside to Shiba Indian Cuisine was that it is a bit pricey.
On our second trip to Haiki we tried a ramen place (まる龍), which we also found to be excellent. It only had bar seating and three tables (two of which were traditional style). They had an English menu though. Katie tried basic pork ramen with a soft boiled egg while JT tried the butter bacon ramen. Katie’s was earthy while JT’s tasted light and delicate. Both were very good. Interestingly, they had a frame made from Malaysian drift wood in their bathroom (as well as an English note explaining the driftwood).
The walk between Haiki and Huis Ten Boush had a side walk all the way. Bikes rode on the sidewalk though, and were impossible to detect until you heard a squeak right behind you. There were lots of crabs on the sidewalk – especially at night – but they were not bothersome. What was bothersome were all of the spider webs, many with pretty nasty-looking spiders residing in them. The walk did provide nice views of the Huis Ten Bosch amusement park when walking back from Haiki at night.
Speaking of nice views, there are apartments reached by long sets of stairs up the hills across from Henn na Hotel. We climbed up these stairs one afternoon and were awarded with a nice panorama of the park and the bay. It was certainly worth the climb.
On our last day in Nagasaki we had an 8pm flight. Huis Ten Bosch was much farther from downtown Nagasaki than we expected, so we had just stayed at the hotel and worked throughout our stay. After checking out of the Henn na Hotel, we took our bags and rode the Sea Side Liner train all the way from Huis Ten Bosch to near the atomic bomb hypocenter.
Once at the atomic bomb hypocenter, we sat and read about the history surrounding the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. This, as well as being at the hypocenter, made us very thoughtful and reflective. We each spent time walking around the memorial park before taking a tram and a bus to the Nagasaki Airport for our flight to Nagoya.