Nagasaki

Last weekend, I went to Nagasaki. I'd actually been to Nagasaki once before, when I went to Japan with my mom three years ago. We stayed with a family that she lived with for a while, back before I was born. They are wonderful people, and I'm happy to say that I stayed with them again!

I drove to Nagasaki with my friend Em. We decided to avoid tolls for the first part of the drive, because we weren't in any particular hurry, and that resulted in some gorgeous mountain views. Altogether, it took about five hours-- the speed limits in Japan are pretty low.

When we reached Nagasaki, we met up with our host family and had some delicious home-cooked food. After we ate, they drove us around Nagasaki. Between the ocean, the city, and the mountains, it really is a beautiful place.

They made us a welcome sign in English!

Nagasaki

The above picture is of Hashima, also known as Battleship Island. If I understood correctly (the conversation was in Japanese), it has that name because it looked so much like a ship that it was mistaken for one during World War II. It was a coal mine in the 1890s that has since been abandoned. No one lives there today, as it is not safe.

Near Hashima was a large hill that Em and I climbed. Like everything else that day, it had a gorgeous view. Here's a picture of us on the way back down.

We also went to see a Iojima lighthouse, pictured below. The lighthouse was destroyed when the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Only the stone foundation survived. It was rebuilt later on, but the original foundation is left standing. There was also a mine in the area, and when the mine shut down, the miners' children carved their names into the stone before moving far away from each other for their families' new jobs. The lighthouse is also featured in a movie called Anata E, which I will have to watch at some point.

If you look carefully, you can see the messages scrawled into the stone.

Then, that night, my host mother taught us to make saraudon, which is not to be confused with zarusoba the food that consists of udon dipped into a sauce. It was delicious.

The next day we did some tourism within Nagasaki City. In a lot of ways, Nagasaki is more international than much of Japan, because when the country was closed to most outside trade, Nagasaki continued to trade with the Dutch, who lived on a small island called Dejima. The Dutch were not allowed to visit any other part of Nagasaki. Before the Dutch, Portuguese traders lived there, though we know a bit less about them. As I understand it, Japan did not want foreigners to push Christianity on the Japanese people. Unlike people from other countries, the Dutch were fine with that, and so they were allowed to stay.

I really enjoyed looking at the buildings and reading all the signs about life on Dejima. The Dutch were technically in Japan, but at the same time they weren't really allowed to enter the country. And yet I don't feel bad for them, because from what I could tell by looking at the displays of archaeological findings, they were very well off, especially the captain. I was also interested to learn that some Japanese women lived on the island, working as courtesans. Apparently some of the women were there so long that they gave birth to children. I'm really curious about the stories of those women and their children, but not much information about them seems to have survived.

At the gates to Dejima, which is no longer an island.

The Captain's house on Dejima. I know very little about architecture, but I thought the combination of Western and Japanese styles was really interesting.

 

We also went to China Town and to a beautiful Confucian temple, both pictured above, as well as the Nagasaki Peace Park. The Peace Park, located very close to the hypocenter of the atomic bomb, has statues from all over the world. The statues speak of the horrors of war and of our collective longing for peace.

The statue donated by my own St. Paul, MN. 

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During my last trip to Japan, I went to the atomic bomb museums and parks in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. I remember finding it particularly strange to be there as an American. Although the bombings happened before I was born and I know they were not my fault, I felt a degree of guilt for what my country had done.

I felt the guilt more strongly this time, because I look at America now and I see a country that is capable of such destruction. We are so riddled with hatred and Islamophobia that I can imagine people rationalizing the kind of mass destruction that happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Peace Park shows that people all over the world recognize the necessity of working toward peace. Even seventy-three years later, people make strings of a thousand paper cranes in memory of the tragedy and send them to both cities. But I saw a mismatch between the collective yearning for a peaceful Earth, as demonstrated by the Peace Park, and the world as it looks today. I'd like to say that we've learned our lesson and humanity will never bring about that kind of destruction again, but I just don't know.

They hypocenter of the atomic bomb. I was told that after the war officially ended, American soldiers came to Nagasaki and marked the spot.

There is no good way to transition away from talking about the bomb, so I will just do it abruptly. That night, we went to the top of a mountain to see the night view of Nagasaki. It is considered to be one of the best three night views in the world, and I can see why. The harbor, the lights, the buildings nestled into the mountains like folds in a blanket-- the view could not possibly be captured through pictures (and especially not with a phone camera), but I tried anyway.

I sort of took that second picture as a joke about the claim that we only see the world through technology, which is taking over our lives, corrupting the youth, and so on. That said, I do think a lot about how my reaction to an incredible view is to take out my phone, instead of trying to take in the fullness of what I'm seeing. It might be because I know that I will forget what I'm seeing, or because it's just not possible to really grasp a view like that, and my camera gives me the chance to react to it over and over again. Or maybe I do just like having the picture so that I can send it to my family and put it on my blog. Either way, I did put my phone away after a little bit, and spent a while just staring out at the world.

And then, in the morning, we learned how to make okonomiyaki! I had never had it before, in part because it often contains meat and/or fish, but it was. So delicious.

You can tell from my plate that this was not my first serving.

All in all, I had an amazing trip. Teaching is exhausting, along with language barriers, cultural differences, and always feeling like a guest in my seven different schools. Sometimes I do need to laze around like I did this weekend. (That was partly due to the fact that there was a typhoon today, and it really wasn't safe to leave the house, but staying home and relaxing was also really good for me.) However, it was definitely refreshing to go on a trip. I remember thinking that tourism was boring when I was younger, but now I love reading signs and looking at statues and taking pictures. I feel like I'm learning something. Plus, the food was amazing.

Thanks for reading! I'm shooting for a blog post a week. Please feel free to say something if you notice I'm not posting-- I could use the external motivation!