Nagasaki Nisshokan

As the only point of contact with the West for over 200 years, there`s a sense of history in Nagasaki.

I love walking along the water front (I confess, give me a port anywhere and I`m happy), and thinking how it was through these ...

We arrived in Nagasaki at 0800 today (our Monday—your Sunday). We plan to visit ground zero where the A Bomb was dropped and go to the museum. After that we'll just play it by ear and look around.

Kobe was great. I tasted my first Kobe beef steak. The claim that it is "fork tender" is absolutely no ...

... a while we were all feeling like going for a bit of a boogie. Unfortunately, our standard technique of asking a local went a bit wrong here as we asked for somewhere to dance and got led to a bar that had a fine selection of DARTS... har dee har har. Nevertheless, we played a few rounds, which was actually a pretty good detour, had a bit of a warm up dance to the background music and then were led to another bar on the top floor of a building ...

... to the hostel and met up with Simon an English bloke who was in the same hostel as me in Hiroshima. We headed out for dinner to this place near the hostel, where we had what was almost like a tempera degustation that included prawns, chicken, baby corn (weird but tasty), mackerel, pumpkin and some other stuff. Again very tasty! After that as usual we tried to find a bar or two for a beer, found this American bar which was ok (at best) and then called it a night.

Diesmal in einer minshuku (also ne art Pension) sehr nett die leute. Wollten uns abholen von der Station. Das Blog schreiben nimmt immer sehr viel Zeit in Anspruch, natürlich auch das raufladen der Fotos und Videos sodass ich nie vor 3 Uhr Ortszeit ins Bett gekommen bin. Deshalb war es sehr angenehm mal nicht zu schreiben. Ist halt doch eher Arbeit als entspannend...
Naja war auf jeden FAll Lustig, wir waren dort bis 31. August und sind jetzt in Fukuoka.

Ist sozusagen ...

... their lives. There is not, however, one from the UK. In the midst of this busy city it is a place of calm, peace and reflection. We then drove past the epicentre - this was where the Urakami Cathedral had stood and which has now been rebuilt - another park and the museum which houses everything to do with that period (we were unable to go in unfortunately - no time). This was the end of the tour and we went back to ...

... at mainly temples, there's not much to tell, the pictures says it all. Yesterday I sent a mail to Mr Yasumasa, thanking him for a great night, and inviting him out tonight for a meal to repay his kindness. To my great surprise, he called me and told me he would be delighted to have dinner with me, so were meeting up in the same area we went out at two nights ago. Watch this space! VideoBlog

... sightseeing, saw Glover Park (the Western style park of a Scottishman from the 19th Century), Oura Church (the most famous Christian church in Japan), the Dutch slope, Dejima (an Artifical island which housed the Dutch traders in the 19th century), the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb museum (which was just, if not more, intense and affecting as the museum in Hiroshima) and the Nagasaki Peace Park. We were ...

... streets of Nagasaki. there were some very Japanese-y stores and I even stopped to take a picture of a flower for my mother (with my luck, it was probably a plant imported directly from west texas--but it looked pretty and made me think of mom)! I took the tram back to the shopping center where I was to be picked up by my host-mom. The tram ride itself was an enormous culture shock. People kept cramming on despite the fact that there was no room and the next tram was due in three ...

This is our big day to see some more of the city on our own. We walk the 15 minutes to the nearest streetcar stop and head south to Nagasaki station. At the main station there is an information booth with maps of the city attractions and street car lines in English. Nagasaki city was the first port in Japan opened to westerners in 1571 and remained the only open port to foreigners for over 200 years. As such Nagasaki was Japan's sole window to the world is today ...