We were going to spend the day in Huis Ten Bosch, but after spending 4 hours there last night, we’d had enough. So in a change of itinerary, we decided to head to a couple of hours south on the local train to Nagasaki, a nice city, that just happened to be the site of the second nuclear bomb attack.
Local trains are slow, but are really nice to get the vibe of a place. We caught the train on the Sunday, yet it was filled with teenagers in their school uniforms. You know it’s hard core when they’re off to school on a Sunday. There was a group of old women next to us, gossiping about all the sights. There was an old lady behind us looking like she was talking into a Bluetooth headset, except she didn’t have one. That was weird.
Finally, we made it to Nagasaki. The main reason we came here was to check out the sights related to the Nuclear attack, such as the Nagasaki Peace Park, the Hypocenter, and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. But on reflection, it’s a bit unfair to tar the city with just that one incident. It was basically the only port open to foreigners back when Japan was sealed off from the world, so it has a big western influence in the architecture. It’s surrounded by beautiful hills on three sides, and makes for a really nice city to explore. I guess what I’m trying to say is after being to Nagasaki, this place isn’t defined by the fact it had a Nuclear bomb dropped on it.
The Nagasaki Peace Park was dedicated to the people who were killed or injured from the nuclear blast. 70% of the people were women, children, and elderly, and the way those people died was horrific. The statue has one finger pointing towards the sky and the atom bomb, and the other hand is searching for peace. It’s a very sombre and poignant place. While Kathryn and I were quiet and respectful, we did encounter a gaggle of Chinese tourists who were loud and jovial. Kathryn thought harshly towards them, but I suggested that they might have had a different context to the bomb, that this was something that ended the war against the Japanese for them, something they suffered greatly from.
We then went past the Hypocenter, which was the exact spot the bomb was dropped. Nagasaki wasn’t the original target, it was Kokura. It just so happened that when the plane was over Kokura it was cloudy, so they decided to aim at the secondary target, Nagasaki.
We then walked to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. This was a pretty sombre and sad museum that showed horrors that happened. There was one fragment which was a skeleton of a hand fused into a glass bottle. Just awful stuff. The images of people basically on fire were terrible. And the stories of the survivors drinking the oily water because they were so thirty were just heart wrenching:
Desperately thirsty, I went to draw water but found an oil-like substance floating all over it. People told me that the oil had rained down from the sky… But I wanted a drink so badly that I gulped the water down just as it was.
We then headed to the station to do some exploring. Nagasaki and the area around it appear famous for their Mandarins, or Mikan, so I bought bags full of them for cheap!
We then caught the Kamome, or Seagull, train from Nagasaki to Hakata Station, in Fukuoka. While on the train, the guy next to us was reading softcore pornography, then decided he’d had enough of that, and switched to his laptop so he could view some hardcore pornography.
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❖ Equipment ❖
Panasonic Lumix GF7
Lumix G Vario 12-32mm f/3.5-5.6 Lens
Sony FDR-X3000 Action Cam
Sony VCT-STG1 Shooting Grip
AloJapan.com