DAY THREE: NAGASAKI > SHIMABARA

State of mind: boneless
Current soundtrack: Ultraseven X - Arl (J.S. Bach Cantata No. 51) (Saitou Takahiro)

Onsen today, yes. But before that…

Started the day with a big breakfast and checked out, heading for the long-delayed Glover Gardens. It’s at the top of a hill, past a storybook museum (!!) and at the end of a looooong shopping street.

Seems the three most-pimped things in Nagasaki are chanpon, sara-udon (fried udon?), castella sponge cake and kakuni manjuu. Popped up on every second sign I saw!

Right, the garden. It was…a bit meh, actually, as we were slightly rushed through the whole thing (Well, I was. Oo look, a tree...*dawdle*). It includes bits of Japan’s first foreigner settlement, Madame Butterfly memorabilia, and Japan’s first asphalt road and tennis courts, but honestly? Not all that pretty and I still don’t know who the heck ‘Glover’ is. Seems to be a preserved foreign residence/settlement, with a ‘performance art’ museum (read: nifty shape-based floats)

But you have to admit, some of the floats damn cool. Shachihoko FTW! Look at the splashiness!

The Peace Memorial was a bit better...well, sort of. We ended up in the Atomic Bomb Museum instead, if you're going to be pedantic. There’s a big old gold-coloured statue in front of that to commemorate all the teachers/students who perished. The tour group went straight ahead into the museum after some pic ops, but they missed a very beautiful statue off to the side of two girls flying gloriously. It’s based on a painting by Matsuzoe Hiroshi and is…quite uplifting. You need this just before going in, let me tell you. No pictures were allowed, so I sketched up a storm. (Thumbnails for now, btw. Click for a larger view.)

The memorial has a good, interesting use of space and ambient sound. Mind-stopping/changing exhibits. I’d recommend this place to anyone who comes down to Nagasaki, just maintain some respect for the site. Walk through and soak it in, and never mind the maudlin copywriting at the beginning. It’s best enjoyed as a long, quiet walk with no major interruptions. Which is what someone should have told the @#*^~in’ Taiwanese tour group who entered. “AND THIS IS THE THINGIE FROM SOMEWHERE. AND OVER HERE AR WE HAVE THIS DOOHICKEY FROM SO-AND-SO”. I’m getting a headache remembering how the guide’s voice cut like a chainsaw through the smooth silence. OK, so y’all read no Japanese or English. But please, please for the love of mercy: Shush! It felt so paiseh just being in the same room with those people. (And it just occured to me. Doesn't the place produce Chinese pamphlets? Hey, boss, here's our next comm. service job. It would be brill. :D)

Rant aside, the place is quite…depressing? Blood-curdling? Chilling? Awe-inspiring? It’s kind of hard to say. Maybe all of that. You look at the blistered trees and things with shadows burned on them from the heat; at the melted glob of rosary; at the cathedral which was torn down during Sakoku and rebuilt and FLATTENED by Fat Man (only one wall remained, slightly warped inward); at the people who were peppered with debris like machine-gun fire when the wind blew back into the hypocenter (this is where mushroom clouds come from); at the cancerous spleen vs the normal one; at the amount of nukes still out there today. I didn’t read a lot of the testimonials, fearing I’d dissolve into tears there and then, but what stuck with me was this:

A girl, 10 at the time, had a 2-year-old sister trapped under a large wooden beam. Many sailors tried to move it; they could not. Girl’s mother came back from the fields, where she’d been harvesting eggplants. She’s covered in shrapnel. Her body is burned purple from the intense heat. Forget all clothes. She’s naked, wounded and exhausted. The daughter called out, she gave the sailors a long look, and she put her shoulder under the beam and heaved. IT MOVES.

The girl went free, but all the skin came off the mother’s shoulder and it was stripped to the bone. She died in agony later that night.

It’s not a pleasant image, but it stays, and is touching. To me, anyways.

I came away feeling very…tired. Bought a book about the Hiroshima Panels (also incredibly depressing) and headed back to the bus.

Moving on to lighter things (must try!) the group headed out to the Peace Gardens (yay!) There was a big blue-green statue there (10 m high) with a little moat around it. It’s a very tranquil place. At one end is Big Blue, part Buddha* and part God; at another is a fountain, in memory of all those who died with pleas for water on their lips. The streams form a sort of wing shape, ala a crane.

Through the park/garden/area are bits of preserved Nagasaki...prison, and statues from various countries, hoping for peace. NZ’s one was really nice; Germany’s was blocky and square and, er, Germanic; Bulgaria’s had a kind of grace to it. It all makes you feel even worse when you recall missionaries first came to Japan through Nagasaki and it still got the shit bombed out of it. Makes you feel more hopeful when you see how beautiful and calm and all-together Nagasaki is today.

A quick lunch at a Chinese restaurant and we left Nagasaki for Shimabara. On the way we stopped near Mt. Unzen and went up to a lookout point. Bought some loquat sweets (nice, but meh) and saw, would you believe it, a big old Harley-Davidson. It belonged to one of three very old Japanese chappies (< = 79) whom we got pally with before leaving. Big strong bikers with hearts of gold, travelling Asia...

...But I cannot really account for THESE on the Beemer-ojisan's bike. O_o;;;;;;;;;;;;;; Ohgodpleasebeusingthemformereaestheticvaluepleasebeusingthemformereaestheticvaluepleasebeusingthemformereaestheticvalue

It was then time to go again, but there was another stop—a buried village, smothered in Fugendake’s pyroclastic flow of 1991. O_o;;;;;; Luckily everyone had been previously evacuated, so nobody died or was injured—even M.Y. can only take so much death and destruction in one day. Houses got buried up to the roofs, though. They run a little cottage industry-thingie nearby, and I mean this because the price stickers say ‘XYZ made by so-and-so-san’ etc. Very nice.

We finally stopped for the night at Shimabara Kowakien, a ryokan-hotel combo jobbie. ZOMG, SWISH. We were treated to a lovely Japanese dinner (I dare not say kaiseki, as it probably wasn’t), and there was of course the ONSEEEEEN. To be more specific, the ROTENBUROOOOO. It was very appealing, once you get past the ‘argh naked boobies naked with other people’ mindset. I went twice! They have a yuzu-infused tub *bob bob* and a normal tub, which is larger (and somewhat steamier?). I intended to check out the outdoor baths the first night, but my body had other thoughts; 3 m out the door, at night in early winter, in the raw, and I had to turn around and flee. I honestly felt FREEZING. Plucked up courage once more and tried again, but a cold wind blew s-o-f-t-l-y through the door and I finally admitted defeat. For now.

I feel very clean and shiny. I’m doing it again tomorrow! Now I shall curl up in my futon(!!) on the (tatami!!!) and prepare to don a yukata(!!!!) in the morn.

As if it was possible to love Kyushu even more. :D

* It's not just the face; upon further inspection while prettying up the pictures for blog consumption, it appears that Big Blue may have a third eye.