So, after waking up in Nagasaki after a long and excellent night of sleep, I went downstairs to have breakfast. As I usually do not really feel like eating noodles or rice in the early morning, I went with some fruit, some scrambled egg and a little sweet sandwich. I had bought some ice tea at the supermarket yesterday, but it was disgusting. Usually I can say: PsychoUni, you might not like it, but just drink it, it’s good to have some fluids in you.

But this was so disgusting; even when I tried it again, knowing about the taste, I could not finish the bottle. It made me a bit scared of (iced) tea, but thankfully for breakfast they served green tea which you could make yourself, so that was way better. After a good breakfast our tour guide told us about some general trip things and more specifically what to do in Nagasaki, and then my parents and I went for it.

First we took the tram to the nucleair bomb museum, which is not at the place where the bomb hit (there is another memorial there, but we did not go). The museum was very cheap, only 200 yen (which is approximately 2 euros), and it was beautiful. The building, the technical stuff, the way the rooms were categorized: it was all perfect. Of course the reason for the museum is pure horror. I cannot imagine what the world was like back then, nor do I understand why they dropped that second bomb after Hiroshima so quickly.

So many lives were lost, so many important cultural objects were distroyed, and it truly is a black page in world history. Not just Japanese history. What I never realised is that the bomb did not just distroy lives and objects because of the impact of the bomb and the nuclear material in it. It also had impact because of the big flash it produced. There are photo’s of things that have a mark on them forever: a mark of leaves, of a person, of a tree. It was such a big flash that things got a bit lighter in color. Isn’t that insane? The longer I think about all this, the weirder and more awful it all gets. More about nucleair bombing tomorrow, as then we will be visiting Hiroshima’s memorial. I do not really look forward to that, cause it is so painful to watch, but on the other hand it is so much part of the country, and it is so essential to know.

After the museum we walked through the beautiful harbor of Nagasaki which had a beautiful park where people were all having a picknick together or with their kids. Or with their dogs, cause everybody has a dachshund here.  It was a lovely day: warm sunshine, though sometimes there was a little bit of rain that included a very cold wind. Nagasaki apparently has one of the most beautiful skylines of the world. I have seen better ones, but it still is very breathtaking.

After our lovely stroll and having some snacks at Starbucks, we went to a place called Dejima, which used to be a small island where the Dutch (yeah, my people!) were running a factory. It was really cool to see so many Dutch words and Dutch things, and the little island looked cool. It was all rebuild, people were walking around in kimonos and you could go inside and walk on the rice mats, which are amazing and I totally want them in my bedroom too.

It really was a cute old little village, and I really enjoyed walking around. Afterwards we went to the Glover Garden, which is located on a hill and offers a beautiful set of gardens with town houses from the old days, really amazing. It was really cool as you took an elevator up and then you could walk all the way down. There was so much to see, my feet started to hurt, hihi.

After that we walked around a bit and we ended up having some cake and juice at the cafe of the Nagasaki Perfectural Art Museum. Really good, beautiful location too, very modern. There was a classical concert going on in the museum, and we could hear it, which was nice. Well to be fair, it was nice until the opera singer came up, cause that was a bit too intense for my taste.

After we had some cake we realised it was almost dinner time, so I checked out Tripadvisor, which had a restaurant only 10 minutes walking away with a very good rating (number two of Nagasaki!). It was called Shikairo, located it a beautiful building with an amazing view. The food was excellent too, though I was a bit disappointed that I could not have any Champon, which is the local dish. They do not really understand vegetarianism here, which is a true pity: I really wanted to try it, but they did not have a veggie version. When I told them I do not eat meat or fish, she said I could order the “steamed vegetables”, which usually came with pork but they would leave them out for me.

I was pretty happy, cause we were having a good time, the view was excellent and the food was good, until I saw a prawn swimming in my bowl. Well, it was not swimming obviously, but it was there. And there was another one, and another one, and suddenly I understood why some of the veggies had a weird texture, almost like it was meat or fish: because it probably was. It was very unfortunate but I only ate the veggies that I knew were veggies, but thankfully I ordered some rice with it, so at least I had that too.

That was a bit of a bad ending of the evening, but I was not bothered, there were a lot of veggies in my bowl and my parents and I had a good time. Tomorrow we will be travelling from Nagasaki to Hiroshima, which is going to be another interesting visit. First, sleep!