Eric's Wacky Tales

Nagasaki

Phew!Made　it to Nagasaki! Apparently my grandfathers old boss, back in the Taiwan Sugar Company days was from Nagasaki and he helped my grandfather out a bit, so this city has some family significance...
Unfortunately, my first couple hours in this city were quite daunting as the 2 hostels mentioned in the guide were closed and the one i got from the tourist information folks had a HORRIBLE map. Actually, all the maps of Nagasaki ive gotten so far (including the one in the LP guide) have been not-so-good. The problem is that these maps dont bother drawing in all the small streets, even though some of the small streets are significant! And of course, they dont name the streets either. Ohwell, after 2 hours of spinning around in circles and asking 3 or 4 people (who had to scratch their heads looking at the map given to me), i finally found the place!

First stop was the Abomb park and museum. Being the site of the 2nd bombing, the park and museum were somewhat less impressive than those at hiroshima, and covered most of the same stuff. The had some remnants of a catholic church which was destroyed as well as an old stone Tori which had one leg destroyed, but remained standing.

Afterwards, i took the tram down to the Harbor area where the foreign communities resided. There were apparently many foreigners who got pretty wealthy dealing in arms and then tea. There is also the old Foreigner ward (Dejima??) where they actually qarentined foreigners in their own man made island to prevent the spread of Christianity! Nowadays, its no longer an island, having had much land reclaimed from the bay, however theyre is some work going on to restore more portions of it and at least make it back into an island.

OK, 15 time limit (at least its free!) on the computer at the hostel. Tomorrow im off to Kumamoto! Will write more then!