Indiscriminate Murder

At last we got a lovely long sleep in our expensive room and got up nice and late. We caught a tram to the Atomic Bomb Museum. We had opted for Nagasaki rather than Hiroshima because Nagasaki sounded like it was quite a nice town as well, whereas Hiroshima sounds like it's just about the bomb, but of course the main tourist sites in Nagasaki are bomb-related too. The trams were frequent, cheap, and easy to use even for stupid foreigners. There actually seemed to be more Romanisation of Japanese script, more English written, and more English spoken in Nagasaki, which came as quite a surprise. We had expected things to get even worse away from Tokyo, but it certainly wasn't the case here at least.

Joanne contemplates atrocity

We spent a bit of contemplative time in the Atomic Bomb Hypocentre Park outside the museum, where a black stone column marks the spot on the ground above which the last atomic bomb dropped in an act of aggression exploded. The museum itself has exhibits of photos, videos, and various burned and melted objects all telling stories of individuals and their families who were in Nagasaki at the time of the blast. Joanne found the whole experience very moving and was shocked at the extent of the damage. I was actually surprised how limited the extent of the damage was, but I think this comes from having grown up during the 80s with films like Threads and The Day After, which depicted the effects of multi-megaton bombs. What actually had the most profound effect on me was considering that this bomb caused as much damage as it did, although it is of the order of one thousand times less powerful than a typical modern bomb. It's terrifying to consider how much damage just one of them would do. I would encourage you to look here http://www.carloslabs.com/node/20 , here http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/gmap/hydesim.html , or here http://bit.ly/11CF7c to find out.

Pledge of Peace

Leaving the Museum Joanne said to me that everywhere we visit the Americans have committed some atrocity: the military campaigns in Vietnam and Cambodia, and the secret one in Laos all leaving behind tons and tons of UXO to kill and maim civilians for years afterwards; the Bhopal Union Carbide chemical disaster in India; and the only ever two atomic bombs used in aggression. Why does anyone have anything to do with America? she asked me. This later became her Facebook status. What had really shocked her were the facts that Russia had declared war on Japan the day before the second bomb was dropped, Japan had already requested peace negotiations more than a month before the first bomb was dropped, and then the Americans' own Strategic Bombing Survey report afterwards came to the conclusion that “certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated”. Yet both bombings still went ahead. We spent a little time in the Peace Park looking at the Peace Statue, but it was raining so we didn't hang around long.

The Peace Statue (impersonating Roy)

Self-indulgence

Delicious salmon sashimi and sake

We had agreed that we couldn't continue with the budget as it stood. Although we were surviving, we weren't having all that much fun, and we wanted to eat something other than supermarket food. We definitely could not afford to increase our daily budget of ¥10000, of which our room was taking ¥6000, so we convinced ourselves that we could instead afford a treat worth ¥5000 once every three days. That meant we were due a treat, so this time we went out to the expensive-looking restaurant we had not been able to afford the previous night. There was no English menu, but our waiter could speak just enough English to help us out. They had sashimi, which is my favourite, but when Joanne asked for nigiri he told us they didn't do sushi. Apparently sashimi and sushi are not usually sold in the same places in Japan. The food was excellent and the waiter was really helpful and did his best, although his English wasn't much better than my almost completely non-existent Japanese. Some people at the next table took an interest in us, and offered us some of their “Japanese crab” and “Japanese rice whisky”, shōchū, which were both excellent. They laughed at us quite a lot but they were very friendly. At one point the all started practising English phrases at each other, but when I looked over and asked my one sentence, eigo ga hanasemas ka, everyone looked a bit shocked and, shaking their heads vigorously, said “no no no no”. We had been warned that Japanese people tend to be a bit shy, but also perfectionists, so will not admit to speaking English unless they can speak it very well.

Sashimi of a local fish

It was a great night, and when we walked out into the street there seemed to be a musical performance being put on for someone's birthday, and they had decorated the already quite attractive bridge outside with candles in little paper lanterns. Lovely! I was definitely beginning to enjoy Japan now. Maybe it was just Tokyo that was horrible.

Lamps across the bridge

written by  The Happy Couple on July 7, 2009 from Nagasaki, Japan
from the travel blog: Michael's Round-the-World honeymoon
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