Nagasaki

Today we headed to Nagasaki for the day.  We didn't do the atomic bomb thing, as trying to explain that to a 7 year old is hard going and Matt has been to the museum and says it is very very graphic.  Don't want to give the boy nightmares quite yet - we will save that for another time when he is older and more able to understand.

Thomas Glover's house

Instead, we decided to do the European settlement in Nagasaki bit.  For a few hundred years, an island just off Nagasaki (Dejima) was the only place foreigners were allowed.  When the country finally opened up in the 1860s, Nagasaki was one of the ports which was opened to trade.  Quite a few British came and settled, helping the Japanese to develop their ship building skills.  One of these was Thomas Glover from Scotland, who made quite a mark on the place, in fact he was one of the founders of what is now known as Kirin Brewery.

Hello Handsome!

We went to visit the Thomas Glover Garden, the location of his house and where they have relocated a number of other houses lived in by Europeans to show examples of early Euro-Japanese architecture.  They were a right mix of styles inside and out.  Generally they were one floor houses, filled with western furniture (sofas etc) and English fireplaces.  Nice big houses they were too.  Can't say they have been well preserved, but you get the idea.  In Thomas Glover's house they had laid out dinner in the dining room - very interesting - it looked more Western than Japanese, but needed a very good dust to be able to see it properly.

The view from Glover Garden

Festival Float

The gardens were lovely, waterfalls, cherry trees (blossom is out nicely now), carp ponds with massive carp, lots of pansies etc - looked very much like English gardens.  The museum ended up in a museum of the performing arts where there were mikoshi (festival floats) on display from the Nagasaki Kunchi Festival which takes place in March.

A healthy appetite

These were very colourful, there was a film showing you how they are used during the festival which was really interesting, they take their festivals very seriously here, would love to see another one (we were at the local festival in Aioi 4 years ago, which was brilliant).  We then headed down souvenir shop alley (amongst hoards of Chinese) to the main road and walked back to the JR station.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't working for us today (first real horrible day) and although we managed to stay out of the rain most of the time we were in the gardens, we got soaked on the way back.  So much so that we decided not to look round Dejima (where there are still buildings from when the Dutch were living there during the period of Japanese national isolation).  Instead we ran into Starbucks (it must have been bad) to dry off.  Unfortunately, Starbucks in Japan only sells tea and coffee, so Matt had a coffee, whilst Tom and I dried off!  We then headed back to the station and got the Kamome (white seagull) limited express home.  Then a quick (and very cheap) tea in Yoshinoya and home.