I’ve seen quite some Japanese cities and most don’t really look very different, when you don’t look at size and sightseeing or other particular places. Of cause, people are more fashionable in Tōkyō and Kyōto has more older houses and traditional shops and people wearing Kimono than others, but mainly the cities are more alike than expected. Nagasaki is different though. You can feel the touch it’s history left behind. And I don’t mean the atomic bombing, but the fact, that the city was opened to the world while others were completely closed.

Honoring this fact, we started by visiting one of the numerous churches in Nagasaki – the Oura catholic Church. A very interesting building including a quite beautiful madonna in the enterance. And a small garden with a Christ on it’s cross behind a pond, which is so typical for Japanese temples. It’s a quite strange feeling to see people kneeling down in front of this kind of pond to pray. A small museum tells about the christian history in Japan including the percecution of christians (of cause without any word saying about their missionary work).

Also the second part of our Nagasaki trip was tributed to the fact, that the city was the harbour being opened to also western countries. In the Glover Garden several western houses brought from other parts of the town are shown. It’s a quite interesting place recalling that this is part of Japanese history too. We also enjoyed to rest in the shadow of a wisteria with a sweet breakfast and a talk about plans for the future. And the museum displaying festival wagons with amaaazing figures and colors as well as beautiful dragons. I wonder of they are so typical for the city, because it had a closer connection to China too. Nagasaki also has a small Chinatown we visited before going back to our hotel in the evening.

But before that we went to the Atomic Bombing Memorial Museum. It’s smaller than the one in Hiroshima and less impressive, but it makes one angry in absolutely the same way. I’m not saying much more on this platform as this topic needs a real talk.

We didn’t went to the peace park with all the statures I’ve already seen, but to the memorial at the epicenter. I think, it’s really good as one part looks like a massive empty sarcophagus with the number of over 15.000 dead people on it – some of them pulverized to dust with nothing left but a shadow on a wall… The flowers layed down the day before, which was the anniversary of the bomb dropping, only added meaning to this feeling.

Against atomic bombs and nuclear energy for a safer world!!