Japan Trip - Day 3 - Nagasaki

Monday, June 22, was our second full day in Nagasaki. Again, we started with traditional breakfast made by Kiyoko, this time featuring a kind of dumpling.

Then it was off to Dejima Wharf - the main harbor area in Nagasaki. Nagasaki was home to the port through which the rest of the world entered Japan. When Japan was closed from outsiders (mid 17th century until 1855), Dejima was an island where Dutch traders could live and a small amount of trading could still go on. Now the wharf has some shops and restaurants and pretty views - it's surrounded by green mountains.

After seeing the wharf, we went on a walk around the area, with Drew and I navigating based on his knowledge of the area and my trusty Lonely Planet guide.

We happened upon Chinatown, where we tried a delicious pork roll.

We also stopped at "Fukusaya Castella Cake Shop, which has been in business since 1624. Unfortunately, there wasn't much to see, but we did buy one of the cakes. Later, we saw a billboard with three foods we'd had - Champon, the cake from the store, and the pork roll.

We attempted to find "temple row," and only partially succeeded before heading back to the main streets.

We did find a river that was crossed by a number of 17th century bridges. Incredible they can last so long!

After spending all morning walking, we decided to head back to Cocowalk mall for some food court udon noodle soup followed by a movie. (Mamie opted out of the movie, preferring to spend a bit more time shopping.) We saw Transformers with Japanese subtitles and some Japanese trailors. The movie theater is fairly similar to in the U.S., except it has assigned seating, the ticket prices are sky-high ($18 for an adult, $15 for a student), and popcorn is cheaper.

We went back to Kiyoko's house after the movie to celebrate her grandson Nozomi's birthday (he was turning 9). We had make-your-own sushi, which was really fun, followed by cake - which was great. Mamie had brought gifts for him and his two cousins, and he was very excited to get the T-shirts and candy from the U.S.

That evening, my mom and I went with Kiyoko to an Onsen (public bath) at a place on top of one of the mountains over-looking the city. I had been a bit unsure whether I wanted to go at first - exploring a new country and culture can make you feel a bit exposed, and the idea of exploring a new place in my birthday suit seemed particularly daunting. But I figured, "When in Rome..." In the end, I was glad I decided to go. The onsen was really nice - it had multiple types of baths - hotter, cooler, some with water jets, some just still. There were a few that were outdoors, overlooking the city (with one-way glass), which was provided an amazing view at night.

Japan Trip - Day 2 - Nagasaki

Sunday, June 21 was our first day in Japan not centered around transportation. Kiyoko had cooked a traditional Japanese breakfast, so we started the day with miso soup, rice, salmon, and green tea. Very different than American breakfast, but I liked it a lot.

After breakfast, we (Mom, Mamie, Kiyoko, and I) took a bus into town and met up with Drew. Our plan was to spend the first half of our day seeing the atomic bomb-related sights, including the peace park, the hypo-center, and the Atomic Bomb Museum. The Peace Park is up on a hill, with a fountain/statue at its center. It also has sculptures donated from a number of different countries.

This one is from St. Paul, Minnesota, which is Nagasaki's sister city.

The hypo-center is the location above which the bomb was detonated. There are pictures showing how all the buildings were destroyed. A pillar of a cathedral is still standing near-by.

The museum was really interesting, and included items that had been affected (melted bottles, coins, etc.), pictures, and scientific information about how the bomb worked and the after-effects. Some of the exhibits are pretty gruesome, but the idea of the museum is to help people understand the effects of nuclear weapons, and it's pretty effective at doing that. It's also incredible to see how much the city has changed in just 50 years.

After the museum, we headed back to the train station, this time just to update some tickets and get lunch. (The station is connected to a mall and has many restaurants.) I tried "champon," which Drew told me is a dish Nagasaki is famous for. It's a noodle soup with lots of different meats and vegetables in it.

After lunch we walked from the station to the 26 Martyrs Memorial. It's a wall with the engravings of twenty-six Christians that were crucified in Japan in 1597.

From there we walked to the near-by Fukusai-Kannon. It's an 18-meter tall statue of the Goddess Kannon standing on the back of a turtle. Inside is a temple, where Kiyoko showed Mamie around a bit, and then a lady came and gave all of us a tour. The inside of the temple was interesting and ornate. The temple also houses the third largest Foucault Pendulum in the world. (That's the one that shows the rotation of the earth by slowly knocking over the metal pieces of a circle.)

She let us each take a turn at ringing the giant bell.

She also showed us how to throw water on the statue out front.

After touring the temple, we headed for the Cocowalk Mall - one of the largest malls in Nagasaki. I think it had seven floors. We did some shopping and meandered around the different stores.

For dinner, we went to Togitsu Keitan Sushi - a restaurant where the sushi comes around on a conveyer belt and you are charged based on the number of plates you have at the end. The sushi was really good, and we had plenty to eat. Even Mamie, who isn't a big fan of sushi, really enjoyed seeing all the different dishes.

One of the funniest types was the "hot dog" sushi - which is rice with a mini-hot dog on top, wrapped with a small piece of seaweed, and topped with ketchup. They're surprisingly tasty.

After dinner, Kiyoko and Mamie headed home, but my mom and I met up with Drew and his friends to do Karaoke. In Japan, karaoke is rarely done in big groups with strangers (like bars in the U.S.) and instead you rent out a private room. It was really fun - Drew's friends were all good sports, and we had a great time.

These were some of the creative lyrics to "We Didn't Start the Fire." (In case the pics too small to read, it says, "No, we didn't light it, but we tried to light it!")

Japan Trip - Day 1 - Nagasaki

Our first full day in Japan (Saturday, June 20) was mostly spent on a train. We woke up in Tokyo, had a quick breakfast, and headed for Tokyo Station. The subway in Tokyo is surprisingly easy to use and understand, and with our JR Passes, we could get on the main subway line for free.

The ride to Nagasaki started at 8:03am. We had to switch trains twice, but all three were the super fast Shinkansen (Bullet trains) and were very comfortable. My mom and I listed to Japanese Language podcasts on during the trip, to tried to learn as much as possible in a few hours. I think we got "Good morning," "Good day," "Good night," "Thank you," "I'm sorry," and "I don't understand," which is a pretty good start. We didn't have time to stop for lunch, so we tried our luck at various Japanese snacks.

At about 5pm, we arrived in Nagasaki, and my cousin, Drew, was there to meet us. Drew is studying abroad at a University in Nagasaki, and has been there for a few months now. He's fluent in Japanese, which is much more useful than just the six phrases we'd learned on the train. Our first stop was at a restaurant for dinner.

The restaurant was Takoyakijo - a restaurant that specializes in Takoyaki. Takoyaki is octopus and some cabbage cooked inside balls of dough. The sign for the restaurant has a picture of an octopus cooking Takoyaki and looking very worried.

They bring the batter to your table and you do most of the cooking yourself. Drew and I each ordered that for dinner, though everyone tried a little.

My mom ordered a noodle dish, and Mamie ordered something that was like a layered pancake.

After dinner, we headed to Kiyoko's house. Kiyoko had been Drew's host mom during the first half of his stay in Nagasaki, and she had invited us to stay with her while we were in town. We spent some time visiting with her, gave her the small gift/souveniers we'd brought her from each of our home states, and had some snacks. (I tried raw squid for the first time!) At the end of the night Drew headed home and we tried to get some rest for our first big day of sight-seeing.

Japan Trip - Day 0 - Narita Airport

Last week I went on a trip to Japan with my Mom and Grandma (Mamie). We visited Nagasaki, Kyoto, and Tokyo. It was an amazing trip!

Our trip started on Thursday, June 18th. Since we were coming from three places - Minnesota (Mom), Texas (Mamie), and DC (Me), we first met up at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport at the gate for our flight to Tokyo. My flight from DC had gotten in a little late, so Mom and Mamie were already waiting. There was just enough time to grab a subway sandwich and pick-up some Mountain Dew to bring for my cousin before boarding the flight.

The flight was ok in most respects - there wasn't much turbulance, no children kicking my seat or babies crying. However, the movie situation left much to be desired. I thought that all the long-haul flights like this now used planes where each person had an individual video screen and could start and stop movies at will. Apparently, that's not the case. Northwest just had a couple bigger, overhead screens (partially blocked by the person's head in front of you), and they only played three movies over the course of the twelve hour flight - meaning the first movie didn't start until 4 hours into the flight, and the last one was over well before we arrived. I ended up seeing "He's Not That Into You" before deciding to get a nap in. Mamie wasn't interested in movies, and instead watched the scenary, which included some cool Canadian Mountains.

Suddenly, it was 6pm on Friday. (We lost 14 hours due to time-zone changes, and the flight is 12 hours, so we essentially lost an entire day.) At the airport we needed to run through a checklist of to-do's. We got some cash, picked up our Japan Rail Passes, made all our train reservations for the trip, and then finally took the hour and a half bus ride to the hotel. By the time we got settled, it was 10pm, and all we were really interested in was sleep.

Jazz Festival

Today was another bright and sunny DC day! Jeff and I got some work done in the morning - and I started packing for Japan (leaving in less than 5 days!)

After that it was down to the National Mall to catch a bit of the Duke Ellington Jazz Festival. Jeff and I had a picnic lunch (of Chipotle), listened to music, and read books. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

Annapolis

On Saturday, Jeff and I decided to enjoy the short burst of sunlight by heading over to Maryland's capital - Annapolis. I had never been there, and thought it'd be nice to see it, since it's so close to DC. We spent a nice hour or two walking around the little pedestrian shops.

We then took at 40 minute boat tour of the harbor. From the tour we got a good view of the Naval Academy, which looked very nice. We ate dinner at a little place near the water - and had some crab dip to start to make it an authentic Maryland experience.

We left in the early evening(around 6:30), and decided we'd like to see "Away We Go", the new movie written by Dave Eggers and his wife that stars John Krasinski (Jim from 'The Office'). Rather than trying to park in the city, we'd just stop and see the 8pm showing of the movie in Bethesda and then go home afterwards. We figured we might be early, but we'd brought books and planned to grab coffee. We didn't expect to run into a parking nightmare, since Bethesda is kind of a suburb. How wrong we were. We drove around looking for a spot for 10 minutes or so, then decided to just park in a garage, since we only had 20 minutes until the movie started. Unfortunately, there weren't any spots open in the parking garage, but there was a long, long line to get out, so we were in the parking garage for a grand total of about 30 minutes (10 minutes past movie start time...)

From there, we decided to drive into the city instead, which has lots that don't completely fill up. We were met, however, with the trail end of the D.C. Pride Parade (which we forgot was this weekend, or we may have tried to catch it - DCist has some great pics.) In this case though, it just becase a serious traffic impediment, as we went in a big circle to get around it. We finally made it no more than 30 minutes early for the 9:40pm showing of the film.

Anyway, enough complaining about traffic. Jeff and I enjoyed the movie - it was funny, and cute, and interesting. Not the most amazing movie you'll ever see, but some good actors and fun dialogue. However, our friend that works at the theater told us not everyone likes it - one woman demanded a refund, saying that the movie had been billed as a comedy, and that after seeing it she felt depressed. To be sure, this movie is not "The Hangover" or "Knocked up", there's a bit more depth and a few serious things to consider, but I enjoyed it.

This made me think about why people choose to see particular movies - whether people just want to be entertained or they want to be challenged. Two movies can be about very similar subjects on the surface, but create very different feelings from watching them, depending on how realistic and serious they decide to get about the circumstances. Movies can sell themselves as eye-opening documentaries, but require no thought on your part. Others can be primarily comedies, but have moments or themes that require you to contemplate your own thoughts on the issue. Most interesting to me are movies that don't provide you with a clear emotional response - scenes or situations that can't clearly be defined as 'happy', 'sad', 'serious', 'mean', etc. seem more realistic and intellectually interesting.

Personnally, I really enjoy seeing both types of films - things that make you think, or require more of you emotionally, as well as movies that are just fun. (I did see 'The Hangover' last weekend.) Overall, though, if I had to pick one type of movie to keep, it'd be the interesting, challenging films - it's just impressive to me how well this art form can be used to present an interesting thought, idea, or emotion. Though some of my favorite movies are family-friendly (The Princess Bride, It's a Wonderful Life), the ones I find most artistically impressive (- Dancer in the Dark, Magnolia, Bamboozled, Quills) tend to be a bit more serious.

Normal Week

I had a pretty standard week last week. Main daytime activities were going to Jeff's class and going in to work. It's been really rainy in DC (like record-setting, flash-flooding kind of rainy) which has put a damper on activities.

However, we did make it out to what we hope will become a weekly happy hour with friends on Tuesdays. Now that we don't see each other in classes all the time, we have to be a bit more pro-active in planning. :) (And thanks to Stephanie, who took the initiative to set it up in the first place!)

Jeff and I watched a movie at home - Hancock (starring Will Smith) which was cute and entertaining, as most Will Smith movies are. They didn't go into the logic or mythology to really explain how Will Smith had become a super hero or why he has a pair, but they did a lot of super-hero-y things, and were funny, so whatever.

Also, I don't think I mentioned yet, but the newest season of "So You Think You Can Dance" has started. I love that show (as anyone that's brought it up near me, or been near me when something reminds me of it, could tell you). So, check it out.

In other TV news, Jeff and I finally finished watching The West Wing. We started on the series about three years ago, and have been watching episodes whenever we get a chance since then. (Though no marathons, like my Four-Seasons-of-the-Wire-in-Two-Weeks activity earlier this year.) It's a good show, and (though it probably reflects poorly on the quality of my North High civics class) taught me a lot about what different people work in the White House and how various government processes work. (Not that I'm taking the West Wing to be truth on how the political system works, but still...)

So, that's it. Now time for weekend fun.