Nagasaki

The first stop on our whirlwind tour of Japan was Nagasaki. Aside from one night of walking through Hiroshima looking for somewhere to eat, this is my first real time in a Japanese city. It's quite a big place when you've been living in the country for a while (where country can be Masuda or Hamilton), and all of the traffic and trams were a little overwhelming. Across from our hotel, there was a huge complex built around the train station complete with movie theatre and Indian restaurant, the latter of which featured prominently in the first night.

Japan is not so big on spicy things, or at least doesn't have as much of a tolerance for it as I'm used to, so when we were asked where on a scale of 1-10 we wanted our food, we went with seven. Seven was in the 'hot' category, the highest of 3 categories, and we thought we were safe. We both spent the meal with our eyes and noses running. What I could taste through the pain, though, was quite tasty. Also, oddly enough, the place's name was Milan. We also found another Indian place of the same name in the city.

The reason we came to Nagasaki was to see the lantern festival for the Chinese new year celebration. Nagasaki is a port city, and so hosts more foreigners than most places in Japan with noteworthy populations from China and Holland. There are a number of signs with オランド (orando) on them, apparently that first 'h' wasn't too important. The Dutch people in Nagasaki were, apparently, responsible for all sorts of industry in the area. There is a park called the Glover Garden (which we kept misreading to be the Clover Garden) which showcases some of the original houses and provided some interesting information. I will summarize the bits I liked:

• Mr Glover: Mr Glover set up many industries in Nagasaki, providing it with its first steam engine and gravel road. He also administered a coal mine, apparently. More interestingly, he founding the Japan Brewing Co. - now known as Kirin Brewing Co. on whose products his mustache features as part of the logo!
  
• There was a section on the Puccini opera "Madame Butterfly," and the first actress to play in it. Or something. Let me know if you can make it out...
  
  
• Glover's son, Thomas Albert Glover, had a Japanese name: tomasuarubero groberu. Creative.
  

The Lantern Festival was really quite exciting as well. It was fun being an American celebrating China in Japan while drinking beer made by a company founded by a Dutch man. There was a performance by an orchestra of people playing some instrument that was something like a shamisen - but not. Notably, it was composed of probably 30 people playing the same instrument, a piano, and a flute. They also all played the same melody line (except the piano and flute), which was also sort of odd.



After that was the dragon dance, which was fun. That dragon's tail was always twitching, and oh how he wanted to catch that gold ball he was after. He chased it positively everywhere around that stage, and it always got away:

That was followed by all manner of people balancing all manner of things. Let me summarize in pictures:



The lanterns, of course, were really pretty too.