Sightseeing in Nagasaki

Nagasaki is very nice.  Sari Timur is berthed right down town at the Dejima Marina and we are within walking distance to lots of shops, restaurants and sights, even the government offices we have to deal with.

Nagasaki is also well known as the city hit by the second Atomic bomb during WWII.  At 11.02am on August 9, 1945, the bomb, nicknamed “Fatman” was dropped on Nagasaki and history was made.  About 150,000 people were killed or injured and the city was destroyed.  We visited the bomb hypocenter and the museum and saw lots of thought-provoking exhibits and due to the sensitivity of the event we decided not to take any pictures.  It is difficult to express how we felt when we came out of the museum.

One surprise we didn’t know about before we came here is that Nagasaki was the big Christian center in Japan.  And we were worried we could not find a church in Japan to attend mass on Sunday!

St Francis Xavier came here and converted lots of Japanese to the Catholic faith and for a while there was religious freedom.  However, they were later being banned from practicing their faith and persecuted.  Lots of Catholics were banished, tortured and killed and they took their faith underground.  For over 200 years they passed on their faith to their descendents in secret.  When the practice of Christianity was finally allowed, they started building the Urakami church brick by brick.  It took about 30 years to complete and it was one of the biggest and grandest churches in the Far East.  However, the atomic bomb was dropped 500 meters from the church and destroyed it.  They have since rebuilt it.  One of the original bell towers fell and they left it where it now stood as a reminder for us to see.

We also visited Oura Church, the oldest wooden church in Nagasaki, built in the 1864 in the Gothic style.

The people of Nagasaki take lots of pride in their city and they keep it really nice and clean.  They are very into recycling.  They even have a boat that runs around the harbor picking up the flotsam in the water.  In spite of the huge ship building activities along the river, the water is clean and clear.  No oil spill or 5h1t floating in the water that we can see.

Nagasaki has the third largest Chinatown in Japan and there are lots of Chinese restaurants.

Nagasaki is also a stop for cruise ships.  In fact one came in a couple of days ago.

There are about 500 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki prefecture and one of them is the famous Hashima or as the locals call it, Gunkanjima (meaning Battleship Island).  We will talk about this in another post.

Nagasaki has lots to offer in terms of sightseeing but there are more in terms of food!  We have been trying different restaurants and they offered up different varieties of Japanese food.

The world is small!  While we were traveling on a crowded streetcar, we heard some people speaking a unique language (Singlish) that we recognize.  Found out that they are 25 Singaporeans traveling on a group tour.  We chatted with them till we got off at our stop.

We do recommend Nagasaki as a destination for your next vacation.

Sari Timur sitting in her berth at the end of the dock at Dejima Marina

Oura Church

Cruise ship "Vogager of the Sea"

Street Car

The rebuilt Urakami Cathedral

The bell tower that fell

Part of the old wall from the original Urakami Cathedral transplanted to the bomb hypocenter

The clean up boat clearing trash from the harbor

Part of the original wall of the Urakami Cathedral left standing