After Sapporo and other Hokkaido destinations, Nagasaki was really hot and humid - there always
seemed to be a breeze though, which helped keep me from overheating. I liked Nagasaki. It had a nice feel to it. I went up the rope way, went to the atomic bomb museum and peace park and visited a couple of temples.
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| View from my hotel room |
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| Statue at a temple |
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| View from top of rope way |
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| View from top of rope way |
The atomic bomb museum was a very sad place to visit (with good reason). On a previous trip to Japan, I had visited the atomic bomb museum in Hiroshima so I knew what I was in for but it was still very emotional. I remember reading the non-fiction book "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" when I was little about a girl who was not injured in the Hiroshima bombing but came down with leukemia a few years later as a result of the radiation. She was trying to fold a thousand paper cranes (origami) so that her wish to get better would come true but she didn't get to 1000 before she died (oops ... spoiler alert!). Seeing all the paper crane chains in Hiroshima and again in Nagasaki really brings that book to life for me.
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| Paper Cranes |
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| Marker for location of hippocentre of bomb |
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| Peace Fountain |
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| Peace statue |
One of the less-sad exhibits in the museum show what the world (or at least some countries) are doing to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. Over half of the countries in the world (and all of the ones in the Southern Hemisphere) have signed/ratified nuclear-free pacts. I was sad to see, however, that Canada has not signed one. Why not? We don't have any nuclear weapons (according to another exhibit) so why can't we be nuclear-free?
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