What's fun in Nagasaki?

I think the best way to feel settled in Nagasaki and not get home-sick is to go out a lot and explore.
I really enjoy just wandering round the city because there’s tonnes of fun little places, parks, monuments and sights to see.
We also like planning where we could go, for little weekend trips to places like Beppu or Kummamoto (real onsen, macaques, and the samurai village) the penguin park (:D) or the many islands around Nagasaki, such as Gunkanjima, an island made in the shape of a battleship, that used to be home to the prefectures coal miners, now uninhabited and ruined by the waves, it was the setting for the James bond Skyfall baddies hiding place.


We also try to make friends, because that’s the best way to really understand the culture. Me and Chloe now go to tai-chi every Wednesday afternoon with a lady called Ezo-san, and her best friend Fujiko-san.
They both travel the world to see solar eclipses, and have been practically everywhere. They are also trying to learn more English, and are happy to teach us Japanese in exchange.
The tai-chi is pretty difficult, but very fun, and everybody in the group is really lovely.

The session is two and a half hours long, and pretty intense, but they we have a break about halfway and everyone offers round snacks. Last week a lady had just got back for Uzbekistan and gave us dried fruit she'd brought back. She’s called Kanaka-san, and offered to teach us how to do ikebana (Japanese flower arranging) So we're going to her house next week. Fujiko also took us for cakes at a gorgeous little French themed cafe. Giving gifts and treating people is a very big thing in Japan, so we're going to be prepared with snacks at the next session.






On Friday we went to our local haunt, the shopping centre/food court/cinema called Coco walk, just down the road from the hospital. We decided to go for an Italian, due to the two whole fish we got for dinner. It was really cheap and verrry tasty. Then we went on a bit of a wander, trying on shoes for around half an hour, bought some drinks and headed home.

 Due to the kanji on the labels, its hard to tell what most of the drinks are, and what we thought might be cider turned out to be a 9% lemonadey thing, that was pretty nice. I also thought i'd be a good idea to buy sake (not a good idea)
We spent 3 hours watching beyonce videos on you tube and looking up places Chloe would like to get married. It was a fun night XD

On the saturday, when I was feeling a bit better, we headed over to the train station, basically hoping we could get a train to Sasebo, a US navel city on the other side of the prefecture. Luckily there was a train as soon as we got there, so off we went. It was literally the most beautiful train journey I’ve ever been on. The tracks hugged the very edge of the coast almost all the way, so we looked out onto the perfectly calm sea with hazy islands in the distance. It looked like we were in spirited away, on the water train.





Sasebo was nice, a few more westerners than central Nagasaki, and with a shopping arcade that was 1km long. To be fair, we didn’t buy that much, but it was fun to walk down. And there was even the perfect shop for me, a tiny, stuffy second-hand shop in an upstairs room, filled with black flag t-shirts, sisters of mercy posters and a chopper covered in warning tape.

After the arcade, we got some food and sat by the harbour. It had been blue sky all day, and was really nice to watch the boats go out and the jellyfish squidge around. The baskin robbins chocolate orange ice cream was pretty good too.

Work on 5W, the rehab ward and watching an operation

Last week I started work on a new ward, 5W. Im doing the same kind of work as the other wards, but its nice to have a change of scenery and meet new people.
The nurses im following round are really lovely. Theres a lady called Yamaguchi-san who is very sweet and is trying to learn english, and who likes to try and teach me kanji (not happening).

Theres also a lady called Tsutsumi who's re-training as a health care proffesional, so is kind of in the same boat as me, which is fun.
My main responsibilities on this ward are taking patients to the different consultants or x-ray rooms, which is nice because I get to stay and chat with them, and learn about the different specialized parts of the hospital.

Last thursday, I went to work on the rehabilitation ward for the first time. I was a bit worried, because the ward was empty when I walked in, but eventually I was met by an occupational therapist and he showed me around.

He spoke a little English, but was obviously keen to learn more, so we sat and chatted while he showed me the different things he uses to increase patients mobility.
He taught me how to make an origami crane, and we spent a while with the patients drawing on paper fans.

He also explained that there was a lady who had just recovered from hip replacement surgery, who had been confined to a wheelchair for two years previously.

All the patients and OTs gathered round as she stood up using a zimmerframe, and everybody clapped. It was really lovely, Im looking forward to being on the rehab ward again.






On friday, we all got the oppurtunity to watch an operation.
We got changed into super flattering scrubs and were shown around the Ope ward. They have 5 operation theatres, and three large rooms containing all the equipment and autoclaves.
We did a few little jobs for them first, like cutting lengths of tube and sorting autoclave bags, then we got taken through to watch the surgery.

We were watching keyhole surgery on a collapsed lung. Because it was keyhole, the inside of the ribs was displayed on two large television screens, so we could see everything the surgeons were doing. First they were using tiny clamps that heated up when closed, to cut the lung away from the ribs where it had become attatched.

The hot metal cortorized the flesh so there wasnt much bleeding, but the smell of burning lung was a bit wierd. This part took a while, but when the top of the lung was seperated, they used a funnel to cover the lung in saline soloution and basically give it a good swill.
There were malformed areas on the top of the lung, large pockets of air and scar tissue from the trauma that had to be removed. They used a horrendously large implement that simultaneously cut away the flesh, and stapled the remaining lung together. It was very interesting to watch. We get to see operations around twice a month,  and I found it really exciting :)

Visit to the Atomic Bomb Museum

On August 9th at 11:02am an American B-29 bomber
plane dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. As a result of this almost 74,000 died and just over 74,000 were injured, 6 days later Japan announced they had surrendered.

So on Saturday we went to the Nagasaki atomic Bomb Museum and Memorial Hall.
As you walk up to the museum, its not very clear where the entrance is. There’s a large structure of glass, and a massive red brick cube building, which is the art museum. We realised however that the entrance was underground and to reach it you were directed around a large water feature. It was a circle of black marble; about 30ft in diameter with water flowing unbroken down the edges in every direction.

 

In the centre were two large green glass pillars. As we walked around the arc, we read the meanings of the feature on the walls. The water is there to symbolise the victims of the bombs struggle to find basic things like water. The glass pillars extend into the remembrance hall below, and form a line pointing towards the hypocentre. As night falls, 70000 LED lights set into the black marble turn on, in remembrance of the dead.

 After walking around the arc, we were led down some steps into a dark, quiet hall. As we walked round we were directed in a certain way, to observe different elements of the hall. The first was a room with liquid crystal displays with photographs of the victims of the initial blast. Then there was a room with the two glass pillars that extended from the water feature. These pointed towards a glass structure, with all the names of the dead written in it, kept from air and UV light to preserve them. There were many offerings and origami around this main room, and the atmosphere was very peaceful, but sad.

After the hall, we were directed to the museum. This too was underground, and was reached by a long half spiral walkway under a glass mosaic ceiling. Along the walkway was a length of 1000 origami cranes.

The first thing as you walk into the exhibit, are two photographs, one of Nagasaki 5 years before the bomb, as a large prospering harbour city, and one just after the blast, with almost all buildings and plant life gone. It was a very emotional picture, so we stayed here for a few minutes. The room containing the pictures was very dark, with lights on only the exhibits. There were recreations of twisted staircases and blackened stone littered about the place. There was a wall clock that had been found near Sanmo Shinto shrine is sakomoto-machi, which was around 800m from the hypocentre. It had been saved by the building it was in, but stopped at the moment of the blast.
There were melted rosary beads, recovered from the ruined Urukami Cathedral , and recreations of the only remaining wall of the cathedral, with blackened statues of saints.

There were charts on the walls with dates and events that lead up to the bombing. Originally, Nagasaki was not the main target after Hiroshima, it was Kokura, however the clouds had been too thick for the pilot of the bomber ‘Bockscar’ to see the city of Kokura. Nagasaki too was covered with cloud, and the pilot had considered returning to the base to refuel, when the clouds parted, and he dropped the bomb.

The bomb ‘fat man’ was an implosive device, around 3.3m long and 1.5m in diameter, and used plutomium-239. A ball of plutonium, surrounded by high explosives. Over 30 detonators were fired simultaneously to pressurize the core to cause nuclear initiation. This caused the explosion to occur 469m above the Mitsubishi plant works. The resulting blast generated heat of 3900°C and winds of around 1005km/h.

The initial blast killed around 60000 people, through severe burns or being crushed by rubble. There were many testimonies in the museum of people who were children at the time of the bomb, watching their parents die of the burns, or seeing their families become sickened by the radiation poisoning.


Everyone has different opinions on war, and on whether the dropping of the atomic bomb was justified. I know that I have only seen this side of the story, and there were many other factors involved, but I don’t believe devastation on this scale is ever justified. The demolition of an entire city. Men, women and children alike burned alive, there’s never justification for that.