Nagasaki, Japan - Oct 08, 2014

Located on the tip of the island of Kyushu, Nagasaki was long time trading partner with nearby China and in 1570 became the first and only port in Japan to open to Westerners. The Dutch and the Portuguese began to settle around the port and brought Christianity with them, converting some of the local people.The masterpiece "Madame Butterfly" by Italian composer Puccini was set here in Nagasaki. Unfortunately, Nagasaki earned an infamous place in history on August 9, 1945, when American planes dropped an Atomic bomb on this city. As a reminder of this painful day and to ensure that the world doesn't see the likes of it again, the Nagasaki Peace Park was built here, bringing together the work of artists from around the world to promote peace.

With our day tram pass in hand this city is very easy to get around with many sites close to all the trams stations. It was here at the Peace Park where we began our day in Nagasaki. I feel we have come full circle around the Pacific on our travels as we have seen many of the battle sites, from the beginning of the bombing when we visited Pearl Harbor and now have see the devastating end here in Nagasaki. The Peace Park is an emotional moving exclamation point put onto the destruction of war and the presentation here is very well done. They show the history of the war, the making of the bomb and a great scale model of the fallout of this event. The emotional part kicks in when you realize that you are standing on the exact spot where this all happened. The black obelisk pictured in this upload is the exact spot 500 meters above where the bomb went off, gulp. The clock in one of our pictures shows the exact moment when it stopped working as a result of this explosion. As you can see many schools take the students here to the Peace Park to have a school picture taken - now I know why when we ask to take a picture of usually a child they give us the peace sign. Peace and respect is part of the class studies here.

From the Park we walked over and viewed the remaining one legged Torii Gate, what was left after the blast. The Tram then took us to the Suwi Shrine, we happened to be here when this shrine has its focus celebration, the city's annual O-Kunchi Festival. This festival centers on a Lion Dance, a strong influence from the Chinese. Part of this festival is the blessing of, well, just about everything but especially businesses. Groups parade around (Dragons, Geishas etc.) the city streets stopping at all businesses to perform a dance for I am assuming is success. We did notice at one stop that a baby was being "blessed", I have included these pictures as the mother was just so proud. From here we bounced over to the "Spectacles" Bridge, up to the amazing Kofukuji Temple, then by tram to the Sofukuji Temple and ending our day at the Confusion Shrine which was originally built in 1893 - restored in 1967 as it was severely damaged on August 9, 1945.

We had an amazing, memorable day here in Nagasaki, Japan. Hope you enjoy our day in pictures...