Kyushu Spring Vacation Part I: The San Francisco of Japan and a Hulking Mass of Human Hubris

For spring vacation, I made a trip down to the southern island of Kyushu for the first time to visit my friend and fellow JET Nathan Drackett and do some sightseeing.  The days were pretty packed, so I'll try separate things out a little bit.

I was using the Seishun 18 Kippu train pass, which is only available during school holidays and allows 5 days of unlimited local train travel.  I used one day on my pass for the Obama trip, and then used the other four for my Kyushu trip--it took 20 hours to get down to Nathan's rural town of Omachi in northern Kyushu, so I had to break it up into two days each way, stopping off in Hiroshima.

I really love traveling on the local trains, as it gives such a good opportunity to read, look at the scenery, and people watch as you move through small towns and big cities.  I was hoping for a cool bridge crossing from Honshu to Kyushu, but in fact the train went underground under the water for a few minutes and we popped up again.  Let's just reflect for a quick moment on how crazy that is.  Humans can do some amazing things.

One of the stops near the big city of Fukuoka was called "Space World", and lo and behold, there was a massive shuttle model in the middle of roller coasters.  Not the craziest theme park I saw on my trip.

Pictures from the train don't always turn out, but this cemetery on a hill caught my eye.

Nate lives in a beautiful tiny town at the edge of wide open farmland and near the foot of a long rambling set of mountains.  I got in around 5 PM and while Nate went to a work party I went for a beautiful run up around a small lake and up above a park, where the deep red sunset perfectly offset the deep blue mountains suddenly expanding in a breathtaking panorama.  The nature of Japan means that towns are often right up against huge amounts of mountains and forests with almost no one living in them.

The next day I headed out to Nagasaki, which a friend had mentioned was like San Francisco.  It was almost laughably similar, in fact.  The city is located around a bay and is very hilly, with some impossibly steep streets.  There are trolleys and brightly colored houses and a large suspension bridge spanning the bay.  There's even an island with famous ruins on it (we'll get to that in a moment).  I have to say that I absolutely loved the city.

Nagasaki has a much longer history of contact with the outside world than most of Japan, as it was first a landing point for Portuguese missionaries and later the only trading port for the Dutch for two centuries.  I was especially interested in this last part, as I recently read an excellent book that takes place at the turn of the 19th century in Nagasaki.  Most of the action occurs on Dejima (literally "Exit Island"), which was an artificial island created by the Japanese to sequester the Portuguese (before the were expelled or killed for spreading Christianity).  The Dutch took it over for a good long while, then they were turned out as well.  Eventually the city reclaimed more land from the bay and essentially consumed Dejima, but since about 1960 there's been a slow reclamation project, for history and/or tourism's sake.  You can now walk in and around a pretty great reproduction of the town at just about the exact time Thousand Autumns is set.  It's safe to say I geeked out.

Scale model of the island.  Dejima inside Dejima...

A fascinating fusion of styles--not really an integration, but just a tradeoff.  Japanese roof tiles here, European railings there.

The European dining room inside the typically Japanese wall construction.

Fine rugs and a dining set on top of tatami (to be fair, I'm not sure if there would have been tatami here at the time, it might have just been hardwood as was present in a lot other areas of the island.

Does this help with your casting image, Jonathan?

Nagasaki's tourism mascot Saruku, positioned a little freakily outside Dejima.

After a brief stop for a call in response to an unexpected and initially terrifying but well-executed April Fool's joke from America (it was April 2nd in Japan), I was on my way traipsing around the neighborhoods of Nagasaki.  This being significantly farther south than Kanazawa, the cherry blossoms were in fine form and the weather was fantastic.

There is an enormous amount of early Western and Christian influence in Nagasaki.  I didn't go in, but the Glover Gardens are a popular site--a series of late 19th century European-style mansions built by rich merchants and diplomats who came after the Meiji Restoration.  And just below them a large Catholic church.  Even apart from these, many of the older buildings in Nagasaki have a distinct Western influence (importantly, this whole area is down towards the bay and halfway around a hill from where the atomic bomb hit.

When researching the city, I came upon mention of Gunkanjima, or "Battleship Island".  This is an island about an hour's boat ride from Nagasaki where coal was discovered and subsequently mined.  Of course, to save on transportation, the miners lived there with their families.  The island is 480 meters by 160 meters, and at its peak it was home to more than 5000 people, which www.japan-guide.com tells me still stands as the world record for population density.

The mining and the unbelievably close living quarters by turning the island into, well, basically a battleship.  Every part of it was build on and concreted over, with high curved walls to stave off typhoons.  Then, as oil replaced coal, the island was shut down in 1974 and closed to visitors.  Seasonal typhoons proceeded to wear away at the island for the next 30 years, but in 2009 a new visitor's dock was built and official tours began.  It was pricey, but very much worth it.  It was powerful to see both the might of the buildings and the way that nature has slowly but surely began the permanent disassembly of the human structures.

This reminded me of nothing so much as some of the "limbo" scenes in Inception.

One of the most apparent things during the voyage to and from Gunkanjima was the massive industrial aspect of Nagasaki, home to Mitsubishi.  This was the primary stated reason for the targeting of Nagasaki for the atom bomb.

As the Gunkanjima cruise took about 3 hours, I only had a little bit of time to go by the Nagasaki Peace Park and hypocenter before my train back to Omachi.  It was interesting to see the difference in peace parks between Nagasaki and Hiroshima--more metal and epic scale in Hiroshima, more stone and park-like in Nagasaki.  Also, while the hypocenter in Hiroshima is only marked by a small plaque on the wall, the Nagasaki hypocenter is a park in itself.

A heartbreaking monument, made strangely relevant and alive by the cat I saw resting on it.

The vibrancy and unique feel of Nagasaki was captivating, and while I had only planned to spend one day there, I was going to have to make a tough choice on that later.  The mix of historical elements and the death and decay the city has seen mixed with the obvious current ongoing life was fascinating to me.

Life always wins, eventually.