No. I was on the toilet at the time.
What kind of idiotic people put full length mirrors facing toilets? Nobody, wants to see what they look like doing a shit, or the other one too if you are of the female persuasion. It’s never going to be you at your best with your underwear at your feet and stuff coming out of you. God, if a toilet in front of a mirror isn’t bad feng shui then I don’t know what is.
But moving on.
The hotel breakfast was a standard selection of miso-soup, rice balls and various dishes of vegetables. There were no free tables when I carried my tray across the hotel lobby but I managed to get a seat with two Japanese women. One of them struck up conversation with me while the other woman looked shocked at what her friend just done.
I told them about my travels and they showed me a guidebook of Nagasaki and pointed out some good places to see. I couldn’t really understand what they were saying but all the while the pictures were interesting. Guidebooks in Japan are full of pictures; little coloured squares on every page with the text squeezed in around it. They look to me more like catalogues and much less useful than the text heavy Lonely Planet books we Western tourists cart around. But I hear the opposite complaints from Japanese people.
Yoko picked me up and we took the tram to Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. It was not somewhere she was particularly looking forward to going, it had been my request and she’d said, “You don’t really want to go there do you?” As a tourist it seemed like one of the most obvious and important places to visit, as a local it seemed to her like a needlessly depressing place to go.
And of course it was depressing; I mean the ticket really summed it up.
A smaller structure than the Hiroshima museum it seemed more personal to its city too. I spent my time reading the signs but Yoko got tired, or sick of reading about it all, and told me she would wait for me at the exit.
We learned from the museum that a torii gate very close to the explosion had been severely damaged by the blast, but despite the collapse of one of its two legs it was still standing. Yoko asked at the Information Point and the lady there marked the gate’s position on a map for us and we went on our way.
A small man was selling ice cream from a small refrigerated cart outside the museum. Yoko bought us ice creams and explained that they were the kind of ice creams you get on school trips.
It was the hottest day I had felt in Japan; the height of Summer in the most Southern point in I had been. Yoko even had her black umbrella.
We stuck to the shade of the buildings as we made our way through the backstreets of Nagasaki. It wasn’t long before we came across the torii gate standing blackened but defiant at the top of some stone steps.
It’s the kind of relic that you could walk past every day for years without realising its quiet but powerful significance. The museum said that after the explosion it was a source of hope for the survivors.
Nearby there was a Shinto temple. At the entrance two large trees were standing with a twisted rope between them.
Shinto temples have a special feeling. It’s spiritual but also natural and friendly. In churches and cathedrals you can feel the sense of spiritualism but it comes wrapped up in awe at the scale of the building, a sense of fear at the huge effigies of Christ and confusing stain glass windows, then there is the feeling of everything being very old and the smell as you breathe through the asphyxiating silence. A Shinto temple is a tiny affair, with the wind blowing through it and the gentle sound of chimes.
That evening we were going to see fireworks from a boat sailing on the river. Yoko had entered a draw for tickets and won. We walked around a nearby mall for a while and I found another T-shirt to buy.
It says “Waste Energy” above a crudely drawn picture of a tiger. I don’t know what it means but I like to think that it cheekily rebels against all the carbon footprint, Global Warming, use energy saving light bulbs, walk to work, don’t breathe out messages that are now so prevalent.
The mall was full of teenagers, there was a festival atmosphere and as we walked to the boat the place was crowded with people and stalls selling food. It was the kind of place you find a portaloo.
The boat we had won tickets for was a big old sailing ship, all wood and rope. On climbing aboard everyone was given a tiny glow in the dark stone, I’m not sure why, maybe in case we fell in.
We got ourselves a prime spot, right on the edge next to where the fireworks would begin but far enough way from the guitar playing man. He could play the guitar quite well but painfully warbled through quite a lot of Beatles classics.
The boat went up and down the river a few times before the fireworks started as if it were looking for a parking space. I took some pictures.
The fireworks were all coming from a floating island in the middle of the river. Our view was superb, both of the actual fireworks and their reflection in the water. But taking pictures of fireworks is notoriously difficult.
I quite like this one though.
And that was my day of explosions.
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