Day Twenty Five: Nagasaki

the Nagasaki detour may be one of my best decisions of this trip


I woke up in the morning and went out on a little side trip, looking for the things the city had to offer. I climed up a staircase in the side of a mountain where there was a cemetery built into it. it seemed to go on for miles up the mountain. I finally reached the top after climbing the stairs for about an hour.

the mountain was covered in graves not only of those who had recently died, but it was also covered in graves that looked ancient. some cemetery plots remained there of whole families dead for many many years.

in japan, it is required that all of the dead be cremated. these graves are often simply monuments to those who have died.

I walked down the stairs passing through more and more of these monuments.

I knew what was most famous to me about this city. I knew the reason I had come here and why it attracted me above anywhere else in this area of japan.

on august 9th, during the second world war, the second of two atomic bombs was dropped on this city by the allied forces. it was an American plane called “bockscar”. it flew past its original target, an industrial city called kokura, before flying to the new destination and dropping the bomb in the early afternoon.

what happened then is really just history.

since I heard about these bombs and what they did in Hiroshima and nagasaki, I have felt my whole life a sincere desire to see these places. after years and years of wanting to visit, I finally have my opportunity to see Nagasaki, the second city.

I thought that in some way it might bring some type of peace to my heart to see this place. it has bothered me for as long as I can remember that so many innocent people died to end that war, and at the hand of my home country.

what I felt and saw there moved me beyond words.

I had already started dwelling on it during the bus ride to the monument at the epicenter of the bomb blast. I started crying on the bus, but since I was wearing big sunglasses, nobody really noticed. I just couldn’t get over it.

many of us can not truly understand the atrocities and suffering of war until we have experienced it firsthand. there have been memorials placed here urging everyone, even those whose lives have not been affected by the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to constantly strive for peace in the world. the people of this city want those who are apathy towards the events that happened over 60 years ago to never forget the suffering and endeavor to bring peace to the world.

I made it to the place where the bomb exploded, the bomb hypocenter. there is a marker there, a big black column with an altar sitting in front, sitting on a small mound. it was a clear and beautiful day, and aside from groups of school kids, there were not too many people there at the park.

the bomb exploded 500 meters above this spot at 11:02 am on august 9, 1945. it was the second of the only two weapons of mass destruction used for war in the history of mankind.

i stood there in front of the altar and cried like I haven’t in years. all the school kids there just watched me as I tried so hard to hold back the tears

at the time I wasn’t focused so much on looking like a fool. looking at those children made things worse for me.

the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki claimed the lives of not only japanese men in the military, it claimed the lives of innocent women, children and the elderly who had never even had a thought of being involved in a war. the kids around me kept reminding me of the thousands of dead and injured children.

and I just kept crying. I was sobbing. I felt like I could barely breathe.

that feeling came to me many times throughout the day. I just saw something, and it was hard to breathe for a moment or two.

I just stood at the altar there picturing in my mind the bombs and the destruction they caused.

we can never forget what happened at Nagasaki. we can lie to ourselves and pretend that what happened there is just a small part of history, but to this day, the echoes of that event still influence the lives of everyone on this planet and the administrations that govern them.

after that, I visited the museum there dedicated to not only the bombing of Nagasaki, but also to the history of atomic bombs. it was one of the better museums I have seen in japan, and everything was written in both Japanese and English, so I was able to read everything.

the pictures showing the aftermath of the bombing were just as anyone would expect. dead bodies covering the streets, mother carrying their dead children, people crawling around begging for water.

I sobbed more and more.

in the event of the explosion of that type of weapon, the blast is so powerful that people at the center of the explosion are completely vaporized. nothing is left behind except in a few cases where the body of someone has been burned into the wall of a building, vaguely resembling a shadow.

in the museum there, there was a video of a woman telling the story of her mother.

following the explosion, this girl, four years old at the time, was stuck under a heap of bent metal, too heavy for even six men to pick up. the men decided that they would leave the girl and go look for other survivors. as the men left, the mother of the girl ran towards the site, naked with her body covered in burns. she was screaming and crying hysterically trying by herself to rescue her daughter. she climbed under the heaviest of the metal beams and with all of her strength was able to pick up the beam long enough for her daughter to be released. all of the skin on the mothers shoulders had ripped off as she picked up the beam, too heavy for even six men.

the mother died that night.

this monument built near the bomb hypocenter was my favorite.


the plaque beside the monument contains the following paragraph:

Created by Nagasaki-born sculptor Naoki Tominaga, this monument expresses the horror of the atomic bombing, prays for the repose of the souls of the victims whose noble sacrifice the buds of peace grew, and – through the form of a stricken child sleeping in her mother’s warm embrace – reaches with great motherly compassion and pleas for eternal peace towards a prosperous Japan in the 21st century.

from then I went on to the peace park where the main memorial to the bomb victims has been built. the park there has been created as a huge prayer area for visitors from all over the world. Monuments donated from many countries are scattered around the park. there is one however that serves as the main statue lying in the very center of the park.


it may not look big from here, but this thing was humongous.

these are the words written by the creator of this statue.

After experiencing that nightmarish war,
that blood-curdling carnage,
that unendurable horror,
Who could walk away without praying for peace?
This statue was created as a signpost
in the struggle for global harmony.
Standing ten meters tall,
it conveys the profundity of knowledge and
the beauty of health and virility.
The right hand points to the atomic bomb,
the left hand points to peace,
and the face prays deeply for the victims of war.
Transcending the barriers of race,
and evoking the qualities of both Buddha and God,
it is a symbol of the greatest determination
ever known in the history of Nagasaki
and of the highest hope of all mankind.

Seibo Kitamura Spring 1955

human beings are intelligent enough to build bombs to kill hundreds of thousands, but they aren’t smart enough to know that they should never use them.

a call for peace means more than being a hippy. the power of the government in America is in the hands of its people, and bringing peace can often mean fighting for it, and fighting for a way to stop this kind of a disaster goes beyond labels like “hippy”.

these are causes that many have fought and died for, and as Americans, we celebrate those who have fought to bring world peace on memorial day.

fighting for peace of course doesn’t seem logical, but when the evil people in the world continue to kill to bring themselves power, someone has to be there to stop it.

and I have to also remember that it was my country that dropped that bomb. it was the second bomb at Nagasaki that ended that war that could have gone on for who knows how longer, but it did end the war, even if at great cost.

if the memory of what happened in this city so many years ago is not good enough to stop the greedy and power-hungry warmongers of this world, I don’t know what would be.

god bless America, god bless japan, god bless all of the world.

god grant us peace.

Day Twenty Four: Yawatahama, Usuki and Fukuoka

never thought i'd be on a boat.

it’s a big blue watery road.

Poseidon.

as the story goes, I head out of Matsuyama that morning towards the port of Yawatahama.

this is the day I would take the ferry from Shikoku island to Kyushu.

so i'm on the trains heading there when I finally make it. I run to the port because the man at the train station tells me the next ferry is set to leave at any minute...and when I get there I find out i've already missed it by at least a half an hour and the next one won't be there for another hour.

that liar!

I sit around the ferry station and wait for my boat. eventually the boat shows up and I jump on.

it wasn’t what I was expecting. for a ferry that is used to carry cars and other gigantic goodies across the big blue watery road, it was nice.

the ferry was basically something like a small cruise ship. it had rooms for people to sleep, a room with famous Japanese massage chairs, a pachinko parlor, internet café, a restaurant, shower rooms for the rich folks, and plenty of other assorted goodies.

I had a reservation made to be a part of this big room where you all crowd in with other people and possibly try to find somewhere to take a nap. it was like being in a big playpen or something, so I hoofed it outta there and went for one of the suites.

I found a room that wasn’t being used and ended up actually becoming a stowaway in the rich area of the boat. I felt so naughty.

so I slept on the bed for a while, got up and took a shower, even though I ended up putting on dirty clothes after. but hey, gimme a break, I cant find anywhere to wash them right now.

then I went and explored more of the boat before I took another nap.

I woke up to the sound of this loud music telling people the boat was about to reach the port of Usuki. I got up and tried to cover my tracks. it worked out okay.

it was weird though, it seemed like all of the people on the boat had disappeared before the boat even docked. there was only me and about four other men that got off the boat when they issued the call that it was safe to disembark.

there must have been at least a hundred people on that boat, I honestly don’t know where they all went.

maybe they got stuck in naptime and just couldn’t leave? maybe they were enchanted by a wizard because they weren’t clever enough to sneak into one of the suites? maybe they were just enchanted by the magical properties of the boat itself.

nobody knows.


I waited at the station in Usuki and eventually was on a train headed for Hakata, part of Fukuoka. I talked to a man on the train for about three hours on the way there and tried to convince him to let me stay at his place for the night, 'cause I had talked to the guy earlier that I had originally planned to stay with--- and he ended up backing out. the man on the train just wouldn’t have it, but I found out later he was going to a city called Okayama anyway, and why the heck would I wanna follow some guy there that I had just met?

I wouldn’t want to, so I didn’t.

but anyway, my man that I had set up to stay with in Kumamoto backed out on me.

how lame is that huh?

but I make it to Hakata and eat some rice, I call my kid again that I might stay with and he says for sure I cant sleep at his place. I tell him it is kind of a bummer, but a have an insatiable appetite for things that go wrong, because for the most part, it ends up turning into something incredibly worthwhile.

and here I am. I caught the last train of the day for Nagasaki. I didn’t realize I would end up coming here, but for some reason, when I was at the station and I didn’t know where to go or what to do, something told me to get on the train headed for Nagasaki, even with no plan, nowhere to stay, and nothing but dirty, sweaty clothes.

when I was with Noelle in Kyoto, we were using a sink together at our hostel and she wanted to make sure there was a hair dryer there. It was obvious to me that she just wanted to use it to dry her hair.

and then she said something I will never forget...

"I need to make sure there is a hair dryer here so I can have something to dry my socks with after I wash them in the sink."

Day Twenty Three: Okayama and Matsuyama

i'm on the shinkansen that goes to Okayama then south to Shikoku Island.

Shikoku is one of the four main islands that make up Japan, this one was very beautiful, or at least it was from the train.

I had been on the trains for a good six hours before I finally made it to Matsuyama.

a girl named Sara was going to be getting me a room for the night, so I called her and tried to meet up with her at her house. I got lost along the way and ended up walking around in the burning hot sun for an hour before I finally figured out where to go.

Sara was very nice and was quick to introduce me to her retarded cat, Jack, and tell me the story of how he did become retarded. Jack fell down seven stories from the balcony and landed on his head.

that’s how cats become retarded.

I tried to talk to Jack a little, but he wasn’t too up for it. Next I went upstairs and took a little nap while I waited for Sara to prepare to head out for the night.

she was going to meet up with a couple of her friends and party it up like it was goin outta style. they went to the beer garden and got their buzzes on, while I opted to take a different route and met them after they were done.

in the meantime, I did some sightseeing-- just walking around looking at some stuff.

it's difficult sometimes for me to take pictures of these things that I think are so fascinating. regardless of how great and camera is, they can never catch the true splendor of a mountain, the beauty of a lake or the majesty of a castle sitting on the top of a mountain.

sometimes just seeing things and allowing them to become a part of me is the best way I can preserve the beauty of the things I see around me.

we can never know the experiences of others truly unless we go through the same things ourselves. people who have never been to Japan will never understand how much it means to me to talk about the beauty of this country and its people and the kindness I am shown every day.

as I said before, I just have to let some things become a part of my heart and my mind and be happy with that.

I end up doing some karaoke with her friends, Bob from Canada...


and Chris from Scotland.


then I got a shot of me and Sara--yes I was covered in sweat, that’s how intense I get at karaoke in this place.


and then I went back to my room and slept while, of course, thinking about what was to come next.

Day Twenty Two: Horyouji

and I wake up.

its probably about 11am.

the official check out time at the Nara Tree is 11am. my plan is to head out of there and look for somewhere to stay for the night. I have someone in a city called Kanonji that will let me stay the night, but in the end they back out.


so i'm just hanging out for a while with Bob and Mayumi--putting on a sick mask fashion show, and then they take me out to eat some Indian-style curry--no no, not the Indians that will scalp you and have names like Sitting Duck and Brother Bear, we mean the Indians that live in the slums of Mumbai and win game shows.


yeah, those Indians. it had been a couple years since I had the stuff, and it was just as good as I remember it being.

so what do I do? I reckon I oughtta spend some more time in Nara, or at least the surrounding areas.

I head towards a city called Horyoji known for its temples and more old school Japanese stuff, and I make it there and get a good look at many of the goodies they have to offer.

on the way back to Nara I decide to take some shots of some of the more interesting signs i've been seeing around.

anybody with the internet knows something extra special about the Japanese, they like to put crazy stuff on signs and they love English. whether or not the words make sense at all makes no difference.

this delight reminded me of Kanye West before his head got too big.


i'm not sure how appropriate this one would be for a young girl to wear around, but it is made for someone measuring 120cm, however big that is-- heck if I know.


this was an aesthetic salon down the road.


this one here has a saying on it that looks strangely familiar…


oh that’s right, it's the slogan for my own beloved BYU. this just goes to show you that even on the opposite side of the world, you can't escape the Provo scenesters, as has already been proven by my one night stay with my friend Joseph in Shinyurigaoka

let's hope the honor code office doesn’t find out another school has plagiarized byu’s slogan or else it could mean certain probation, or even worse, someone might have to shave their beard to take a test.

and last, but not least. was my favorite one of all I saw.


this strange gem has a father sitting in a bathtub with a naked child standing next to him holding a shower nozzle in his left hand, and definitely a gun in his right. even though he is facing certain death at the hand of his naked son, dad is still cool as a cucumber.

and just for kicks we'll throw in this sumo character wearing his swine flu mask.


when I got back that night, me and this Australian man staying at the guest house went to a Japanese music show that Mayumi had talked to us about earlier in the day. it was this old timey temple music put on by three different people.

the show was scheduled to last an hour, but halfway during the set, the old man started convulsing and apparently had just suffered a set of seizures.

I really do hope he is all right.

so I went back to the house, hoping to do some laundry--which I didn't get to, watched Spirited Away on the guest house tv, and tried to figure out what was gonna come next.

and as always there is more havoc to come.

Day Twenty One: Nara

nara is a city known for many different things.

along with Kyoto and the other cities of the kansai area, it was preserved from being blown up or burned by folks during the second world war. most of the temples that have been there for hundreds of years still stand and the city is a plethora of old architecture, monuments and artifacts.

I loved it from the moment I saw it.

I ate some food in the café next door to the guest house. mayumi owns the café and makes great food.

nara is also known for having deer that just walk around like they own the place, and I pretty much reckon they do.


they're everywhere. they roam the streets, they steal peoples food, they carry guns and knives and steal women's purses. there have even been reports of deer splinter groups that have become pirates and attack ships.

I had my own encounter with one of these deer.

I was just walking through the park minding my own business, shooting the breeze, ya know?

then this deer walks up to me, of course acting like hes got no hidden agenda.

we get to talking a little bit. I tell him i'm just visiting the area, looking at the sights.

he asks for some food, I tell him I don’t have any but if I did I would probably let him share some of mine.

that wasn’t a good enough answer for him.

this deer reaches into my back pocket while i'm turned around walking away and pulls out my map of nara and starts eating it. I try to pull it out of his mouth but he wont let go. I kept yelling at him to give it back.


all these little kids are laughing at the foreigner who is being antagonized by this deer, and eventually this old lady comes over with a metal stick and started hitting it until it finally gave me back my map. the deer ate the bottom part of the map, but luckily it wasn’t a big deal. he had eaten the Kyoto section and not the nara one.


but I bet he got away thinking he had really shown me up, he was wrong.

all I could say was “oh dear, oh deer, oh dear, oh deer.”

there are cars that roam around making sure nobody is bothering the deer. they make sure people give the deer lots of food to keep them strong.

I found my way to the building that houses the daibutsu, the big Buddha, or nara.

you may remember that there is one of these sitting around in kamakura that everybody decides to go to because its so conveniently located south of Tokyo.

what they don’t realize is that there is a much cooler one sitting in nara, in a big beautiful shrine.

I got lots of pictures of this guy, after all, he is Buddha, a very important part of lots of peoples spiritual beliefs.


as it turns out, you can't walk inside this Buddha. the daibutsu in kamakura is hollow, and for about 30yen you can walk inside, take pictures, or hide from your teacher while you kiss the cute girl in your fourth grade class on a school field trip.

I know…because I saw it. I was there man, I was there.

but the daibustu here, in my opinion, was much better than the other. it was big....real big.

as was the case with many things in nara. they seemed to be more beautiful in some kind of a way. maybe the deer had something to do with it.


there were also groups of school kids that were there. lots and lots of them. one group in particular had it written into their assignment for the day to practice English phrases on someone who spoke it.

so they came to me in swarms. sixth grade Japanese children with yellow hats everywhere, asking me questions in English and sometimes not understanding the answers I gave back. then the best part was they had to get the foreigner to sign this page in the book proving they had actually talked to me.


it was pretty cool.

after spending the day seeing the sights, I went to a store and bought some senbei, Japanese crackers made from rice, and sat outside the store at a table.

this old man came up and started talking with me, sometimes in English, sometimes in Japanese, and he kept telling me he was a “hen na nohonjin” and he was still ”sukebe” even after all these years. we got to talking for a while until a 25-year-old girl showed up. she was pregnant and claimed she had a husband, somewhere, but this old guy kept referring to her as “my young”.

it was kind of weird, but he bought me takoyaki and we sat there and ate it together.

I asked him if he thought the girl that worked at the takoyaki stand was cute. he looked at me for a couple seconds, got up and walked over to the stand to tell her I was in love with her, which at the time was not true.

his “young” told me that he was just over there cause he thought I liked her and he didn’t want me to steal the takoyaki girl from him.

after a couple minutes, I got up and left him and his young to the takoyaki girl.