24 January!

Today was the busiest day we have had on our trip. First we had a gigantic Japanese breakfast with lots of little foodstuffs. Chrissy tried fish cake for the first time ever! She didn’t die and it wasn’t gross!
Kosuke had to go to an English exam at the local university, so we got up early and went out with his parents to take him there. While he was doing the exam, his parents wanted to show us around the local town, Isahaya.
Our first stop was the local Shinto shrine, Isahaya-jinja. We stopped and prayed at the shrine as Kosuke’s parents were keen for us to do and had a look around. Everywhere important in Nagasaki area is on top of a big hill, so the shrine had a great view.
The next stop was a hotel on top of the side of a mountain where there was a nice view, as we looked out I saw an interesting sea wall that goes all the way across a big bay. Kosuke’s Dad said “that’s were we’re going next” and we were told all about that big project to reclaim land in the bay. So we went in the car down the mountain and drove over the big wall, which is seven kilometres long, with the bay on one side and the ocean on the other which, stopping in the middle to marvel.
The next event was a big drive back to Isahaya over the mountains which had beautiful views of the sea through both sides of the car. Chrissy fell asleep but Charles watched the whole day talking (with a dictionary) to Kosuke’s parents. Chrissy didn’t mean to fall asleep! It was nice and warm in the car.
Before picking up Kosuke we stopped to look at a scenic bridge of Isahaya which is one of a class of bridges called “megane bashi” which means “glasses bridge”. The two stone arches of the bridge which reflect in the water looked just like a pair of glasses. We also looked into the high school there where there were kids doing Japanese archery which was fun to watch. In fact, we were told, Kosuke’s sister does Japanese archery.
After we picked up Kosuke from his exam we all headed into Nagasaki to go to a restaurant for lunch. The restaurant is owned by relations of Kosuke’s mother and is 200 years old. It was very traditional and very fancy, we were in a traditional Japanese room and were waited on by women in beautiful Kimono. The dishes were traditional Nagasaki dishes called Shippoku Ryori. It came in a tall bento box with three levels, and a bowl of soup. It was traditional to eat the soup first – it was clear and had a piece of fish, some mushroom, a piece of fish-cake, and a rice dumpling thing in it. The broth tasted of fish.
The bento had in it lots of little singular foods, differently prepared tofus, fishy stuff, prawny stuff, potato, pickles, sweets. After we finishes we were served mandarins! Then some stewed apple and a sweet! Then some sweet soup with a rice dumpling in it! The sweet soup was the best thing ever! It was very thick, made of sweet bean paste. All the people who served us were really nice, probably because the owner is related to Kosuke’s mum.
We went and looked at the river and found some heart shaped stones! I guess we’ll have luck in love or good cardiovascular health or something.
We dropped Kosuke’s mum at the station so that she could go home and prepare stuff. Then the three of us went to Megami Bridge (as opposed to Megane Bridge this morning), which is a 1km-long bridge across the harbour. It’s spectacular! Look it up.
The three of us went to the Nagasaki atomic bomb museum. It was awful and we left quickly because it was so horrendous. We felt very sad. Then we went to the Nagasaki Peace Park, where there is a humongous peace statue from Japan, and lots of other smaller ones from other countries. The big statue is very symbolic. He has one hand pointing up to the threat of atomic bombs, the other hand outstretched bringing humanity together in peace, one leg crossed in meditation, the other poised for action, eyes closed in prayer for the victims of the bomb, a kind countenance, and a muscular body to be able to help people. That’s like seven symbols.
We drove back to Isahaya, to Kosuke’s house. His aunt and uncle were there to celebrate Kosuke’s sister’s birthday which is today, and Kosuke’s dad’s birthday which is next week. We had two cakes and sung Happy Birthday in Engrish. Kosuke’s mum had prepared vineagered rice and we all made our own sushi with many ingredients on the table. We were plied with o-sake, which was delicious. We watched a samurai-drama on the TV that has been advertised ad-nauseum in Nagasaki because it’s set in Nagasaki about a real character, and the actor is very handsome and also from Nagasaki. As far as I can tell, nothing happened in the show except character development which we didn’t understand.