In our haste to find a place to set up tent the night before and realizing that the entire down town of Nagasaki was a sprawling concrete jungle (or jungle floor since there were really no skyscrapers in Nagasaki), we ended up building our tent on the only piece of soil we could find. The Nagasaki Peace Park.
Ok, so we didn’t really build a tent in the middle of the park (which is on the top of a little hill), it was more of to the side of the park where the edge slopes down into a wall that separates the elevated park from the sidewalk below. It was really a bit dangerous since we could have slid down into the sidewalk during the night, and the height of the fall would have left us with a spattering of bruises. Luckily, a couple of pine trees were planted on the ground and kept us anchored on that slope. But we still had to suffer through a night sleeping at an angle, it felt like the world was without gravity and everything was slanted to the right. It was no wonder that I woke up with my face almost plastered on the tent wall. I should actually count myself lucky that I wasn’t crushed by Ninon and Asen in their sleep, although, they were both dangerously close to me as we huddled to the lower side of the tent.
Now, I’ve never actually slept in a park before, but something tells me that stands on the fine fine line between the Legal and Illegal columns in the “homeless activities” category and I’m not all that sure if my “don’t blame me, I’m a stupid foreigner” looks will get us out of trouble this time (It’s the bloody Nagasaki Peace Park! It’s almost like a National Treasure for the Japanese!). So as soon as I got my bearings, I woke Ninon and Asen up and demanded that we clean up the tent, erase all evidence of our slumber and act like we just got there.
In about 15 minutes, we had the tent rolled up and we had a lot of our stuff sprawled on the park bench while the three of us took turns washing our faces and brushing our teeth in the female public restroom (the male restroom was locked). Suddenly, to my horror, a team of park cleaners arrived. They were terrifying to me at that moment. Old Japanese men and women, each one at least 60 years old, holding onto long-handled brooms, dust pans, rags and pails of water, were walking side-by-side like contestants in Fear Factor. I watched them coming closer and I could just imagine what would have happened if they arrived 5-10 minutes earlier when we were just tearing down the tent.
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| From The Silken Backpack |
Images of a 70 year-old Obaasan after me with a broom flashed through my mind, followed by another of the three of us posing for a Japanese Mug Shot, followed yet again by a news article in the local papers with the caption “French, Bulgarian and Philippine National Caught Defaming Japanese Monument to History” in bold letters above my battered and raccoon-eyed mug shot. I will be deported back to the Philippines, but out of shame, my country and my family will disown me and I will be left to wander the streets of Manila. The despair will lead me to contemplate suicide and right before I jump off the Guadalupe Bridge into the Pasig river, my last thought would be “I should have just spent 2,000 pesos on a blasted hostel.”
Pathetic.
Ok, back to reality. I eyed the cleaning team warily but smiled sweetly and innocently when they looked at us, curiosity evident in their glances. I thanked my God silently for the impeccable timing as we nonchalantly went on fixing our things at an amazing speed.
Finally, with our backpacks still on a bench well within our line of sight, we went around the Nagasaki Peace Park. It was our first time to see it in broad daylight, and just like any other normal park, it had clean landscaping and a fair number of benches. But what sets this museum apart from all others is nothing short of astounding.
At 11:02 am on August 9, 1945, the second atomic bomb in world history exploded 500 meters above this seemingly insignificant park. This bomb, dubbed “Fat Boy” after England’s Winston Churchill, contained plutonium, a radioactive material stronger than the uranium inside the atomic bomb of Hiroshima. In an instant, most of Nagasaki was flattened, the damage of which lasted through days, months, years and generations.
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| From The Silken Backpack |
Around the park, reminders of the world’s desire to prevent such devastation from happening again could be seen. Statues and monuments given by different nations, from Bulgaria to China, dotted the landscape of the park. Each work of art depicted peace and how important it is for the world’s present and future.
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| From The Silken Backpack |
At one end of the park stood the bluish 10-meter Peace Statue created by sculptor Seibou Kitamura. The statue was of a man sitting with one leg folded inwards and the other leg folded down with the foot on the ground. The folded-in leg represented meditation (Buddhist monks sit cross-legged when meditating) while the other signified man’s initiative to stand up in defense of peace and the people of the world. The statue’s arms formed a right angle with the left arm stretched parallel to the ground and the other arm raised up with a finger pointing into the sky. The left arm signified eternal peace while the right arm pointing to the sky symbolized atomic bombs.
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| From The Silken Backpack |
At the other end of the park was another statue, this time of a woman holding a child, with the numbers 1945 8.9 11:02 written on the base, commemorating the date and time when the atomic bomb went off in Nagasaki. The park offered an outstanding combination of sadness and hope as it featured remains of the tragedy of Nagasaki while gracefully reminding everyone that the lesson behind this unfortunate event is to ensure that it never happens again.
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| From The Silken Backpack |
After we were done going around the park, we headed to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, which was pretty decent but had nothing on the museum in Hiroshima, so we just went through it quickly (We only paid 200 yen so it wasn’t a big loss)
We were pretty much running out of time and Asen was still without his “Lazing on the Beach like a Bum Moment”. So after doing a bit of research, we found out that there were a couple of islands close to Nagasaki where we can just wind down, hang around and enjoy the sea. We ended up choosing Takashima, boasted in a couple of brochures from the Tourism Office, as THE tourist-y place to go to (plus, it says that there was a “camping ground” in the island, which would be a refreshing change from our usual practice of just setting camp wherever).
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| From The Silken Backpack |
I decided to give up on my initial plans to go around Nagasaki more to see the Dutch Colonial buildings and gardens (my tall friends weren’t so interested in it coz well, why would they want to see european-inspired architecture, they’re already from Europe!), and trooped with Ninon and Asen to the port, bought tickets to Takashima, and we were on our way!
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