Sylvia's Journal

Nagasaki was sunny and relatively warm compared to yesterday. We had a day of tourism in front of us. We are way outside tourist season and did not see any other foreigner until we arrived at the airport. Most of the time we are the only white folks around.

First Axel guided me through the reconstructed Dutch enclave of Dejima (Decima) where the Dutch had a trade monopoly with Japan in the late 18th and early 19th century. Thanks to the 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet we knew a bit about daily life on Dejima at the turn of that century.

Now the fan-shaped enclave is no longer on the ocean and has gotten a bit lost in urban sprawl, hemmed in by parking garages and office buildings. Still, it is a breath-taking experience to walk in the footsteps of those Nederlanders who ventured so far from home.

Next stop was an architectural marvel, the prefectural museum of art, which needs a bit more of a collection to put in its enormous spaces. From the roof you have a wonderful view over the harbor and to the many volcanic eruptions turned islands as far as the eye can see.

After a sushi and tempura lunch, accompanied by a small bottle of sake, we headed inland toward the museum of Professor Siebold, a German scientist who further drove in the wedge already created by trade, into this society that had been so introverted for so long. His enormous knowledge and curiosity earned him respect and students from all over Japan. His Japanese daughter was the first female OB/GYN in Japan.

And then it was time to head for the airport and board our plane to Tokyo with hundreds of salarymen going home or going on a business trip. We got lost in a sea of black suits until we alighted from the airport monorail and found all the salarymen relaxing in subway noodle and sushi shops – they weren’t running home quite yet.

A nice lady from the Canadian embassy helped us find our way back to the surface through a maze of underground tunnels. And now we are settled in our (much less fancy) hotel – more of an international youth hostel – here in Tokyo. Or rather, I am settled as Axel went out for a late meal somewhere back in that maze.

While Axel was exploring the old Dutch remnants in Nagasaki, Miho and I took the tramway to the university and walked through alternating snow, sleet and rain to the school of public health where 12 eager students were awaiting us.

The best thing in Japan, during the cold season, is the heated toilet seat. I could manage the cold knowing that somewhere a heated toilet seat was waiting for me.

At lunch time we had the traditional Nagasaki noodle soup called Champun, that was just the right thing to warm up. After lunch we continued the ‘lecture’ and I had the students explore the meaning and utility of the concepts of mission and vision. It was all very new and mysterious.

We met up with Axel at the Atomic bomb museum – a complex of exhibits, reflective pool, meditation rooms, gruesome photos and artifacts. The whole thing made me extremely angry – the pictures of the male protagonists in this drama: Hitler, Stalin, the Manhattan project men, the Japanese, Truman, Oppenheimer, Bohr, Einstein, Russell – the latter eventually realizing that the bomb was a really bad thing and becoming peace activists. The only women portrayed where survivors with their horrendous stories of loss and suffering, and the non survivors, the charred bodies of mothers and their babies. What were people thinking?

We rode back in a packed tramway, sober and shivering from the cold, me longing for the warm toilet seat that we found across from the old Decima (Dutch) enclave in a restaurant named Garcon Ken. Ken was there waiting for customers in a tiny but empty restaurant. We stated that we came for drinks, to warm up. But Ken expertly seduced us to stay for a meal, bringing out one delectable tapa after another, plying us with ‘warm up’ drinks. And so we had a French Japanese meal (fish of course) that will be among the more memorable culinary experiences of this trip.

If Australia is down under, then we must now be up above. We arrived safely in Nagasaki after a very long and exhausting trip.

In our non-existing Japanese and the waitstaff’s non-existing English we managed to order lunch in a nice fish restaurant across from our hotel. We arrived at 11:30 AM but the rooms are not released until 2 PM. That we travelled more than halfway around the world was apparently no cause for some leniency on this rule. We could have paid our way into our rooms but the restaurant beckoned.

There too was a time constraint; we were 8 minutes ahead of the start of lunch hour but they let us in anyways and served us a nice hot cup of tea. We found all our favorite Japanese dishes (and more) on the menu.

Earlier, what now seems a life time away, We had landed in Tokyo, in a dark and rainy drizzle. It was cold, after LAX. We were glad we brought our warm coats and gloves.

Haneda airport was a new experience for both of us. It is pristine, immaculate and totally sanitary. We wondered whether that makes the Japanese more vulnerable to infections. Many walk around with masks.

Just before landing we were told by the airplane crew that avian flu is back in the news in this part of the world. We had to walk through a temperature detector and over a disinfecting mat. Would it mistake a hot flash for an avian flu risk?

At the domestic airport, equally clean and full of the most polite people, we tried a Japanese breakfast and an American coffee before boarding a half full plane to Nagasaki. As we circled up from the runway that is built like an enormous bridge, sticking out into the harbor, we had a breathtaking view of Tokyo going on forever in each direction. I think we saw Mount Fuji or else a mountain with a Fuji profile.

We flew over a winter landscape southward to Nagasaki. The palm trees and the still flowering bougainvillea hinted at Southern France. But on all the north-facing slopes the pine trees were more than dusted with snow – much like we want Christmas trees to look like – even the palm trees had a light snow cover.

A colleague of my friend, host and ex-colleague waited for us at the bus stop, hailed a taxi to take us to the hotel and pointed us to the fish restaurant after which she bid us farewell to return to the university.

Still to early for check in we took a digestive walk in the hotel’s neighborhood. We are in or near the Chinese quarter. It is decorated festively with lanterns for the Chinese New Year. According to a historical marker this is the old Chinese entertainment quarter. Now it is full of bars, sometimes multiple bars on top of each other. In the olden days (1870s), we learned, there were more than 1400 geishas and prostitutes working here. An ironworks frame over the alley way shows a scene of a gentleman in a pull-rickshaw being taken to his entertainment with shy geishas fanning themselves on the side. Just as I remember from the “Memoirs of a Geisha” movie.

Finally checked in we had hoped we could stick it out till an early bedtime. We thought that we ought to try to stay awake or else we will never get used to being 14 hours ahead of ourselves. But we both succumbed to a deep sleep from which only a phonecall could wake us up. It was Miho who had to sit for a PhD exam and is now ready to party. We are of course totally ready for our next culinary adventure.