Over the Puddle

Well, I must say, my weekend certainly turned out well. First, one Saturday, Matt, Nathan, and I met Nathan’s conversation partner and four of her friends (ours too), and we all went to karaoke. That was an experience! The building was like 4 stories I think, stank of stale beer and cigarettes, but was decently priced (2000 yen / hour I think), and the actual ‘box’ was fairly large. Not quite the karaoke box I envisioned from anime, but not bad. The setup wasn’t bad either: 2 mics that plugged into the system, with a couple decent speakers suspended from the ceiling and either the actual karaoke track or a midi of the song requested with kanji (or hiragana at times) for the Japanese songs, and the American lyrics with furigana for the American ones.

The Japanese song selection was impressive, and the American one was all right, mainly older stuff really. I knew a majority of the Japanese songs the girls sang (and sang well they did!), but didn’t know the lyrics. They were surprised I knew Ayumi Hamasaki and were even more surprised that I knew some of the lyrics, though not well enough to sing when they passed me the mic. For my part, I solo’d a Red Hot Chili Pepper’s song, Scar Tissue. I was nervous, and am a poor singer anyway. I also pitched in for “Mr. Roboto” (Styx), “Sign” (Ace of Base), “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Queen), “Stayin’ Alive” (Bee Gees), “Tears in Heaven” (Eric Clapton) which was by far and away our best song. Probably because it was in our vocal range for a change! “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (Nirvana), “Cruel Angel These” (Neon Genesis Evangelion, group sing-along), mumbled to the “Cutey Honey Opening”, and “Seventh Moon” (Macross 7) badly, though to be fair, the midi sucked.

It wasn’t quite as embarrassing as I thought though, because the girls didn’t seem to mind our singing, though I think they were busy looking up their next song and weren’t necessarily paying attention.

Afterwards, the girls returned home, and Nathan, Matt, and I hit the mall near Hamano-machi, stopped at a Mr. Doughnuts (for a dinner that had no doughnuts ironically enough), browsed a CD/VHS/DVD rental place (hellloooo pirate city!), stopped at Amu Plaza (Nagasaki Station), and finally went to an arcade (’London Park’ I believe, which I hated because for all the games it had, it has jack squat, and was expensive to boot), and finally returned home.

Today (Sunday), I had resigned myself to a day of primarily sitting around, but didn’t do that at all. Today, my host mother trimmed my hair, and did a decent job at it. Afterwards, we headed to a kimono shop not too far from here. The reason being, I need a kimono for my fine arts class this week (on how to wear a kimono, so kind of necessary!). I assumed we were going to rent one, but was mistaken! So, I wound up walking away with a 9000 yen yukata (summer kimono), as a present. It is a very cheap kimono, but will be good enough for me.

Afterwards, we met up with a friend of my host mother for tea. During the course of conversation, my host mother’s friend asked me the usual questions: how I liked the food, how I liked Japan, etc. When I mentioned that I wanted to play Pachinko before I left, my host mother surprised my by saying I should go with my host father to play Pachinko while she and her friend went shopping. I like my host mother, but she does have some flaws, one being that considering my financial situation, she sometimes grabs onto an idea and pushes it, saying that I’m in Japan and should do stuff like that. She does have a point I suppose, though I don’t know how good of an idea it is to gamble while overseas on a shoestring budget! She had just seen me take out 3000 yen earlier, so knew I had some money on me and pushed it. At any rate, I wound up going down to the “Lucky Parlor” Pachinko parlor.

My first thought upon entering was how noisy it was! As the doors opened, a huge wave of sound burst over me, with the cacophony of beeps, dings, voice over the PA, and sounds of coins dropping into slots! The system for Pachinko was simple enough: you put money into a machine to get a prepaid card to play with. The machine had an option of 2000 yen, 3000 yen, 5000 yen, or 10000 yen. I bought a 2000-yen card, and then followed my host father to a machine and sat down.

The game is fairly simple: insert card, push button, and get 500 yen worth of steel balls, which empty into a feeding tray, then all you do is turn the knob to indicate how hard you want to launch each ball, and hold it there when you find a good spot. Now, not to get into horrific detail on how the whole game works, but essentially, you launch a ball, which bounces around off of steel pegs in the board, and hopefully lands in the proper hole in the middle towards the bottom of the board. I don’t have to mention that odds are not in your favor, as it’s anybody’s guess where the ball’s going to go when it bounces off of a steel peg. Then, whenever you get a ball in the hole, you get a crack at the second part of the game, which appears on a little screen in the middle of the board. At this particular parlor (I guess parlors differ in how the ‘inner game’ works), different fish with different numbers float by, hopefully to stop and line up 3 in a row (and I think some other combo’s too, though I’m not sure). Should you manage this, the confusing part begins!

When I got to what I call the “big game mode” (for lack of a better term), I had a girl swim up and smile at me, then give me a little victory sign, and onto Level 1, and then a lot of balls started shooting into my ‘winnings’ tray. I was confused and had no idea what was going on because the machine started beeping, clanging, and dropping enough balls for me to think I had broken the machine! Anyway, I kept firing balls toward the hole, which apparently was the right thing, because I got to Level 15 before the girl smiled again, said “Ganbatte!” and swam away, and the machine assume a more normal attitude.

My host father had walked away before this, and so was rather surprised when he returned and saw my one very full bucket of balls. Oh, I should mention that I almost never reached that point. True to form, I blew through my 2000 yen very quickly, but then my host father swapped out my card for the remainder of his, which had another 2000 yen on it, and headed upstairs as he wasn’t having luck with the Pachinko machine. It was at the very tail end of that card that I struck gold.

Anyway, I had the girl visit me again on the screen twice more (and had my machine jam up a number of times while it tried to dispense a flood of balls). The first time, I wondered why my machine was beeping, clanging, but no balls were coming out. An attendant noticed, stopped by, fiddled, with something in the machine, and a stream of balls came out. He stopped by periodically to fix the machine (as the thing seemed determined to jam up), and even had to swap out a part, but I wasn’t about to switch machines! Anyway, when the girl seemed to not want to visit me anymore, I gave up and discovered something: these are steel balls, and thus having 3 baskets of them can be extremely heavy! Luckily, a burly attendant walked by and saved me the hassle of carrying them and trying to figure out where to go.

Now, I digress a bit, but I should mention that it really isn’t through any great skill on my part that I seemed to win quite a bit, but rather, luck was on my side. I have walked by the pachinko parlors any number of times in my wanderings, and noticed on several occasions people sitting at a machine, with a rubber band around the knob, and the other end hooked onto the tray, and just sitting at the machine happily smoking and drinking some coffee during which the game happily spit out steel balls occasionally. I have even heard that there are people who making a living off of doing this sort of thing, which I guess doesn’t surprise me.

Back to the story. After the attendant had taken the balls and poured them into a machine to count them, and it spit out a receipt to me, and I handed it to woman nearby, who then gave me a box of chocolate candy and what looked like 14 gold colored mechanical pencils! Wondering if I had just made a huge mistake, I wandered upstairs to find my host father. When he saw me with my ‘treasure’, he said “wow!”, and I wondered what the heck he was impressed about, because I had expected to walk away with cash, not school supplies! When he noticed my confusion, he took my pencils and went out to cash them, which is apparently at this tiny hut outside I found out later. While he was gone, I munched on my candy bar, which on reflection probably wasn’t a great idea. For all I know, I could have just eaten 3000 yen. I later found out that it is illegal to gamble for money; so instead, you win these little prizes, which are then “traded” in for money. Talk about barely legal!

My host father soon returned with the money I had been expecting, and then I sat next to him to watch him play some Japanese slots. An interesting thing about the slot machines is that you put in your 1-3 coins, and then pull a lever to set the reels spinning. Then, while the reels are spinning, you hit the button underneath each reel to stop it. One thing I noticed when I decided to try my luck on them, is that the slots seemed ridiculously easy! If you get the right combo to get the “Big game mode” (again, for lack of a better term), which isn’t easy mind you, which is usually 3 bars, 3 of this other icon (a flag maybe?), or 2 bars and a flag thingy, you go into the “Big game mode”. Once you’re at this part, it seems easy. If you have a sense of timing, you just hit the buttons at the same interval apart, and you’re pretty much guaranteed to get 3 rhinos, and you get 15 credits each time (that’s the easy part). I think when you’re in the “Big game mode”, you can get up to 7 chances at getting the rhinos. All in all, I thought it was fairly easy.

When my host father and I finally finished, we collected our cash and headed out to meet my host mother. All said, I think that I walked away with about 18000 yen, and my host father with 20000 yen. Not bad!

We then headed to a little French restaurant. I think I surprised everyone by ordering in French, surprising even myself that I remember enough from my high school days. The food was really good, though I was slightly taken aback by having my fish come out to me in whole! Head, tail, fins, everything was still there. So, I picked around the not so appealing parts, and had some wine. The restaurant had me worried at first, because there were no prices for anything, and everyone knows that if that’s the case, the place is expensive! I think my wine came out to 2000 yen, and my dinner another 8000. My host parents had roughly the same amount. Afterwards, I offered to help pay for the dinner, but my host mother wouldn’t let me, instead saying I should save the money for later. So, all in all, it was a really good day!

Ok, today was a little last minute, but rather fun. Today, we were supposed to go to dinner with a Japanese friend, go to Dejima Wharf (which got canceled), and then were told the day before that we were all required to go to a Elementary School from 12:30-3:30, which superceded anything else we may have had planned. Now, I don’t like being told where to go and when, but in the end, it turned out to be quite fun.

We arrived at the Elementary school around 12:30, where we were ushered to a small library room to be given last minute details. Afterwards, kids from the 6th grade came to escort us to lunch. Each group had drawn a picture of the ryogakusei that they were supposed to accompany. Some of them were really well drawn, some looked like anime, some were, well, interesting, and mine looked like a `mug shot` ;p

After we were introduced, we went to the classroom for lunch. The lunch consisted of a beef stew, some bread, and a salad. While we were eating, I got acquainted with the kids at my table, and in particular, the one who seemed to be the head of the group, an energetic, funny kid named Ryo. (Note: I have this list going of people I would love to take back with me to America, and he’s now on it ) It was also interesting to watch the kids during the lunch. They put on a little dance for us, which was amusing to watch. It essentially consisted of a verse, then the chorus, during which a body part was mentioned with which to use while dancing. It started with the hands, then the legs, then the head, the behind, and finally the whole body! Quite amusing! Next, all the kids put their dishes away, and two of the kids were responsible with cleaning up any mess around the serving area, then taking the dishes away to be cleaned.

Next, we headed out to play a little dodgeball. The rules were a little sketchy, but otherwise it was pretty fun. There’s something about running around with a bunch of energetic 11-12 year olds that really gets you going!

When recess was over, we all went to the gym, where the introductions of each ryogakusei were made, the grade schoolers gave a little speech, and then they all put on a fantastic gymnastics display! o.o! You can see the military discipline even at the grade school level. It was well done, but very drilled, with whistle blows and everything.

Next was some fun, if a little goofy games. One was the teacher with the whistle would blow a certain amount of times, and then everyone had to try to get in groups of the number of times the whistle was blown. Next was a game where a card was drawn from a deck. You then guessed if the next card was to be higher or lower. If you were wrong, you sat down. The last person standing won.

Afterwards, the ryogakusei were divided into groups of 3 or so, and each group went to different displays, some went to a music class, some drew pictures, some participated in games, and my group got to watch Sumo, Judo, Karate demonstrations put on by the kids themselves! It was refreshing seeing how they put their little hearts into the demonstrations, and even got us involved in a Sumo tournament. I have to give the kids credit for doing a fine job.

When the demonstrations finished, we had a little free talking session, where the kids could ask questions of us. They asked about famous places in our countries, what the name of Japan was in our language, and they asked me how to say `pass gas` in English. I chose `pass gas` as it was one of the more tame versions that I could think of ;p I chuckled a bit at hearing them yell it in the hallways later!

Finally, it was time to head back. I think we got our 15 minutes of fame right then and there! There were so many children running around, looking for handshakes, to say goodbye, and try to get a little last minute talking in. The feeling was incredible! There was just this sea of children, and the ryogakusei standing over them looking a little bewildered at the chaos and flattered at the attention, but couldn’t help smiling.

When we went to leave, the children were waving as much as they could at us, and some even ran after the bus as far as they could to try to catch last minute glimpses! It’s a little odd thinking that quite possibly we may have been the first foreigners that they have ever seen. I think we made a good impression though! I certainly won’t forget them anytime soon. ^_^

We all had a meeting to go to on Saturday that we were told was mandatory, and we all knew it. Some head guy from a California University was to be coming to Nagasaki to talk about `Globalization`, a speech you could have heard anywhere in the US. However, I had heard sometime ago that a Jpop band, EE Jump, was going to be coming to Nagasaki sometime soon, and when we further learned that it was going to be the same day as the meeting, the outcome was only too predictable ;p We asked one of the teachers and contact people of the JASIN program his opinion about our imminent skipping of the meeting. When we mentioned that there was going to be a concert the next day, and then suggested that we may oversleep, or maybe get stuck in traffic, the knowing grin was all we needed to see.

So, Matt, 5, and I met up at Nagasaki Station/Amu Plaza at noon, before the concert. Unfortunately, by the time we all met up, and headed out to the concert, which was in the rather large open area between the plaza and station, the good places were all taken, both on the ground, and on the balcony on the second floor. Now, luckily, I am taller than your average Japanese person, so I was about to see over most of the Japanese people while waiting, which gave me hopes for the concert. As the concert drew near though, and a man came out introducing the band, and also saying that taking pictures was not allowed, luck would have it that a group of exceptionally tall high schoolers wormed their way in front of me, and I couldn’t seem to shake them.

The concert itself had a meager stage, about 2 feet off the ground, with no band, and some smallish speakers that put out sound pretty well. When the two singers of EE Jump came out, I was almost blinded by the sheer volume of flashing cameras, and was nearly knocked over by all the people pushing to try and get a picture, and even saw some interesting gymnastics as people tried to see! I was actually a little disappointed that they didn’t use the huge video screen hanging on the wall to broadcast the concert so people in bad places could see… As such, I spent most of my time trying to look around on tall kid in particular who was seemingly always in front of me. I even made it as far up as about 4 lines back from the swath of little kids in the front, but the guy was still in front of me. Matt, on the other hand, I felt sorry for. He’s shorter than me, about average Japanese height, and thus could see next to nothing. Nathan was up on the balcony trying to take some pictures.

The concert itself was surprisingly short, only about 40 minutes or so. They played only a handful of songs too. The music wasn’t bad, a touch `pop`ish, but entertaining. Also, I noticed that the male singer generally sang in rap style, with English lyrics. This was quite different from any other concert I’ve been too, but considering the concert was free, and beat snoozing through a boring lecture, I couldn’t complain. After the concert, Nathan and Matt both bought a CD single from the little table of merchandise, which, we found out, also enabled them to go up and shake the hands of the performers. I didn’t really want to sink $10 on a CD single that I could get anywhere, and may not listen to again, so I couldn’t. That was ok, because I was then nominated to try and take pictures of when Nathan and Matt got up on the stage to shake the performers` hands.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t seem to get anywhere to get a decent picture. There were security guards walking around stopping people, so I kept the camera hidden. I tried the balcony, but there were too many people there, I tried the floor, but there were too many people…. Seemingly, none of the people had left after the concert had ended. I settled for a crappy position, but one that would at least let me get a picture, only to find that when I focused the camera, I had a security guard standing with crossed arms directly in my view, obstructing it, and had another security guard on either side of me too. I guess being a gaijin does make you stand out ^_^;;

Nathan and Matt did get their chance to shake the performers` hands, and apparently startled them too, being the only gaijin to shake their hands. I imagine the male singer was a little nervous, wondering how his English actually was! I bet they will be talking about meeting the gaijin for quite some time though.

After the handshaking, the performers quickly took off, attempting to escape the huge swath of Japanese people trying to take more pictures as they hurried off. Quite the spectacle I must say.

Now, there was also a Latin party to be held later that night, but it wasn’t for quite some time. The concert officially ended at like 2:15 I think, which left us with roughly six hours to entertain ourselves before meeting up with some other people before the party, Mark Tiedemann`s wife and relatives. We were to meet with them at 8pm, and the party was to start at 10pm. So, in the meantime, we visited the arcades, ran back to my house, then wandered the mall at Hanamo-machi.

When we met up with the group of people, we headed to a liquor store to pick up some cheap beers, then to Karaoke place near the Latin party. This was a little unexpected, because none of us had heard about this. It turned out to be a good time though, as they all were exceptionally good singers, which made us guys feel like total amateurs, though we may be ;p

After that, we went to the Latin party, which was near a little park. The party was fun, as there were a bunch of the JASIN students there, and also lots of other people. You got one free drink, which amounted to a small cup of beer, with the entrance fee of $20. The party ran from 10pm to 4am, and started with some pretty good music at the beginning which tapered off sharply at the end. There was plenty of dancing and socializing, and it was a good time. One of the female JASIN students got herself totally and utterly drunk, and was the life of the party
When 4am rolled around, Nathan, Matt, and myself started to head back to my apartment. By the time we got halfway up the hill to the apartment, it was about 5am, and Nathan decided to catch the street car back, which was to start in about an hour anyway. Matt and I headed back to my apartment and got some welcome sleep.

The next day passed rather uneventfully, which was fine by me, as I was still tired from the previous day. Matt and I walked around the Sumiyoshi area, and went to a Toys R Us, and caught a quick lunch at McDonalds. After that, he headed home, and I headed wandered around a bit before heading back myself.

Apparently, we lucked out. I was dreading the next day, when I would have to face Yamaguchi-sensei who would undoubtedly ask why we weren’t at the meeting, but for some reason, the question never came!

This weekend was pretty fun. Friday, all of us JASIN students head to Unzen together. There, Unzen is famous for the onsens, because of the volcanic vents. Unfortunatly, the entire area reeked of sulphur, as I found out when I stepped off of the bus and gagged, nearly being violently ill several times. When we arrived at Unzen, we headed first to the volcanic vents, from which many hotels in the area siphon off the water and or gas, I`m not entirely sure really O.o Anyway, as we headed to them, I nearly had to turn back, because the smell was so bad, and I was nearly violently ill several more times. It wasn`t until Yamaguchi-sensei gave me a towel to cover my nose with that I was able to walk into the area.

Once in, it wasn`t so bad, luck would have it that the strongest concentration of gas hovered around near the enterance, and in the area, most of the gas was blown away by the wind. It was actually pretty intersting, walking around. I have never been close to a volcano, let alone near any kind of volcanic activity, having lived in the American Midwest my whole life.

Afterwards, we continued on to our hotel. At the hotel, we were given some free time before dinner, during which most of the people went to the onsen. I had some homework to do, so I missed out on the first round (I had forgotten about a little speech we were supposed to give that night, so I hastily did it). Soon, we all headed to dinner, and I noticed that most of the people were wearing the Yukatas (light summer kimono type things), and reeked very badly of sulphur (or rotten eggs, about the same). Dinner was fairly traditional, consisting of duck sashimi (O.o), fish sashimi, a soup, tofu, salad, and rice.

When we were finished, we headed to the meeting room, there to give our little speeches we had written. The speech was about Information Technologies, and was to be written in Japanese. Consequently, a fairly complicated topic was rendered so hopeless as to be laughable. I mean, how do you explain something with a lot of technical jargon in a language you are learning? Perhaps not the best choice of topics… Anyway, when that was done, we played some group games. The first one was the two-person in one coat game (whatever the name of it was). It`s where teh person in the front puts theirs behind them, and another person behind that person has a coat put over them, and uses their hands to try and make the first person drink tea, or eat pocky or wahtever. I think I nearly suceeded in sticking a piece of Pocky up the guy`s nose ;p

The games were for the most part simple, and rather silly. But I noticed that I grew incresingly bored of them after about forty-five minutes or so. I think the other Americans were getting rather tired of them, and finally I convinced one of the senseis to stop the games so we could go to the onsen. What surprised me was that -everyone- decided to go to the onsen again!

I had been to an onsen before, so knew what to expect, and could relax and enjoy it, despite the sulphur smell. I think we stayed in the onsen for about an hour before heading back upstairs. When I got upstairs, I noticed that noone was in my room at all. Wondering where everyone had gone to, one of the Korean students walked into the room. She told me that everyone was in her room, apparently scraping money together to buy some rather expensive beer from the vending machine. Having nothing better to do, I headed over. We suceeded in getting enough money together to puchase about seven cans of Asahi beer, and Nathan proceeded to teach them a drinking game with cards. Pretty simple really, simple enough that the Koreans understood easily.

Once we managed to get the rules down, we proceeded to play for the better part of an hour. The long and short of it, whoever had the lowest card at the end would drink a glass of beer. It was rather fun, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. By the time I left, I had put down about two cans by myself I think. The girls then decided to head back down to the onsen, so us guys were thinking of heading down as well, and headed back to our rooms to get ready. When I stopped at my room, I walked smack into the middle of another group of Koreans, all guys this time, drinking some beer. So, happy enough to see me, they gave me another big can to drink. You know, one of those 40oz ones. So, we chatted for a while, and had a good time, and by the time we finally were ready to head back down to the onsen, I was feeling the beer I had a little.

Down in the onsen, we basically had the whole onsen to ourselves, which consisted of us three from Platteville. We were probably there for about an hour before heading back up to the rooms. Once I got back to my room, I was tired and fell promptly asleep.

The next morning, I was the first (and only) one up in my room. I got dressed and whatnot, and decided to head out to buy a Coke, where I ran into Yamaguchi-sensei and Chamberlain-sensei, and went with them down to breakfast. The breakfast consisted of pretty much what I was not in the mood for… Fish, natto, eggs, rice, etc… I ate a small salad, some toast, and some juice. Afterwards, we soon headed to Shimabara. There, we visited a Samurai`s house, which was intersting, and went to the top of the volcano. Actually, not quite -the- top, because we didn`t have enough time for me to go on the skycar to the top, but we were close. The volcano had erupted ten years ago, and looking down, you could see where some boulders had been tossed, and where the lava and mud had flown. A little scary.

Next, we went to a restaurant near Shimabara castle for lunch. It was a small lunch, consisting of a soup. When we finished, we headed into the castle. The castle was smaller than Kumamoto, and wasn`t quite as interesting, because it had very little explanations in English. They did have a little radio you could carry with you for explanations, which would have been a neat idea if they had something in Englsih, rather than just Japanese. Oh well.

When we had finished touring Shimabara castle, we headed back to the campus.

Whew, today was another marathon day! On top of that, I think the change in climate gave me a minor cold, so I’m feeling a bit sick.

Today, the JASIN students and several Japanese conversation partners met in the lounge to go sightseeing. I kind of lucked out and got a partner who spoke pretty decent English, because I didn’t really want to have to fight with Japanese today while sightseeing. On top of that, I was rather pleased to see that Krista’s conversation partner was there as well, as I had gotten to know her a little bit from the other day. Nathan’s conversation partner was there as well, who seemed rather interesting as well. Actually, with Nathan’s partner, there’s usually two other girls that follow her, which is alright as they are all pretty funny and interesting people.

So anyway, our first stop was some restaurant’s meeting room with the JASIN students and I think the first year students. One of the first difficulties was getting to know your table’s occupants ^^; They split the JASIN students up and had only one at a table. Now, did I mention this school has a rather high female to male ratio? So, things were a little uncomfortable and confusing. On top of that, this rather tall Japanese girl was at my table who I had seen before. It was the previous day when Matt, Nathan, and I were heading to the cafeteria for lunch. She gave us all long looks and muttered “gaijin da” to her friends when we walked by… So, I wasn’t too sure how to react when I saw her at my table. I think that she actually had a thing for foreigners, judging by how she reacted today. So, I was on edge during the whole time we were there. It would be one thing if she was attractive, but she just wasn’t my type. The other girls were nice enough, one of them speaking decent English the others in lesser degrees.

Next, they had all the JASIN students come up as a group, and had us introduce ourselves. I didn’t really have a problem with saying my introduction, though I was second and had no idea what to say. I found myself being conscious of my accent and wondering how bad it was. It’s something I’ve been thinking of more often now that I actually interact with Japanese people.

After that, we went back to our tables, and played a game. The game being the JASIN students write 2 questions in Japanese and the Japanese students in English, then ask them to other members of our table. After that I didn’t feel quite so bad about my accent! It was interesting to deal with someone who was learning a language too, rather than dealing with someone who was decently fluent in both.

Next , we all headed to another restaurant for lunch. The restaurant was right by Oura Catholic Church, more on that later. The lunch was OK, mainly rice, some meatball dish, a pasta dish, and eggrolls. We had a pretty good time, the JASIN students and our partners joking back and forth. I think I could see myself becoming decent friends with all the Japanese partners there today.

After lunch we headed to Oura Catholic Church. It was kind of a letdown, nothing really special. It was neat because it was so old, but…

We then proceeded to Glover Garden. The plants there were very well kept, and very picturesque. The actual house itself didn’t have much at all on Glover himself though, so I didn’t really learn anything about him. The view was beautiful though. On our way down, we came across a ‘play’, or ‘dance’ I guess be the best way to describe it. I believe it’s Chinese in origin. Essentially, it’s a dance depicting the dragon chasing the moon. The dragon was one of those large paper-ish kind with the fierce head. Hard to describe. It takes like 10 people to manage the dragon . Afterwards, they brought out a smaller version so visitors could try, so almost all of us gaijin were trying it out.

Our groups then split up. The Koreans wet off one way, and the rest of us another. There were four language partners with us Americans, and David. We decided to head to Peace Garden next.

Peace Garden has a definite atmosphere of peace and tranquility to it, with a grim reminder of what prompted it’s construction. It is all beautifully cared for, and has a large fountain spraying water in a dove formation, to signify peace, and also to serve as a offering of water to those who died after the Atomic Bombing for want of clean water, but who had drunk oil-slicked water and were thus poisoned in addition to everything else.

Beyond the fountain are various sculptures wishing for peace, part of the remains of a prison (which was the closest public facility to the blast), and finally the peace statue itself. It was a huge statue of a man sitting with one leg crossed for meditation, one leg ready to get up to help a human in need, one hand raised to the sky in prayer for peace, and the other hand pointing to the threat of nuclear weapons (America). Beautiful but haunting.

Next we went to the Atomic Bomb museum. I was rather surprised that the partners wanted to go with, but then again I wasn’t. I think we’re becoming friends with that group anyway, and I don’t think they minded staying late. I was a little uneasy being an American going to the museum, let alone with Japanese people our age. I had no idea what Japanese people my age thought about the Bombing, and didn’t really want to ask. The fact that they wanted to go with us was an indicator that weren’t holding us responsible anyway.

The museum was very haunting, shocking, depressing, thought provoking, and morbid, all rolled into one. If there was any thought in my mind that nuclear weapons were a necessary evil, they are gone now. The sheer destructive power of that first generation Atomic Bomb is shocking, as is the damage it caused, and the people it killed. I should also mention that at the Epicenter Park just outside the museum there is a sign that shows the ground height before the Bomb, which is four feet higher than it’s current level. The museum was an experience I won’t forget. The awful stares from the generation alive during the Atomic Bombing I also won’t forget, even if it isn’t my generation who dropped the Bomb. To try to describe what I saw wouldn’t do the horror justice. When I saw the Japanese students outside the exhibit, they were all quiet. One of them asked us what we thought of the exhibit. We replied that it was interesting, and horrible, to which Minno, replied “Good. People need to remember the need for peace, so this doesn’t happen again,” to which the other Japanese students nodded solemnly. It’s interesting to see that this generation is completely for peace, and the disarmament of nuclear weapons. It made me feel better with interacting with my generation of Japanese students. It was the question I always wanted answered, but didn’t know how to breech.

After that, everyone returned home, but I hung around the Epicenter for a while. There is a monument erected at the exact Epicenter where the bomb exploded 500 meters above. The grass didn’t seem to grow too well there, judging by the sandy dirt, and patches of laid sod. Just being there, and trying to image the explosion was probably one of the most somber moments of my life.

On my way home I stopped at a CD store I had seen before. I was pleasantly surprised to see it was a discount CD store. It had a lot of American music though… It did have an ok sized Jpop section and an anime section. I bought two Legend of Galactic Heroes CDs, though one seems to be a drama CD… Oh well, the price was good.

When I got back, I told my host family where I had been, and was surprised to find out that my host father had actually been in Nagasaki in the Bombing. He was 5 at the time, in a shelter 1km away, so he survived. And now he’s hosting American students, and has before! I wish all the people of his generation were that way, but that’s a lot to ask for.