This morning I woke up to an announcement “Man Overboard”.
I got outside as quick as I could and noticed the pilot vessel was already alongside and land was nearby. I set up my GoPro for a time lapse.
The ship was bobbing in the water for a while while the doctors on the ship attended to the injured person.
The captain announced we were waiting for another pilot, but eventually the ship got permission to follow a tug without a pilot.
As the ship entered Nagasaki it passed under yet another bridge. It didn’t seem as close as the one in Busan yesterday. The ship turned around to dock about on time.
There was an ambulance and police at the port when we arrived. When the ambulance left I heard once of the crew mentioning that the injured person wasn’t in it. A minivan backed up and the crew carried out a body (in a bag) with a bag of what I assumed were clothes. I assumed it was the pilot, but people do die on cruise ships, so it could have been someone else.
Today’s port guide:
Today’s onboard activities:
After waiting a while longer we were allowed to go ashore around 8:50 AM. Because we were reentering Japan I needed to provide a landing card and customs form. My reward was another landing permission QR code with Nagasaki on it.
From here I made a bad decision by purchasing an all day pass on the tram for 600 Yen. I could have just used my IC card because the day was shorter than expected.
Rather than switching trams I walked 10 minutes to get the correct one to visit the atomic bomb museum.
I arrived to the Nagasaki Peace Museum and the entrance had a string of a thousand origami paper cranes.
The entrance fee for the Atomic Bomb Museum was only 200 Yen and the audio guide was 157 Yen. I spent about 2 hours in the museum.
One of the first exhibits is a clock that was destroyed during the blast yet still showing the time of the blast – 11:02 AM.
I didn’t take pictures of the charred people shown in the pictures. The museum was very good at displaying the destruction caused. It was also not political at all with the exception of calling for the ban of the devices. There were exhibits showing melted glass bottles, shadows caused by plants in front of a fence, the facade of the remains of the Urakami Church, and a model of the fat man bomb.
It’s horrible that the bombing took place, but if you rewrote history and didn’t use the bombs in 1945 when they were still relatively small one could only imagine the horrors that would have taken place in Korea, Vietnam or other wars when the bombs went from being rated in kilotons to megatons.
To see some of the exhibits from the museum with actual descriptions please click the link below. The museum has them in many different languages, including English.
I briefly visited the memorial hall next to the museum. It was nice, but not really worth visiting if you are on a short timeline.
From here I went to the rooftop garden, which again wasn’t worth the trouble.
Next I walked across the street to visit the hypocenter. There were a few sculptures / statues and a lot of paper origami cranes (if you couldn’t tell what the colored things in the plastic where because it took me a while to figure it out).
The hypocenter had a bunch of concentric circles around what looked like a casket. There was also a section of the remains of the Urakami Church (relocated).
From here I walked to peace park. At the base were tunnels used as a bomb shelter.
There are escalators to go up the hill which made the visit easier. I took some pictures of the sculptures and the peace bell.
In the park was the remains of the foundation of the prison.
I took the tram back to the station I got on at – #31, Chinatown.
I quickly visited the Dejima museum where there used to be a Dutch East Indies trading port.
The cost was 520 Yen and although it had interesting history I could have done without visiting it. I only had an hour to visit to be able to return to the ship in time.
After the quick visit I hiked back to the port around the seaside park. There was some kind of festival ongoing for the boys day holiday, but I didn’t have time to investigate.
I made it back with about 15 minutes to spare.
I set up the GoPro on the back of the ship this time so I could get the city and the bridge.
Before the ship left the captain made an announcement that the Nagasaki harbor pilot was in fact the man overboard and that he was retrieved by the ship’s fast rescue craft, but they were unable to save him. No details as to what happened.
I ordered a colortini and some food and enjoyed the sailaway.
I skipped dinner at the main dining room as the menu was not thrilling.
I took a picture in the atrium with the carp flags as today was the last day of the golden week holiday.
Today’s timeline:
