Nagasaki

So I live about 20 minutes away from Nagasaki. I went in today with my host sister to see the history museum and the A-bomb memorial as well. It was super hot going over there (37 degrees celcius) and it was still super hot and humid the whole day through. Luckily though, most of our time was spent in air-conditioned buildings.

We went to the museum first, which had an exhibit on some dutch dude's book of fish from olden times. It had a bunch of weird models of Edo period monsters and mermaid mummies which I forgot to take pictures of, but I did remember to nag a picture of this:

Chub Mackarel. What a fucking name. If I had a pet fish, it would be a Chub. Anway. The fish were pretty cool I guess. I mean, as cool as fish can be. The museum also had another section with stuff about historical Nagasaki which was cool to learn about. If you guys had taken East Asian Studies, more commonly known as China-Japan with the infamous Chi-An Lin, you would know that Nagasaki was the first Japanese port open to foreigners and the only way into the country during the period of isolation. That's pretty much what I got from this museum exhibit except that there were also pictures and dioramas and models, such as my friend up top of the post here. I forget what she does, but she looks like an idiot so I took a picture.

The museum also had a tortise shell jewelry shop on the grounds where they were making jewelry on site. We went in to watch the guy do his work and ended up in a conversation with him where he showed us various objects made of tortoise shell and told us how much they were. Everything was ridiculously expensive, and he said that if we were in Tokyo, we could expect to pay triple what it cost here. For example, there was a hairpiece that cost about $2,000 USD, and in Tokyo it would probably be more than $7,000. That was ridiculous also there was this:

Does that look like it's worth a million bucks? Well it's worth eight. That is too much. Where the hell are they going to find a buyer for that? Who goes into a store and says to themself "Yes. Yes I do want to spend eight million dollars on a boat that has a piece of coral stuck in it and can't even float"? Well anyway. They also had a guitar pick there for 1000 yen and I was thinking of getting it for Matt but then I realised how stupid that was. Aren't guitar picks like a dollar? The guy said that they sound really good, but ten dollars for a guitar pick is too much. I'll get you dudes better stuff than that. Or maybe I'll just get the boat and you guys can all share.

After the museum we went to the Peace Park which had a huge statue representing peace. According to the Japanese, peace is a big dude with longish hair and a face that looks too small in comparison to his body and head. The Peace Park had a bunch of statues that various countries had sent over. The hypocenter was nearby as well. The memorial there was an obelisk that stood in the middle of a circular court. I thought it looked pretty nice because all the bricks in the entire surrounding park pointed inward towards the hypocenter which made for a nice effect. The memorial was also nice but I want to talk about the TV programming I am currently watching so we'll cut that short. I understand that could possibly be one of the most offensive things anyone could do, but I think I'm making the right choice.

Alright yeah the TV shows here are amazing. The show I just watched was basically a bunch of guys standing over the grating of a subway ventillation duct and listening to the subway passing by. They all really seemed to enjoy it. At least, enough to spend the entire episode of their show doing it over and over again (I gotta try it). After the first time they came up with a bunch of stuff to better listen to the subway, including using flags to determine when the train was coming and using PVC pipes as a way to listen in and cut out ambient noise. They even went to the point of getting headphones and a boom mic to get a better sound. Then they got a map of the subway system and used it to follow the train around town. It was fantastic.

Now I'm watching what seems to be the Japanese response to Sealab 2021. It's a bunch of old cartoon characters who are sent out on missions or something. I dunno exactly what it is. But what I do know is they got a baseball pitcher (for reals, not cartoon) to throw a spoon and then they measured how far it went. This is Japanese TV.