I didn't exactly know where the Kunchi Festival was being held at though I'd seen the coverage on TV before I checked out of the hotel. The woman at the front desk said I should head to "Suwa Jinja", but I neglected to ask her precisely where that was. My map would have been a great help except that its Japanese was unflinchingly strict, offering up no furigana for the difficult kanji of temple and shrine names--the translation to that being that there were no training wheels if you weren't able to read the Chinese characters in the first place. Leaving the hotel though I discovered that was all moot because small groups of friends and families were prowling the streets and alleys of Nagasaki all heading in one general direction. Shrugging with a "eh, what the hell" sentiment I filtered into their midst and went with the flow, ending up at Suwa Jinja fifteen minutes later.
This photo doesn't do justice to the utter mass of humanity at Suwa Jinja (way in the background, up the hill). This shrine being carried down stairs must have weighed as much as a compact car.
If Suwa Jinja is impressive enough to warrant a good couple hours to take a peek around, then the area around it is rich enough to fill a day with activities. There are several other smaller shrines and temples, one of which (and whose name I unfortunately can't recall or seem to find on the net) is a Chinese-style Buddhist temple in a sad state of disrepair, but still recognizable under the moss-covered, cracked roof tiles and fading paint as breathtaking. What was even more splendid about this temple was that it lay at the foot of the largest hillside graveyard I found in all the city and those are always a blast to weave through. Heck, who doesn't want to shake out a day's worth of morbid fascination and get some good cardio in? Anyways, also in the are is a WWII era bomb shelter for the mayor and other high-ranking officials, the Nagasaki Prefectural History and Culture Museum, the prefectural library and the Nagasaki City Park. Like I said, a whole day's activity for the sane and patient, neither of which I claim to be...on this day at least.
I'm kicking myself for not getting the name of this Chinese-style Buddhist temple, because it's frankly amazing even in its state of disrepair. The view's not shabby either.
Suwa Jinja was packed to the rafters with people for the festival's opening ceremonies that had actually started a couple hours earlier at 7AM, so I followed one of the many outgoing portable shrines that would be plying the respective neighborhoods of their manufacture and resolved to come back later when things weren't bloody bedlam. I followed the shrine for a block before seeing some shiny bauble and heading off to the northeast, towards Nagasaki University, but again got sidetracked by a sign pointing towards the grave of some Chinese trader. The grave was disappointing, but the path up the hillside graveyard wasn't, taking me through alleys too narrow for cars and up more stairway-laced neighborhoods like the day before, but this morning things seemed more lively. Maybe it was just the neighborhood or the festival atmosphere that made sound and smell explode from each passing house: a piano here, the smell of miso-something-or-other from there, someone practicing trumpet from the third floor above me, TV news blaring from someone's basement. Such life here!
You see this pretty often even in big cities: food or crafts on sale in front of someone's house with nobody but the honor system to ensure people don't just run off with the stuff. In this case we have eggs.
By 11AM I was getting hungry and fiending for some java so I set out to find my favorite van cafe in Shianbashi. Only problem with that was how the twisting stairway climb and graveyard crawl had distorted my sense of direction somewhat. I realize now, in retrospect, that the direction I was traveling in was tens of degrees off as the crow flies from where I wanted to go, but I eventually found my way to a tributary of the Nagasaki River and the charming stone bridges of the equally charming Yahata-machi neighborhood (officially where I would live if I ever end up in Nagasaki), which is the next 'hood over from Shianbashi. Then, guided by the coffee radar in my head and just where I left it last night, there was my sweet little baby blue cafe on wheels, today with more patronage. The more I think about it the more his business plan makes sense: if ever the "hip" area of town moves from Shianbashi he can just pull the chocks out and move with it. Hell, maybe he is what makes the neighborhood cool and the businesses have to pay him not to roll down the road. What a pimp!
The Bridges of Yahata-machi! This area of town has tens of stone bridges over the river, the most famous being the one of the left known as the Megane-bashi, or "Eyeglasses Bridge".
The next five hours are...*sigh*...I don't even want to talk about it, but in the interest of honest disclosure I'll spend one paragraph on it and that's all.
After a flurry of emails describing in greater and greater detail our respective locations as I moved closer, Laura and I finally found each other amongst the crowds and carnival atmosphere of Dejima Harbor. The thing is, she had brought her boyfriend along too. She hadn't told me about that. Now, you're probably jumping to conclusions about where this is going and what I was thinking, but I want to say with the utmost of honesty that I didn't travel this far to meet her here because I expected something to happen, you know? But I was/am put off by this, and I think understandably, because who the hell wants to sit on a bus three hours to be in Nagasaki as someone's third-wheel? I wanted to excuse myself, I should have excused myself, but by the time it dawned on me, I had stupidly put my bag in their locker at the bus station to relieve the burden of lugging it around. Then, what I had seen in forty-five minutes in the morning, I ended up retracing with them for three hours. OK, 'nuff said, moving on...
Other than my five minute streetcar foray to Nagasaki Medical University I hadn't touched the ever present vintage trains that criss cross the city, much to my chagrin. So I hatched a simple plan: ride every line end to end and see what you find at each final destination. From Ishibashi to Hotarujaya, Nishiura to Shokakujishita, I rode all four lines in about one hour, surprisingly. In some places the streetcars move much slower than auto traffic, in others quicker, but everywhere we went I was happy to have already walked there (except for Nishiura in the far north) and gotten to know the neighborhood more intimately--the glass may be a centimeter thin, but the gap of knowledge is infinite.
One of the food stalls in front of Chinatown, on the river. The "Boss" had left by this point and the guy on the left isn't blowing his nose, he's intentionally covering his face. C'mon! Ham it up!
Now it was getting on evening and earlier, at Dejima Harbor, I happened to run into a handful of other JETs from Oita and they kindly invited me along to their big night out. Serena, Candice, Shawn, Shane, Kate and...someone else whose name escapes me, unfortunately...met me at the Shianbashi Starbucks where we departed for dinner in an overpriced, gaudy Chinatown restaurant. However, unlike ANY Chinatown-like neighborhood in America the ones in Japan apparently close down at 8:30PM for some reason and our plans were dashed. The group was getting restless and though I would have loved to suggest one of the scummy yakitori shops or yatai stands from yesterday this was not an assembly that would universally accept such things, fun as they are. It's fine though, we found decent, cheap eats, a pool n' darts bar and got down to some serious drinking and some seriously bad games of billiards. I had to leave by eleven though because of the hotel I was staying at tonight after losing my spot at the previous night's establishment. The place I found for Sunday night was called--seriously--The Nagasaki Guest Houth (sic) and they had a strict doors-closed policy at midnight. So if you have a room and you're out until one, tough luck.
I gave myself an hour to get back though the hotel was only a fifteen minute walk from Shianbashi, just in case of...who knows. Glad I did though because I had two interesting experiences on the way. First was in the enigmatic neighborhood Sakura-machi where high rise offices and condos rise in a ring around several square blocks of what can only be described as dilapidated commercial/residential tenements. At 11:15PM the area was utterly deserted except for me and several feral cats, which is why when a gale wind materialized out of nowhere in this obvious wind bowl and surrounded by rusting sheet metal buildings, spider web-obscured sodium lamps and flying styrofoam bits I freaked the fuck out. This was pure horror movie set up for the scene when the guy wearing a patchwork mask made from the skin of his victims jumps out and shivs me with a sharpened bone knife. Very weird. I cheesed it immediately and found a bar-ish place with no seats that had a special deal of snack and beer combo for only $5.00 J-bucks. A better deal I had not seen in all of Nagasaki, but what really sealed the deal is the owner was showing the Imola MotoGP race live on his walll-mounted plasma screen and Noriyuki Haga, Aprilia's old WSB racer, was in third place! That guy has really moved up in the world and I'm feeling like a pretentious indie band groupie who says things like "well I liked him way back when...", which in this case would end in "...when he sucked and cost his sponsors millions in crashes and lost races." All of which is true, I guess. Anyways, keep moving ahead, Nitro Nori.
I slept like shit at the Guest Houth and I don't think I'll be going back there ever again. My bus left at the unreasonably early hour of 7AM, but I still had enough time to raid Trandor for cheese toast and Family Mart for canned coffee and "vitamin drinks". I slept most of the rainy ride home much better than I slept earlier that morning and nearly missed my stop in Kusu.
Reflecting on the trip now and when I stepped off the bus, though I jumped in with no preparation and paid for it in anxiety, and though the meeting with my friend didn't pan out well, Nagasaki broke through it all with its wonder, heritage and personality to be the best weekend I've yet spent this time in Japan. I haven't mentioned, you know, The Bomb in any of these posts and I don't intend to now as it would take much too long, except to say that as an American the feeling of what happened is ceaseless in the subconscious and one looks around measuring every neighborhood by which structures survived, which had to be rebuilt and which are entirely new.
And now a word of warning, folks: if I had it all to do over again, considering the ground I covered in two days, I would have done anything, ANYTHING, for a bicycle. Even if I had to steal it. Tallying up both days' walking, subtracting the hour on the streetcar, the three hours I spent in restaurants/food stalls/van cafes and the hour I spent napping on Mt. Inasa. I was on my feet and moving for a cumulative total of twenty-plus hours Saturday and Sunday. Ouch. Trust me. Ouch.
--Matt
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment