We are on a Princess tour today as we really want to see some things in detail.

The Diamond Princess was built in Nagasaki at the Mitsubishi Shipyard in 2004.

We do the usual meet in the Wheelhouse bar, get our tour stickers and wait for immigration. Surprisingly this is a much quicker process than in China yesterday. We are on our coach within 15 minutes and have an excellent guide called Fumiko, who speaks very clear English.

Fumiko gave us a lot of the history of Nagasaki from the Portuguese in 1570 to the Dutch 200 years later and told us about the Buddhists who have become Christians who had to go underground when the Dutch came.

In 1853 the US asked Japan to open up to the world and this happened in 1859.

The current population of Nagasaki is 440,000.

Our first stop is the Atomic Bomb Museum. This was very confronting. Paul and I bought the head set guided tour which was great. All our fellow passengers were reading every display but while on holidays I found the sound tour much better ( it cost us $3Au each).

Some of the displays were quite graphic and I found the stories of the school children really pulled at my heart. To think those children left home, went to school and never returned was quite depressing. And the hospital centre was near ground zero so when people were waiting for support it didn’t come as the doctors and nurses were just as badly affected as everyone else. I also realised that if this had happened in Australia it would have been recess. ( 9th August 1945 at 11.02 am).

After viewing the Museum we went down to Ground Zero. Every year they update the statistics of how many people have died from the atomic bomb. So as the elderly, who survived the initial blast pass away, if it is cancer related etc, they add them the number which is displayed on the box (coffin) at Ground Zero.

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Next we went to the Peace Park. This was great. I didn’t realise what an international feature it was. Many nations have donated statues/sculptures to represent their image of PEACE. The most recent is was from New Zealand in 2005. We wondered why Australia was not represented and thought this would be a good news story for Julia to be involved in. But there must be a reason. We thought, perhaps it’s because of the whaling in our waters and this may make it a political hot potato. Do any of you know why we haven’t done this?
The main statue at the Peace Park is a large man. His right arm and index finger points skyward (pointing to the sky warning of the potential threat of nuclear war), his left arm is outstretched, seeking peace and sheltering the victims. His left leg/foot is firmly on the ground representing confidence and moving forward and that humanity should support humanity. His right leg is bent in a Buddha pose representing reflection.

We also met a survivor who is now 82 years old. He was a 14 year old working in the munitions factory in 1945 and his boss sent him to a storeroom to get something. This order saved his life as he wasn’t in direct line of the blast. He comes to the Peace Park every day to welcome visitors and pay respect to those who died. He spends his days being photographed by and with visitors.

I was unaware that there was a POW camp close to the bomb blast site so our guide told us of all the allied nations that also lost people on that day.

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Our trip finished with a city tour and we decided to stay in town to shop, rather than returning to the ship. We wandered through China Town and down to the large shopping complex. This was the cleanest China Town I have ever seen and as we walked the streets close to the shopping centre everything was spotless. We did a bit of shopping, then decided to try our luck with a Japanese lunch. Neither of us are into Sushi so we close one that served tempura. We walked downstairs to a restaurant and there was a queue (of Japanese.) so we thought this is good – eat where the locals eat. Paul had to write his name on the list and we waited near the fish pond – very relaxing! The hostess knew to come to us as Paul’s name was the only non Japanese one recorded.
We had tempura battered prawns and vegetables, chicken and salads. Very nice… and cost about $20Au.

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We then caught the tram to back to the ship – this cost 120 Yen each. This was a great experience and there ended up being lost of crew members on the same tram.