Visiting Nagasaki/ Carlos Pueblo

Visiting Nagasaki/ Carlos Pueblo

From Kagoshima to Nagasaki, I have to transferred to an express train at

Shin-Tosu Station and once inside Kyushu Shingansen stops on every big

station from Hakada to Kagoshima. It takes about 3 ½ hours to make it

for the trip. My time in the northern Kyushu was very limited; therefore, I

still always walked to have my visit. I selected the direction of Dutch

settlement, the old town area instead of the Peace Park, the nuclear

explosion area. There was an uniform high school student excused himself

for helping me to read the map when the street light turned green, yet he

did inform through his cell phone for another kid in another group to catch

up with me to make sure I got the help. This is one reason why I have been

very impressed with Japanese good manners, a sign of the excellent home

and school education. I walked along the harbor, walking up to an elevated

platform to observe the harbor, passing by a beautiful market, a pretty park,

toward a huge cruise ship called Quantum of the Seas, after I saw the Hong

Kong Shanghai Bank Museum I knew that I was near to the destination.

The old British Consulate building was under re-innovation. This is the famous

Oura Machi with the Oura Church, the Confucius Shrine and the Chinese

Historical Museum etc., and the Dutch Slope, the old Dutch settlement. The

Slope means on the hill where I have walked from place to place. In 1541,

Nagasaki received the first visit of Portuguese ship, then Catholic and trading

ships attached and Spaniards joined, then British and Dutch followed. The

Shuganate allowed them settling in this area. Nagasaki was one of the three

Ports, Hakodate, Yokohama, and Nagasaki designated for foreign trade. There

Is a very pretty women university on the slope called Kwassui Women’s

University, Kwassui is the living water from the Bible I guess.

From the women’s university campus, I walked into the old Chinese settlement.

There is a popular local goddess temple, Martsu  a sea goddess in the Formosan

Straight, a Fuchien Club house built like a temple with Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s statue

inside the court yard. I was lost while attempting to locate another building and

walking into a new Chinatown with a lot of lanterns, a lantern festival I guessed.

The new Chinatown is busier than the old one. Chinese immigrants were very

Noticeable during those days almost reached 1/3 of Nagasaki population.

I did my gifts shopping at the station with a great help of a sale lady. I tried to

buy a famous Castella cake as introduced, a Portuguese left over yet she didn’t

know what I was talking. I think that is a sponge cake which we also have had

during the Japanese era in Taiwan.