Big Adventures, Little World

An early start was in order as we decided that returning to the hostel for some R&R during the middle, and hottest, part of the day was best. We were heading to Dejima, which was once a man made island, but had since be reconnected to the rest of Japan but is in the process of being restored to its early 19th century form.

Dejima is about 15000 square metres and was originally developed as a place to keep the Dutch and curb their effects on the rest of Japan. It has many buildings that have been restored to how they used to be, along with objects and other history strewed around in buildings around the island. It now also features and Adelaide, Australia Koala Bear on one of the ropes holding up a giant flagpole. (Well at least it did when we left the place).

It was so interesting wandering around, reading all the information from how the island was created, to how it was run, what operated on the island, and tools and objects they used, that before we knew it, a few hours had passed. It took a lot longer than we had expected, but we weren’t complaining at all, it was worth every minute of it.

We decided to walk out towards the beach in search of the dragon boats festival that was going on, and eventually, and somewhat unintentionally we stumbled upon it. We had heard drumming so followed that, to what we found out was what we were looking for. A little disappointing though, as none of the boats actually looked like dragons as I expected, or even had dragons painted on the side. We sat by the water and watched as occasionally a team would row out to a random spot, wait a while, maybe row some more, then come back. We were confused. All I wanted was a race, was that too much to ask? I didn’t think so, but apparently eeryone else did, as I didn’t get my wish. So we moved on.

Back at Nagasaki Station, we slowl ventured around the shopping mall to kill some time, before getting an early dinner, then upstairs to the cinemas to see The Dark Knight. The previews and ads before the movie were in Japanese, but I’m pretty sure I got the tanslations right just from the pictures. One being “you’re not allowed to replace your head with a camera.” Thankfully the movie was in English, and all I had to do was put up with the annoying Japanese subtitles. Oh yeah, the movie was amazing, it had it all, with Belinda not being able to take her hand away from her mouth the whole movie! Not only did the movie have it all, but so did we, with Mister Donut donuts, caramel popcorn AND salted popcorn, and not to forget, some melon soda to top it off. Oh the life of the unemployed…