Tag Archives: museum

Nagasaki: talks about peace and nuclear weapons

Posing in front of the peace statue
Posing in front of the peace statue

Today we went to Nagasaki where we then visited the Peace-Museum. At about 8:30 in the morning near the Omura station, we waited for everyone to arrive. Soon after, we all boarded the train to Nagasaki. The ride took about one hour but the time flew when we were talking to each other and planning what we were doing during the free time this afternoon.

At the Nagasaki Station we all got our day-passes for the tram and then proceeded in direction of the Peace-Museum. It went a little uphill until we arrived there. After a quick explanation we then entered the museum. Greeted by stones and wall pieces where we listened to the televisions showing different kinds of documentations from the day the atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki. After our little tour seeing all the sad, interesting things we then met an atomic bomb survivor who was telling us about his experience on said day.

After the speech we gave him of course a Thank you card and then left the museum. Hungry, we went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch, afterwards we made our way to the peace garden by tram and then by foot. Taking a group photo in front of the “Peace-statue”. A few stairs even higher we visited an old school that had a strong history connecting it with the atomic bomb.

The afternoon came and we had our 3 hours of free time. People continued by going to the places they wanted to see and/or by shopping in the station mall. I went for small shopping tour followed by drinking something in that hot weather and then going to the Shiru Shrine with a small group.

At 18:00 free-time was over and we were all meeting again in front of the station. 20 minutes after, our train left with another hour back to Omura, where we had a quick wrap-up and then returned to our host-families.

Jean-Michel Vandervoeren
Luxembourg

Natural disasters and fireworks; what a perfect host family day!

Host family day is always a fun day! As my host family had already noticed that I was quite tired after a week of many exciting activities, they told me that we wouldn’t start the day until closer to 9, so it was ok for me to sleep past the usual time of 7, which I found very satisfying. Breakfast was served in the traditional Japanese way of delicious, and once the full family of four (counting myself) were ready for adventure, we departed for the local museum of natural disasters!

At the museum I gloriously failed a quiz on how to react during an earthquake, and managed to bleed some nosebleed during a fire evacuation drill, which really impressed the group of Japanese people I was getting a tour with. In addition, I got to experience an earthquake simulation of how a scale 6 earthquake would have been, which was fairly terrifying. We also went into a rain chamber to get a feel for how it is to stand in 30 m/s winds and 30mm/h rain, which doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that the winds of a typhoon are twice that strength, it puts things into perspective.

Once we finally finished at the museum, we moved on to the Buddhist temple Shibamata Taishakuten in Tokyo, which is surrounded by very touristy shops. The temple itself had a very nice garden behind the main building, which was only overshadowed by the amazing wood carvings surrounding the temple. The last part of the day was dedicated purely to watching the awesome Japanese fireworks display, which was a really good finish for the day! Relaxing and interesting all the way to the end, and I could not have asked for anything better.

Simen Solum (Norway)