nagasaki kunchi

went to nagasaki over the weekend for kunchi festival. grand festival for the god ujigamisama - god of nagasaki's suwa shrine. while we were there we decided to check out the peace park. this is a rememberance park for the atomic bomb dropped over nagasaki. happened around the same time as hiroshima, although not quite as well known, still devastating.

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memorial at peace park - hand up represesnts threat of atomic weapons, hand across represents peace

abish standing near "ground level at time of atomic bombing"

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after the peace park we met up with some workmates of abishs, went out to dinner and had a couple of drinks with them... time passed by very quickly and all of a sudden its 12:50am, the hotel that we were staying at had a curfew of 1am can you believe that? decision time; do we go back for an early evening or stay out the whole night? we decided to stick it out. headed to karaoke for a couple of hours then found a cute bar to chill... got kicked out of there around 5am, were on our way to find something to eat and realised the final day of festival was already starting up - this is like 5:30 or something crazy! - quickly grabbed something to eat and with no time to sleep picked up our bags from the hotel and headed to suwa shrine.

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left to right: jess, tamara and sarah at a cute bar

monday morning at temple... end of kunchi

traditional dancers

infront of temple

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took us a while but finally figured we needed tickets to get past the gate of the shrine... we thought for a second should we be stupid geijin?? - geijin = foreigner in japanese - and just gap it up the stairs?? "hmm no guess we should purchase the tickets."

after the closing of the festival we went to catch what was the worst train ride ever back home.