Ukumillion.com » Nagasaki

Soufuku Temple (Soufuku-ji)

Murray — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 07:30:57 +0000

The last place we visited in Nagasaki was Soufuku-ji. This is a temple that was built by a Chinese monk in 1692. Two of the buildings have been designated as national treasures.

Here are a few pictures of the grounds:

Confucius Shrine (Koushi-byo)

Murray — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:32:28 +0000

We also visited Confucius Shrine (Kyoushi-byo) – it is the only shrine dedicated to Confucius outside of China that was built by Chinese. The original shrine was built in 1893 but was destroyed by the bombings of the Second World War. The shrine was completed renovated in 1982.

Here is a view of the courtyard…

Originally, there were 72 statues in the courtyard. Each statue represents one of the 72 followers of Confucius.

A 73rd follower has appeared?

There is also a quite nice exhibit of old, expensive pottery. Like most museums, you can’t take photos – but the pottery was impressive (but what do I really know about antique Chinese pottery?) For your viewing pleasure, I borrowed a couple of photos from a pdf I downloaded for the shrine’s website (Japanese only).

Isn’t it lovely? (Note the peony-lotus-arabesque design)

Yet another exquisite piece… (the ever-popular dragon and phoenix design)

My favourite plate – the exotic yet somewhat familiar 9 peaches design.

Nagasaki Kakuni Manju

Murray — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 06:49:13 +0000

While siteseeing in Nagasaki, we had a wonderful local food – Nagasaki Kakuni Manju. Basically, it is a bun with a very fatty chunk of BBQ’d pork inside. It was around 350 yen, but it was worth it. Yummy!

While riding the bus on the way to the airport, some people were eating them. I was envious! In the airport, we each had another one! Next time you are visiting Nagasaki, please get me a souvenir.

Huis Ten Bosch

Murray — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 04:09:30 +0000

For our 6th wedding anniversary, we decided that we’d travel domestically because there are many places in Japan that we haven’t been to yet. We chose to take a one-night trip to Nagasaki – in particular, we were interested in visiting Huis Ten Bosch – the 152 hectare “European resort of flowers”.

(this image was borrowed from the park’s homepage)

We enjoy taking pictures of flowers, so we thought that this would be a nice place to visit. We weren’t sure what to expect, but I had a slight suspicion that the park would be filled with senior citizens looking at flowers wilting in the summer heat…

As expected, the park is enormous. Many people rent bicycles, tandem-bicycles and even this monster bicycle:

Yes, a bicycle for 6 – room for 4 adults and 2 babies. I’m sure the average family visiting the park needs one of these!

We opted for a more exotic form of transportation:

That’s right – Segway Personal Transporters. To be specific, these are i2 models – a mere $4,500 at your local Sam’s Club. We did a one-hour tour of the park – the first 15 or 20 minutes consisted of orientation / practice and the remainder of the time we cruised around part of the park. Great fun – I highly recommend trying one. Next time we visit Oahu, we might just take the Segway tour of Waikiki.

Here are a couple of pictures at the park:

As expected, there are lots of “museums” in the park. There is a trick painting/photo museum. We enjoyed looking at the paintings but didn’t take many pictures actually. Here’s a fun illusion:

Great fun! We also enjoyed the attractions. Of course, taking pictures in the attractions is prohibited, but in my next post about Huis Ten Bosch, I’ll describe our favourite two attractions.