Sunday, April 6 - Nagasaki Day 2

Upon waking up we found out that the Akari Hostel does not offer breakfast. We had to go scrounge out our own. Shingo gave us the rundown on how to get to the kite festival before leaving. Vaso and I jumped on a streetcar to the station and decided on the local Royal Host for breakfast. Japan has these things called “family restaurants” which are basically any restaurant you find in America. A menu with a bunch of different things on it, and most importantly a drink bar where you can get all the drinks you want. After we walked into the Royal Host and sat down, our friend Juan from the Hiroshima hostel showed up. We talked a bit, exchanged numbers, and he said he had a plane to catch. Yet another person that we just happen to run into again! Anyway, Vaso and I had pancakes which were actually pretty tasty. For drinkage we both had a ton of orange juice. The machine was full when we got there, and almost empty by the time we finished. I love unlimited drinks!

We asked our friends at the information desk (I say friends because we asked them how to get somewhere every time we came to the station) how to get to the kite festival. They gave us the number of the bus and we were off. The festival was held on top of this giant mountain, which the bus had quite a time climbing up. Even when we got to the bus stop, we still had a ways to climb by foot before reaching the summit.

We saw kites everywhere.



Kids, adults, men, woman, everyone was flying a kite. It was probably the coolest kite related thing I have ever seen. The professionals were battling in the preliminaries for a spot in the final tournament. Now you are probably thinking “kites? Tournament? What?” so let me explain. Kite flying came from the Dutch way back when, and so did this tournament. Basically, the pros use normal, diamond shaped kites with one string and have a one-on-one battle. The trick is that the first 50 feet or so of the string is coated in fiberglass! You literally try to cut your opponents string, sending his or her kite fluttering helplessly to the ground! It is the coolest thing I have ever heard of in the world of kites.



Anyway, Vaso and I wandered around taking in the sights and wondering where we could get our own kites to fly. Out of nowhere this nice old lady shows up and hands us two kits from her bag. She said that they were giving them out at the beginning of the festival for free and grabbed extra to hand out to people. What luck! Free kites! We spent the rest of the day flying, watching the shows they had on the stage, and flying some more. Along the way we got interviewed by a lady from the Japan Times and were told that we would be on American TV sometime. We will see about that. Shingo and Nana showed up a little after 1pm and flew kites with us. They proceeded to give us a ride down the mountain which was really nice of them.



We were dropped off in front of the Glover Skyway. Nana and Shingo said that it would be a good place to spend the rest of the day. We got into this huge elevator that took us up the side of a mountain. At the top we could see where we flew kites from on a nearby mountain. We took the opportunity to get some nice pictures of the city as well. A little further up we came across the Glover Home. This guy Glover started up trade with the port town of Nagasaki in the beginning of the 1900’s. He built his house on the side of a mountain facing the port so that he could oversee all the ships going into and out of the harbor. I guess eventually he became pretty famous and expanded his property towards the bottom of the mountain. The Glover Mansion is home to the first paved road and tennis courts of Japan. He was a pretty influential guy. Vaso and I wandered the grounds checking out all of the buildings. There were apparently a ton of servants for the Glover family and a bunch of guest houses. Some of the guesthouses turned into permanent residences for friends of the family. The compound was huge.



We walked all the way down to the bottom of the mountain. Thereafter we decided to check out the “Sky Ropeway” which was marked on our map. We ended up taking a bus over there. The ropeway is this really cool cable car that takes you up to the biggest mountain in Nagasaki. We hopped on and rode it up. At the top we came across another stunning view of the city. There were some old run-down buildings as well as another 2-person ropeway like thing on one side of the mountain. In the middle there were a couple television broadcast towers. On the other side was a big cylindrical building which you could climb. We of course walked up the stairs and were greeted with the best view in Nagasaki. Vaso and I spent some time trying to fly our kites, but for being on top of a mountain there was hardly any wind. We gave up and descended back down.



I really had high hopes for the skyway, but it was a pretty big letdown. We found out that there is also a small road that leads all the way up the mountain which defeats the purpose of the ropeway. Secondly there were the old abandoned buildings that looked like they used to be restaurants. It was sad because we would have eaten on top had there been any kind of food. Lastly, there simply wasn’t anything there. I feel like the owners had big plans for it, but for some reason the ropeway just didn’t catch on.



We caught a bus back to the station where we went shopping. Vaso ended up buying a pair of shoes. While he was looking I wandered the other stores, kite in hand, while getting a ton of weird looks. We were planning on going back to the hostel and chilling the rest of the night when we stumbled upon a movie theatre. Hey let’s see a movie! We checked the times and concluded that we would be able to return, take a shower, and make it back in time for the movie. That is exactly what we did.

We saw the movie entitled “Mongol”. It was a very odd experience in that the people were all speaking Mongolian and the movie had Japanese subtitles. It felt weird by only having the Japanese link to the movie and no English. I could read enough to understand the general idea of what was going on, but I am sure I missed out on a lot of the juicy details. Anyway, it was pretty, and bloody, and had a lot of running away in it. That night I slept like a log.