Nagasaki Prefectural Orientation: Never-ending Party Off-the-island. Part 1.

Last weekend was the Nagasaki Prefectural Orientation and my first trip off the island since arrival. It was a wonderful 3 days of city life and daily consumption of sumptuous Baskin-Robbins ice cream.

My plane left from Izuhara around noon, so I left the apartment around 9 to arrive with time to spare. It still took me around 2 hours to drive from Hitakatsu to Izuhara, but it felt like I was flying around the mountain curves with more ease than my last trip.

Arriving Thursday afternoon, the other Tsushima JET newbies and I checked into our hotel and went to a covered shopping arcade. I nearly cried when I saw the 24-hour McDonald's. While I very rarely indulge in its fat-dripping offerings in the states, here in Japan McD's is like a big of home transplanted. A Big Mac here tastes just like a Big Mac at home, and for a few blissful moments I can pretend to be anywhere in America, as long as the secret sauce lolls about my mouth. Add to that the fact that I can only get it while on the mainland... well, that's a good set-up for McDonald's obsession and consumption. It's not that I'm homesick or want to be home in America. It's just that the daily effort of getting around using Japanese can be draining, and the food is fairly foreign, so something exactly like it is at home that I can order in English is a blessing. I am glad to report that I am not the only American who feels this way or even the only expatriot. During the lunch break at orientation, one of other island girls from New Zealand made a bee-line for McDonald's and ordered a Mega Mac-- yes, that's a double Big Mac-- and we had a stimulating discussion about how we'd almost never considering eating such things at home.

We ended up at a small hole-in-the-wall bar for dinner Thursday night, after Rose and I snuck off for Baskin Robbin's (oh my goodness the chocolate-banana crepe... mmmm), which had pretty decent pizza if you can ignore the mayonnaise sauce. Actually, I think it's pretty good, but I had a hankering for authentic American food after seeing the golden arches, so I imagined the mayo sauce away.

Friday saw the dawn of orientation, which was pretty much like Tokyo orientation but smaller-- and, as the JETs who were helping run it said, they had to repeat stuff from Tokyo. It was nice to meet up with the Nagasaki JETs I hadn't seen in awhile, though, especially the other islanders. You've got to bond when someone from a smaller island than yours is going to skip the evening bar-hopping festivities in favor of buying toilet paper (which, according to her, was too expensive to imagine on the island. I guess they can get away with jacking the prices up incredibly because people still have to buy it.)

I went to a few post-orientation get-togethers, including a tabe/nomihodai (all-you-can-eat/all-you-can-drink) dinner at a hotel which had delectable cheesy potatoes. I know, they're really pommes des terre au gratin, or something like that, but let's call them what they are. Cheesy potatoes. And yes, for all of my family who knows me too well and must be wondering, I found some ketchup to go with them. Japan has a sad lack of cheese, aside from the dairyland of Hokkaido, and Tsushima is no exception.

I should make a checklist for future mainland visits. It would go something like this:

--Get a Big Mac.
--Make time for your daily Baskin-Robbins.
--If cheese is to be had, go out of your way to get it.
--Try the local delicacy if it sounds at all edible.
--Definetely try the local soft-serve ice cream flavor. If there isn't one, get matcha.
--If there's a handicraft place, go and make something, however ridiculous.
--Buy stationary.
--Ride on a train if possible.
--Hop in a scenic onsen if one is available and it's not too hot. Climb a mountain if necessary.
--Try to get to a high point in the region or surrounding wilderness and take scenic pictures.
--Go to at least one historic place and take tons of photos so no one knows what you were really doing the rest of the time... which is, mostly, searching out food, eating it, and trying to burn off the calories.

... if you can't guess from my list, on Saturday I went to a bunch of historic places in Nagasaki City ^^ The focus of the morning was the Nagasaki Peace Park and atomic bomb museum area. I really wanted to see everything there was to see, perhaps to assuage some of the guilt I have walking around a city that was obliterated ~60 years ago by my country and wondering, every time I pass an old man or woman, if they lived near Nagasaki during the war. But I couldn't do it. The peace park was fine; there was an assortment of statues from Japan and other countries, all dedicated to the ideals of peace:

... which was all fine and good. However, Ground Zero, the spot above which the bomb exploded and was a source of suffering for so many, was filled with too much residual energy. The black tower marks its exact location:

... after that, I wandered into a memorial hall with a couple of the other ALTs, but we ended up skipping the museum. Having been to Hiroshima, I knew it would probably be fairly graphic, and I wasn't up for it after the heaviness of what we'd already seen.

(... to be continued in Nagasaki, Part II...)