Nagasaki Day 3

On day 3, Banshee and I toured the foreign entities in Nagasaki. Our first stop was Deijima wharf.

Deijima Wharf is an artificial island built to contain the Portuguese and Dutch merchants that imported goods into Japan.




Because it is an island, it is sectioned off from the rest of the city. Deijima Wharf’s most active period coincided with the height of Japan’s heavy isolationist policies. The city of Nagasaki has recreated Deijima Wharf and it has become a popular tourist attraction in Japan.






The next stop on our tour of foreign influence in Nagasaki was Glover Garden. Here is a nice description of Glover Garden from its official site:



“Thomas Blake Glover, who travelled across the sea from distant Scotland, built his home here on Minami-Yamate hill in 1863. At that time, the town of Nagasaki was brimming with the enthusiasm of those dreaming of a new dawn for Japan.
　The merchants of the foreign country who have embraced the dream from other side of the sea, the patriots at the end of the Edo period who fervently aspired to overthrow the Shogunate, and the young men of Japan who aimed to learn the study of the West.
　More than a century later, mementoes of when the Glover family lived here survive unchanged, along with the residences of the traders who loved Nagasaki and made their homes here.”




Glover garden is a VERY LARGE garden built to enshrine the memory of Blake Glover. His various real estate lodgings are all well preserved. Inside these houses, they were pictures of several foreign families and recreations of their living and bedrooms. Lovely gardens and fountains surround the park as well.

There is even a museum dedicated to “Madame Butterfly” presumably because the opera takes place in Nagasaki. Everything in this museum is in Japanese, so we moved through it quickly.




The bottom of Glover Garden has an exhibit dedicated to a famous festival in Nagasaki called “Nagasaki Kunchi” that takes place every year in October. These parade floats are stunning. The exhibit displayed videos of the floats and wild dances that are associated. I would love go to this festival!

It took a few hours to move through Glover Garden, so afterwards we rested at the hostel. For dinner, I ate more toruko rice. Yum.

Funny picture time: