NHK Day

NHK is the national television station for Japan. Anyway, a couple weeks ago they had a day in dedication to themselves. I'm not really sure what the purpose behind the event was, whether anniversary or whatever. Regardless, I went with a group of people set on watching some fireworks. There was a stage occupied by various Jpop performers, and a tent full of NHK related stuff including news desks for people to sit at and get their picture taken, etc.

It's difficult to take good pictures of fireworks.

Anyway, my key fell out of my pocket while there (thus barring me from my apartment...), so I returned the next morning to look for it and ask the koban (police box) if they had it. They didn't. Regardless, I took some pictures of the port since I still had my camera on me.


A week or so later, I returned to the port-side park for a picnic. This date coincided with the seeing off of a Japanese Navy vessel:

佐世保

Well the beginning of May was Golden Week, a time for vacation in Japan when a bunch of holidays occur concurrently or within a short period of each other. I got the 4-6th of May off, so it wasn't exactly a week for me. Anyway, during this time I went on a short day trip to Sasebo with a friend and his host family. Sasebo is a city about an hour and a half away from Nagasaki, but traffic was backed up on the way, so it took a little longer than that. The population is about 1/2 the size of Nagasaki. We went through the excessively long shopping strip, a park, and ate Sasebo burgers (which are burgers with all the toppings plus an egg). Delicious. Sasebo holds one of the U.S. Navy bases which, as I'm told, sells American food and has a Taco Bell. Despite the military base, it was still quite surprising to see so many foreigners there.

Some pictures taken from the inside of a moving vehicle:

En route:


The shipyard:

帆船祭り

The end of April (23-27) was marked by the Nagasaki Tall Ships festival, which was the 10th anniversary of the festival. The purpose of this festival is to celebrate when Nagasaki's port was re-opened for international trade. Most of the sailboats were from Japan, but there were ones that travelled from Korea and Russia as well. The festival was accompanied by food stands, rides on the ships, and an extensive fireworks show. After dark, the ships were all lit up like giant Christmas trees. Below is the 海王丸 (Kaiwomaru), which is used for sea training.