Feb 25 - Utada Hikaru

Well, today was my last full day in Japan. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, it's off to the airport to fly back to Shanghai, then into work. Boo.

European houses with Japanese detail on Holland Slope

It wasn't such an eventful day, actually. We got an early start cause Rei had to leave early and there were still a couple of things we wanted to see. Yesterday we went to Dejima, which was the only place in Japan that was open during the isolation era. But once isolation ended in the mid-19th century, there were still only 3 ports open to the rest of the world: Nagasaki, Hakodate and Yokohama. So the European influence here is pretty strong, and because of the history with Dejima everything is still Dutch heavy.

We started out in a part of town called Holland Slope, which was the center of the European neighborhood post-isolation. There's more buildings similar to what we saw on Dejima, mostly Japanese in style with European embellishments, but then you also start to see some more European buildings as well. Whereas on Dejima it was Japanese homes with European details, it's European homes with Japanese details here, like roofs and fences in Japanese style.

The Glover House in Glover Park

Then we kept walking on to Glover Park. This is a huge park built up a hill slope (of which there are many in Nagasaki), which was purchased by one Mr. Glover post-isolation and turned into his own compound, which he then shared with other Europeans. Here you see proper European houses that some of the richest and most influential Europeans, like Glover, built. Glover actually had a huge influence on Japan, being one of the earliest and most influential European traders. In fact, he even started the company that later became Kirin Brewing. You also get fantastic views of the city from up here.

After the park, Rei and I had to split ways. I made my way to the prefectural art museum to see an exhibit of Gaudi's life interpreted by a famous Japanese manga artist. It actually turned out to be an exhibit of Gaudi's work - sketches, blueprints, models and the like - interspersed with manga styled storylines showing what was going on in his life at various points. It was really well done and a great exhibit. The rest of the museum was just ok, but I'm not huge on museums anyway.

Nagasaki from the hilltop

And that was pretty much it. After that, I hopped on the train back to Hiroshima, did some last minute shopping, at some last minute sushi, and now here I am. All I have left is sleeping and going to the airport. And sharing a song. And today's song is moving more into pop with Utada Hikaru. She's super famous here, and even crossed over into the US with a couple of English language albums (she's actually American born Japanese. Or went to school in America. Or something, but anyway she speaks flawless English), which had songs produced by the likes of Timbaland and everything. And you may know this song, Passion, which is a great one and probably her best, if you play Kingdom Hearts, because it was the theme song.


She does a lot of the poppy R&B stuff, and it's not all great, but she does have some excellent songs like this. Even some of her English language stuff is quite good.

This isn't actually what I wanted to share today. I wanted to share 愛の愛の星 (read Ai no Ai no Hoshi, meaning Star of Love) by the brilliant green, another song that is probably one of my favorite Japanese songs ever. Unfortunately I could not find it anywhere, despite the fact that they're super famous. You can go look for it if you like, it's great, they're great, I like them.