This is Hirado Xavier Church.
Francisco Xavier came to Hirado in 1550 and promoted Christianity.
There are many churches in Nagasaki.
And also many temples too, both are like in this picture.
I heard that churches usually have the same right and left side, but this one doesn’t because of lack of money.
The other day I went Hirado which is located North West of Nagasaki in Kyusyu Japan.
It is a nice town which has Japanese castle and a port.
In the early Edo era before national isolation, it had trade with foreign countries like Holland, Portugal and China.
The statues in this post are Jack Specks, who was the first director of the Hirado Dutch Trading Post and Richard Cocks, who was an English trader and cultivated sweet potatoes for the first time in Japan.
It was a rainy day, so we couldn’t go around many places and take pictures.
But I liked Hirado and want to visit there again.
Huistenbosch is a theme park which is located in Sasebo, Nagasaki prefecture.
A Netherlands cityscape is reproduced there.
It is bigger than Tokyo Disneyland, and it is the biggest theme park in Japan.
Many attractions, events, and seasonal flowers like roses are happening.
There are also fire works and illumination events.
I went there at X’mas time.
It was beautiful with thousands of colorful lights.
At that time I hadn’t yet gone to Europe, so it was interesting.
I want to go there again.
Hashima is an island which is located in the ocean about 19 kilometers southwest from Nagasaki port.
It is called Gunkanjima (battleship island).
That place prospered from undersea coal mining from the Meiji to the Showa era through most of the 20th Century.
It was just 160 meters in width and 480m long, and 5200 people lived there at its peak.
Some of the earliest ferroconcrete high-rise buildings were built there for the first time in Japan.
And also schools, hospitals, movie theaters, and stores, etc were there.
But it was closed in 1974 and nobody lives there now. It is disintegrating.
Now you can visit there by tour.
Gunkanjima was chosen as World Heritage site in 2015 and it is a popular ruined island.
http://www.gunkanjima-concierge.com/en/index.html
Christianity was brought to Japan by Xavier in 1549.
This is Ouratenshu-do (Oura church) in Nagasaki.
It was built by the French after national isolation ended in 1865.
It is one of the a oldest wooden gothic buildings and the only national treasure of western architecture in Japan.
Japan.etc. 