We started the day by going as a group to the Glover Gardens. This is a garden surrounding a house built for Thomas Glover, a Scottish merchant who contributed to the modernization of Japan in shipbuilding, coal mining, and other fields. In it stands the Glover Residence, the oldest Western style house surviving in Japan and Nagasaki's foremost tourist attraction. The house and buildings are kind of like going to a museum in the United States of a wealthy persons house for the 1800's. The gardens are very nice. The whole arrangement is high on the hill overlooking Nagasaki Harbor. It is a very pleasant place to visit and is part of the European heritage of Nagasaki.
We then went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch. Chinese restaurants are considered fine dining. Unlike the US, in Japan going to a Chinese restaurant is a special event. The food was very good, and the restaurant building was very striking.
This is the Chinese restaurant.
After lunch, we went to a shopping mall. This one is fairly typical. They have taken some intersecting streets, put a roof over them and limited vehicles. The shopping mall is open at the ends, so the roof just protects you from the rain and sun. There are large stores and small stores. They are fund to browse.
This is view of the mall. Notices the green sign. This is the sign indicating a police office. Not mall security, the city police office in the mall.
A close up of the sign. Koban is the Japanese word for police. The image says it all.
This is a good feature of most Japanese cash registers. It is a little holder along side the register where the clerk puts the money that you give them while they make change. There is no confusion as to what amount of money you gave them. When they are done making change, they put the money in the register.
That evening we attended a special meeting of the Rotary Club of Nagasaki. They normally meet at noon on Thursday, but we were all leaving before that, so they had a special meeting just for us. There were speeches of thanks and good will. It was a pretty good meeting considering that most of the Nagasaki Rotarians did not speak English and with the exception of Amy, we did not speak Japanese. But, you could feel the goodwill and the speeches were translated.
Nagasaki Rotary President speaking
District Governor, and Past President of the Rotary Club of St. Paul, Joe Kovarik speaking.
The artist Bill Hueg and St. Paul Rotarian Sue Cammick talking about the statue.
Me, Megumi, a former exchange student from Nagasaki to St. Paul, Amy and Sally.
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