Korea and Nagasaki

 March 13, 2024

We are in Busan, Korea.  Another country added to our list of countries visited. That makes 87. There were three stops on our excursion today.  The first was at a small theater where we were going to have a "cultural experience".  This "cultural experience" consisted of three  different performances of Korean folk dances and a drum duet.  All three of the dances were rather slow and descriptive although neither of us could figure out what they described. The music for all three all sounded the same.  Korea folk songs are generally writing using a penatonic scale which has only 5 notes which means it is rather limited in its variety.  The drummers used small drums with a drum head on each end, with the drum laying on its side so both heads could  be hit at the same time.  Each drummer used two sticks of different sizes. This resulted in them hitting one stick on one head and the other stick on the other head.  Again this was rather limiting so there was little variety in what they played and they quite often were playing the same thing at the same time.  Unfortunately, the whole "experience" became rather boring.  The second stop on our excursion was a duty free shop.  The shop featured a lot of cosmetics and ginseng.  Lynda bought a t-shirt for herself. The last stop was a fish market advertised as the biggest fish market in Korea. Lynda stayed on the bus for this stop.  Tim can confirm that is was "a damn big market." The building is 7 stories tall and we were led to believe that all 7 stories were part of the market with the caveat that the 2nd floor was mostly restaurants.  We visited only the first floor.  It had well over 100 individual stalls, each stall being about the size of the average bathroom. The interesting thing is that each stall was selling pretty much the same fish, practically  all of it alive.  In the past when we have gone into spice markets we have  commented that we wish you could smell how wonderful they smelled.  Not this fish market. Still,  at the end of the day Tim can brag that he has been in the largest fish market in Korea. Tim is sure you are all envious.

March 14, 2024

We are back in Japan but, unfortunately, in Nagasaki.  That means visiting the site of the 2nd atomic bomb dropped on Japan.  This was very similar to the visit in Hiroshima.  There was a very well done museum that described the Manhattan Project, had samples of clothing that was shredded by the shear power of the bombs blast, showed pieces of metal that had been twisted out of shape by the heat created, and pictures of survivors  showing the damage to their bodies by the heat and radiation. Unlike in Hiroshama, the Nagasaki museum had a life size replica of the bomb that was dropped.  There was also video of the bomb being loaded into the B-29.  The ground zero site and seperate Peace Garden were also equally well done. The Peace Garden in Nagasaki featured more statuary then the garden in Hiroshama.  Nagasaki has 6 sister cities and each sent a sculpture for the Peace Garden as did 7 individual countries  included the United States.  We are both glad that we visited these sites and have no desire to visit them again.  We also both agreed that all world leaders involved in nuclear arms treaty negotiations should be required to visit both of these museums to see the results of the use of these horrific weapons.

Here's hoping that the rest of our experiences in Japan will be much happier.