15 November 2018
Lard night
Eating ramen with added lard and a donut
Despite having walked forever already today, I left the hotel a bit early to run up a hill and take a night view shot of the city. That ended in failure. I had selected a park on a hill which google maps showed had a good enough view, not too far, in a different direction from where I had been before.
Off I set, at high speed, determined to be at the spot for the dark blue post sunset sky. I bounded up stairs and steep roads only to get to a totally tree covered, spider infested, pitch black slippery forest path. I briefly attempted to use my phone as a torch to follow the path, but giant birds were flying at my head and I think I saw a bear. So I made a hasty retreat and instead...took a photo of a drain.
Then it was time to find my dinner. Nagasaki has a specialty noodle called champon, which is literally noodles in a thickened sauce made almost entirely of lard! I decided that would not be something I would enjoy. By this point I was faint with hunger, slightly delirious, and eyeing off the octopus ball stand, so I settled on Ramen. With lard noodles on my mind, I was concerned when my ramen arrived not looking like the picture, but instead looking like a bowl of slightly diluted lard. I ate the noodles and the egg and beat a hasty retreat from LARDMEN.
So now I was still hungry, what to do except go eat some pastry fried in lard! It was delicious. I am scared I might develop a taste for donuts. I feel quite unwell now though, full of lard.
Tomorrow I fly back to Tokyo, where I still have 6 more nights to eat lard and be in locations with less view but more people to gawk at in the evenings. Thats if my JAL flight actually departs, theres a report today that in the last year or so 19 JAL pilots have blown over the limit and been fired and now they are short of pilots! 19 is a lot! You would think after a few of them were caught the others would know better, but clearly they are hopeless drunks, captaining a jet with 400 people on board. Awesome.
Here is a spooky drain after I beat a retreat from a spooky forest that prevented me from taking a night shot of Nagasaki.
Near the drain was this row of shops and houses, with strange colored lighting. It was over the road from a huge graveyard, perhaps the red lights are to ward off evil spirits.
Even though I was right on the edge of the city, there were a few shops still open. Closer inspection revealed all of them (7 in total) to be fancy bakeries. All within a hundred or so metres of each other. Why would they all open in this small area?
I never rode a tram in Nagasaki. Tomorrow I have to take a bus to the airport. The airport floats in the sea and has no train!
My retreat down the hill went through another closed shopping street. The places that were open make no sense to me. Florists, a mens suit shop, but the restaurants were closed?
Now we start our trio of food pics. This is PLASTIFIED champon lard noodles.
And here is real LARDIFIED ramen. I hate it when the picture shows the egg cut in half and then they are too lazy to cut it and give you the full egg instead. I always try and cut it in half with chopsticks as shown here. Have you ever tried to use a chopstick as a knife???
Finally, evidence that I have consumed a donut. I will deny this later in court and reserve the right to delete this photo at any time and deny all knowledge.