Many people are undoubtedly most familiar with Nagasaki because of its recent tragic history. The hilly terrain kept the casualties from the A-bomb blast down to 75,000 or so, far fewer than Hiroshima, Still, there are plenty of reminders of the incredible violence of the blast. This is perhaps the most dramatic: half of this shrine torii was sheared off in the blast, leaving the other half standing - a mute reminder of Nagasaki's most horrific day.

This chapel looks like it could have been designed by Gaudi - but it actually commemorates the 26 Christian martyrs massacred by Hideyoshi's purge in the late 1500s. Nagasaki's Christian history is also quite interesting... in fact, Shimabara, the area with Unzen that you passed through to get here, is the location of the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637-8, in which Christians joined with local farmers in a failed revolt against the Tokugawa shogunate.