Mt. Inasa Lights Stretching Beyond the Harbor, and Castella I Brought Along

That winter, I took my red 4WD sedan across from Ariake by ferry. After getting off at Shin-Moji, I was in my 2nd week on the road and would be staying 3 nights in Nagasaki. On the evening of day 2, my friend, who’d flown in to join me, met me in town; from there, we headed straight to Mt. Inasa. We were there to ride the glass-sided ropeway and see the harbor on a winter night.

I parked at Fuchi-jinja Station’s car park. It was small, with space for about 14 cars, and the ropeway took about 5 minutes to reach the summit. The gondola was glass all around—front, back, and sides—so you could see in every direction. As we set off, the city lights slowly fell away beneath us. I could see the road we’d just driven turn into a line of light leading to the harbor. My friend leaned so close to the window that I told her, “The glass is cold.” She shot back, “I know.”

We walked from the station to the observatory, where Nagasaki Harbor spread out beyond the glass railing. City lights ringed the dark water, with scattered homes glowing on the hillside beyond. I’d expected to look only at the harbor, but the lights stretched much farther up than I’d thought. I tilted my head back to look for the highest lights on the slope.

To warm my cold hands, I poured a drink from the thermos into my cup, holding the thermos in one hand and the cup in the other. After a sip, I looked toward the right side of the harbor where my friend was pointing.

The lights along the shore connected like a ribbon, but the higher they climbed the slope, the farther apart they grew until they became dots. Even in one city, the lights looked completely different down low and up high. Buildings I’d seen from the road during the day became part of the whole city from up here. My friend and I traced our route by the lights, saying, “Maybe that’s around where we met up earlier.”

Small lights were scattered across the observatory floor too. After walking a little, I could see the glow at my feet and the distant night view all at once. The floor lights were just bright enough to light the ground; when I looked up, the harbor lights seemed to begin just beyond them. I followed the lights to the far end of the railing and looked diagonally across the harbor. From straight on, the lights on the hillsides had looked flat, but from an angle they rose in layers, one above another.

When I started to feel cold, we went into the observatory lounge for a break. As we warmed up, my friend asked about tomorrow’s plans: should we pick out castella in town first, or walk by the harbor in the morning? I wanted the morning harbor; she wanted the castella. I was about to settle it with rock-paper-scissors when she laughed and said, “Why not do both?”

On the gondola back down, the hillside lights drew closer, and the windows that had looked like dots from above slowly took shape, one by one. Back at the station car park, I climbed into the 4WD with my friend in the passenger seat, and we headed to where we were staying. Every time we stopped at a traffic light, she pointed out the window and teased me: “Is that a ribbon or a dot?”