People interested in the history of Nagasaki, Japan and European interaction, definitely worth to study or discover or read on it. Dejima was an artificial island, originally built for the Portuguese for trade/etc before they got exiled by Japan. A time after that the Dutch occupied it where Dr. Heinrich Siebold played an important role in transmitting medical knowledge to Japan.

There seems to be even a huge festival every year at the Suwa shrine called "Nagasaki Kunchi" which presents the trade between Japan and the dutch/chinese/british. The festival seems grand and awesome held somewhere in October if I am not mistaking. Really planning on visiting when I can.

In Turkey we call 'backgammon' "Tavla". No sure about the difference in rules (think roughly the same). I gave him a quick lesson on how to play it and explained the strategic insight to the museum staffmember who was in the room. He asked me like: "I don't understand this game despite the rules being written here. How does one play this." Had the honour to be temporary museum staff there and the man was (hopefully) pleased about my (half-assed-Japanese) explanation.

Holland is as flat as flat chests in your favourite doujin(ry. While the scenery isn't that rare to me (being Turkish) it did charm me to see Nagasaki being spread over the mountains. I loved the landscape view.

And yes, we did the Oishiiiiiiiiii-vegas-pose at the restaurant. FlanImouto triggered it followed up by the rest of us. MeilingDad was confused.

Did you learn all that when you were there? I'm actually pretty interested in the history of Nagasaki (and not only Nagasaki), so I'm always open for something new.

In fact, aside from translating touhou doujins into Russian (and sometimes English) I'm writing a book now about a Ukrainian cossack who went to Japan at the beginning of bakumatsu, and he started his journey in Nagasaki. Actually, the first thing he did was beating up a group of Dutch pirates that terrorized local citizens :)

Too bad that I can't go to Japan myself, since the one-way ticket from Ukraine costs about 8k hryvnas (1 hryvna=10 yen, or 1 euro = 10 hryvnas), let alone getting a visa, staying there for a while and getting back. That's definitely not possible for my purse.

So I get to know Japan only with the help of doujins and books :p

I have just basic knowledge (as in I know) that the Dutch had special relationship with Japan. However I never knew about the festival and logically hadn't visited Siebold and Dejima museum. History has not been entirely my interest field but I am always open to new things. My trip to Nagasaki (and Japan) was also cultural and I was very glad that the "Scarlet Devil Family" could show me all this both with the homestay and the trips we made around.

Ah yes, Dutch and Japanese. 2011 Germany and Japan celebrated their 150. anniversary of their friendship. However, the relationship between Dutch and Japanese has last over more than 400 years now.

In fact, the Dutch were the only western people who were allowed to trade with Japan during the closure of the country during the Edo period and Nagasaki was the only city where a Japanese could learn the advanced medical science and other things from Europe and so European science was known as "rangaku" (Dutch studies) in Japan at that time in opposition to the nationalistic "kokugaku".

By the way, Heinrich von Siebold wasn't Dutch, but German. However, he had to pretend to be Dutch when he arrived at Japan due to the treaties between Netherland and Japan at that time.

FYR, the Wikipedia article for Nagasaki Kunchi is here.

LOL! teaching him backgammon is such a turkish thing to do XD!