This steeply sloped pathway in Minami-Yamate, affectionately known as Dondon-zaka, has been a bit of a personal "pilgrimage" site throughout my adult life... one of the houses accessed from this old stone-paved laneway was my father's childhood home, and I still remember playing as a 3-year-old with my grandfather at the house.
This beautiful vista towards Nagasaki Bay and the Mitsubishi Shipyards in particular is a view that, in my mind, serves as an emblem in our family's collective memory, and I have sketched it almost every time I have come here (seen also in the lower right sketch from my last post on February 10, 2011.)
With the passing of my father on January 1st this year, this latest version 2 weeks after his death was like an act of prayer... and I missed not being able to show it to him as I always used to do.
This was the last place he wanted to visit (and did visit) before cancer took his life.
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