Okay, we're all incredibly sorry for not updating our blog for a long time. We've been traveling a lot in the last few days. First, we took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima yesterday (8/3--which seems like it was a week ago), and we hit the ground running here. We took the day to decompress from all of the depressing war memory stuff we've been seeing lately, and the Shinkansen took about six hours to get to Hiroshima, so we all did a bit of reading/music listening. This area is, unlike Tokyo, very mountainous and beautiful. We're also close to the sea, which means the air moisture is wreaking havoc on Amanda's lungs.
We got to see a bit more of the countryside today, while taking the Shinkansen to Otsushima. We actually had to take a boat to get out to Otsushima, whose name in Japanese ends with the "island" character. This is the island where the Japanese military started its Kaiten program, a branch of the general push toward kamikaze in the latter years of WWII. Kaiten were basically manned torpedoes, designed to attack large boats, like aircraft carriers. The Kaiten Museum, our destination on the island, turned out to be quite surprising for several different reasons, including its lack of air conditioning. We had been billing this museum as a "war museum," since its mission is to commemorate the men who died in battle in these suicide missions, but it ended up being very peace-oriented. It was quite the touching, sentimental museum.
As is evidenced by our lack of posting over the last few days (sorry!), we are rather busy all the time. This is going to get worse, since Hiroshima Peace Day is coming up. We're all doing fine! Kelsey will probably be uploading more pictures and vlogs within the next couple of days, but we make no guarantees!
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