I'm a little behind in posting and will try to get caught up. Today we left Tokyo and are now in Mito (northeast of Tokyo) before heading to Kamisu tomorrow. We are now in our small group of 16 and will be visiting schools this week.
Friday's lecture revolved around Peace Education and we were fortunate to have a Hiroshima A-bomb survivor as the guest speaker, Keijiro Matsushima . He was 16 at the time of the bombing and stressed the importance of teaching peace to our students as he fears that the story of Hiroshima is being lost in the younger generations. He was in math class at the time of the bombing and saw two American bombers looking like "ice cakes" against the clear blue sky just before his world was torn apart. It was amazing to hear his stories of surviving and then running out into the streets to see all of the damage and all of the injured people, looking like zombies. He was such a humble man and said that he really didn't resent the Americans, but he did hate the invention of the atomic bomb. These websites do a great job of telling his story...
After the lecture, we went to a performance of kabuki, which is a traditional Japanese theatre performance. The individual Japanese characters mean sing (歌), dance (舞), and skill (伎). Kabuki is sometimes referred to as the "art of singing and dancing." See the slideshow for examples of the elaborate costumes and make-up.
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