good talk

Of course,  having been to Tokyo a few times, I've visited the Yasukuni Shrine.  Dedicated in 1869, by the Emperor Meiji, to commemorate the military-dead in the service of Japan, 2.4 names are inscribed.  It's a Shinto Shrine, mostly open-air, you can see Shinto Priests moving-about inside, and the Japanese kneel on the outside, I of course, didn't get too-close, maybe stood 30 yards away.  Absurdly, it's become a pariah for high Japanese government-officials.  Dec. 26, 2013, Shinzo Abe, the Japanese PM, paid his respects, and was widely denounced by the U.S. and other Asian countries, as among the names inscribed are 1068 considered to be WW 11 war-criminals.  2 million of the Japanese armed-forces died during WW 11, mostly the sons of the rice-farmers, and the Shrine is honoring their memory as they died in the service of Japan, it matters not if they died from bullets or being hung by the Americans, for high Japanese officials not to go here would be odd, as is the current-situation.   Go to the right a hundred yards and there's The Yushukan, dedicated in 1882, it's Japan's oldest war-museum, and it's cracker-jack.  For the most-part it deals with Japan's military accomplishments from the winning of the Russo-Japanese War in 1905, to the conclusion of WW 11 in 1945.  The lightly-armored Japanese "Zero", the A6M, made by Mitsubishi, was much the superior-plane during the War in the Pacific, until 1943, when the Americans introduced the Hellcat, and they have a Zero inside the Museum.  It had 2 20 millimetre cannons on the wings, and 2 fixed 7.7 millimetre machine guns.  In another exhibit, they had one of these machine guns displayed, gazing at it while an old Japanese guy was there, he glanced up at me with an air of experience  ...excellent gun...