Japan Kagoshima Kamikaze pilots and driving home

The next stop was at the Kamikaze pilots museum. We were a bit disapointed that very few items had informations in english, and the guide would tell our disapointment to the management, so maybe it will be better later on. Here are some background about the Kamikaze pilots.The Japanese word Kamikaze is usually translated as "divine wind" (kami is the word for "god", "spirit", or "divinity", and kaze for "wind"). The word kamikaze originated as the name of major typhoons in 1274 and 1281, which dispersed Mongolian invasion fleets under Kublai Khan. In Japanese, the formal term used for units carrying out suicide attacks during 1944–1945 is tokubetsu kogeki tai, which literally means "special attack unit". This is usually abbreviated to tokkotai. More specifically, air suicide attack units from the Imperial Japanese Navy were officially called shinpu tokubetsu kogeki tai, "divine wind special attack units"). Shinpu is the on-reading of the same characters that form the word kamikaze in Japanese. During World War II, the pronunciation kamikaze was used in Japan only informally in relation to suicide attacks, but after the war this usage gained acceptance worldwide and was re-imported into Japan. As a result, the special attack units are sometimes known in Japan as kamikaze tokubetsu kogeki tai. Present museum was opened in 1987. After this visit we drove to a Sand Spa, where we were burid in hot sand and relaxed for up to 15 minutes. Traffic back to town was slow, lots of cars on the road, but at least I got some pictures from that trip too.

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Entance

From the exhibition in the outside garden

		Interesting cutting of the tree

Farmers have started the spring work

This huge popped up, and we saw it for a long time

View along the road after the Spa was finished

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