Pictures, Hakone, and a bit of article commentary

I have now put up at least half of the pictures from mom and rae's visit. I wasnt able to separate them into their own album so they are right there when you go to the album (link is still on the side bar but in case you cant find it: here).

I'm also very bad about labeling and describing the pictures on photobucket. So here's my promise:

I'm about to go traveling with Andrew's parents to a lot of the same places. This time around I will dedicate one article to pictures and information and history about one major site for each place we go. Hopefully this will help you to figure out what's what in my images from mom and Rae's visit.

also...I went to Hakone with Andrew's parents and him. It was amazing. I wish I had known about it earlier because I definatly would have taken mom and Rae..though they would have had to battle their fears a bit. It's a mountain town with geysers and geyser cooked eggs, a beautiful hotel/resort (Fujiya-which is currently having discounts for foreigners on account of their anniversary), a great museum, and the greatest (and my first) view of Mt. Fuji. The weather was perfect! I'll be putting up hakone images later so you'll have to wait to see the Great Fuji San!

On another note:
thenikku recently posted an article relating to comfort women. as some of you know, I wrote a paper about said topic and have some interest in the subject now. My dad sent me a link to another article (which followed the first article the enxt week).

Article

My only issue is that the japanese government has made it's records "available" before but never all of them, and never the ones that mught truly help-if they even still have those. And the records they might share will probably support this idea of the damage to the women being done independently..but it's just outsourcing from what I understand...inevitably the Japanese gov., from what I understand, was responsible. Of course...that's only if you believe the testimonies of the women and some soldiers...which according to an article I read for my women's history class are infalliable simply because the women cant remember what branch they were "serving" or the names of their locations and such things. Tell me...if you were an 80 year old woman who had been traumatized like that when you were young-firstly...would you still remember all the small -and I think unimportant- details? and second, would you have even known them in the first place considering your position?
Honestly I probably don't know enough about the whole thing to have an opinion...and I still love Japan and I completely believe in frogiving for past wrongs (every country has it's history)...I just can't help thinking about it....

in any case...
Much Love!