Long time no see

Things have started to get a little busy here, hence the long break from posting. That, plus I'm a little lazy, and it doesn't help that I have to contend with a celeron equipped laptop that takes 3 minutes to display all my photos in thumbnail format.
To make sense of all the various photos that have been posted, here's roughly what happened.
We went to watch the Yamakasa festival, where basically teams of men run around the town carrying a one ton float in a race that starts at 4.59am. We then went to school and boarded a bus bound for Hiroshima. Arrived in the afternoon, took a ferry over to Miyajima island, visited the Itsukushima shrine, had dinner, went back to the Otori mon at night. The gate was quite remarkable indeed.
The next day was spent at the A-bomb museum and its surrounding, lunch at the Okonominura and then back home. We were scheduled to move from our apartment to our host families, so the next update will probably be on that, as well as a few other activities, such as a nomikai (drinking session), a tea ceremony and others. Stay tuned.