Where am I?

Ohayo gozaimasu,

Yesterday afternoon we took the Shinakansen to Fukushima Prefecture. The Shinakansen is translated into English as "bullet train. The train took off exactly on time and arrived exactly on time 1.5 hrs. later. Most Japanese people eat a meal on the train. They can buy one before they depart, bring it from home, or buy on the train. We were provided with a box lunch; the only thing Japanese was the little thimble like container filled with fruit-flavored gelatin. The other things were Japanese versions of what they think Americans eat. And, unlike the Japanese meals I've already had, it didn't taste too good. I think my first clue to this was that I noticed we were given a fork instead of chopsticks; we were given a little wet towel, but it was not warm, of course. Fukushima is north of Tokyo Metropolitan Prefecture, but not nearly as large; it is almost the same size as Kentucky---2,000,000,000 people. We arrived in Fukushima city, and were taken to the Prefectural Art Museum. They have some Japanese artists represented, but also Andrew Wyeth, as an American artist (we could not see his works because they were on a traveling exhibition), and some famous French artists like Monet and Chagall! I was pretty impressed since these artist's works cost millions of dollars to buy.

When we left the museum many people oohed and aahed over the scenery, saying how beautiful it is, and that they had never seen anything like it. I just said, "Oh it is beautiful; but it looks just like Home.

Here are some bullet trains (the seats swivel to face the other direction when the train is making the return trip), my box lunch( called bento boxes in Japan), Fukushima Prefectural Art Museum with the hills that remind me of my old Kentucky home.