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Yumi and the children had been watching re-runs of the Shinsengumi! television series, a popular drama about a Japanese special police force from the Shogun period. A lot of the action takes places in Kyoto, which was Japan's capital and the emperor's residence at the time. Each show ended with a short documentary about actual locations where some of the main characters had lived and died. We decided to go and discover some of these historical sites ourselves.

We left from Tokyo by Shinkansen on Saturday, October 6, 2007.