Day 22 - 18/01/1998: Change Agents: We finally arrived at Kagoshima, Ritsuko lived in Kagoshima number of times before and has a Bachelor of Education from Kagoshima University. Ritsuko knows the places to go in Kagoshima and she can speak the local dialect.
The first place we went to see was the monument to the Satsuma (what the area around Kagoshima used to be known as) Seventeen Samurai (see the photo above). These seventeen samurai left Japan people during the Edo period (a time when no one was allowed in or out of Japan). They where able to slip out of Japan with the help of the powerful Shimazu family. They went to the UK to check out modern manufacturing techniques. When they returned to Japan they were instrumental in helping bring about the Meiji restoration and the modernisation of Japan.1
