A Warm Welcome

Warm Welcome

After the busy and tiring day that Niall has kindly described for your benefit, our group returned to the temple's living quarters, jet-lagged and exhausted. But sleep definitely wasn't on the cards for any of us...

We wandered around thinking about how humid it was and how much we felt like sleeping (or dying) even though it was only around 4PM. Before long the temple's living room became full of Japanese families: adults and children of varying ages. We already knew a couple of families - the ones that had taken us to the shopping mall and stuck around - but every knew face made a positive effort to introduce themselves to us and have a nice chat.

Our new Japanese friends suddenly grouped into pairs, and held opposite hands to form a human tunnel. They then encouraged us all to run through it and take a seat at the other side. This wouldn't have taken more than a minute, but of-course Alex Diva Ball had to made a late entrance.

Once we were all sat down, an adult member of the Hippo family group told us she would be MCing. Over the next 30 minutes or so, us English sat back and watched a comedy sketch performed by some of the adult Hippo members and then listened as names were called out and we were told which family each of us would be staying with the next day and night.

As each of us were called out and introduced to the Japanese family we would be staying with, we received warm welcomes and thoughtful gifts including personalised fans, like the one shown below.

A buffet of Japanese food was then dished up which everybody enjoyed; it also gave some the opportunity to brush up on their chopstick skills with the advice and guidance of the friendly Japanese.

The evening consisted of warm, friendly exchanges between our group and the Hippo family group and ended beautifully with Excess Baggage (our band) playing a couple of acoustic songs for our new friends followed by a few Japanese women coming up to the piano and playing some lovely pieces.

Sayonara,
Eugene