Day 1 & 2 : Arriving in Japan

Hello everyone !

I'm going to keep it brief as I'm writing this on my phone, however I don't know how I can put into a short post how AMAZING everything has been so far. It's not just me who can't quite believe we've made it; after a 7 hour flight to Doha in Qatar followed by a 9 hour flight to Osaka and a 4 hour coach  journey we arrived in Gifu for Ho Ho.

As they say pictures speak a thousand words, so, as I will probably do for the rest of the trip, here are some photos of what we've been up to.

We started off our journey at Heathrow airport, meeting 2 other units off to the Jamboree. 

*generic plane photo* 

Once we landed in Osaka , it was pretty obvious that the Jamboree units had arrived, blue bags EVERYWHERE.

We drove from the airport to Gifu, where we were picked up by our host families and taken to their homes. By the time we had arrived we were hot, sweaty and very tired, but we still had the energy to show our family ( the parents and oldest son) our 'about me' books. 

These are the 3 children in my family, the boy, who is a Cub Scout, is called Ousaku, the oldest girl is 4 year old Itchika and Akari is 1. They are all incredibly cute to say the least.

The man on ththe left is to father of our host family, Taiji and the woman carrying the baby on th right is Hitomi.

After a traditional breakfast of rice, miso soup and various Japanese condiments, including Natto (fermented beans), we went to the town hall and met the mayor.

The hospitality of both the family and the Mayors office was overwhelming.

We visited a traditional Japanese castle withy the local Cubs, meaning we joined up with a couple of other pairs from Unit 8. 

The castle was used by sammori warriors over 500 years ago. This one is called Inuyama Castle.

We took part in a tea ceremony in the afternoon, and I came to the conclusion that green tea isn't really my cup of tea.

The children in our family are adorable even if all we can say to each other is arigatoo ....

As we were walking back to the car we came across a bridal procession, the woman is wearing a traditional Japanese wedding outfit.

Apparently the temperature reached 34c today and the humidity was quite a shock to the system. Amber, I and the rest of the unit are catching the Bullet  train tomorrow lunch time and heading down to the Jamboree site, which is looking pretty damp :(

So, that's day 1 and 2 over, please feel free to leave any comments and check out the unit 8 Facebook page for more photos.

Thanks for reading,

Lauren x

PS this is dinner being made as I type.