Tuesday 26th September - David's third day in Japan!

David arrived safely at Narita Airport just after 9am on Sunday morning. After a few 'technical' problems I was there to meet him and help carry all my heavy presents he brought from back home (!!!). After navigating our way around the aipport to try and find the train station, it was a good few hours before we were well on our way back to Nagano on the Shinkansen. We had an hour between trains in Nagano so indulged in a Starbucks and a walk around the city. Once we were on the wee train back to Iiyama, we met a few groups of my students who all got very excited at seeing David (or "Davido" as they called him!) and took plenty photos (mum - please note correct apostrophe use!) on their camera-phones.

Yesterday, I had a few classes to teach in school so left David to catch up on some more sleep . I had organised to have him visit one of my classes in the afternoon and the students had been preparing questions for him since last week. He surprised us all by turning up in his kilt and the students stood up one by one and asked him their question. The questions varied between "how tall are you?" and "how much do you weigh?" to "what are your dreams?" and "do you think Japanses girls are beautiful?". David answered all their question for them and although most of the students were quite shy, they all began to relax in his company. I had brought in some cakes for the students and some of the sweets David had brought from home for them to try. When we were walking through the corridors after the lesson, you could hear students in classrooms whispering "Davido, Davido" and waving to us from behind classroom windows. A few of the boys even stood up next to David to see how much taller he was than them - very amusing!

Photo - David outside Iiyama Eki.


So, we spent the evening walking around Iiyama and being greeted by students (although it always confuses me when I see them outside school because I can never be sure if they are my students or not! At least in school, if they have tartan-like skirts/trousers on I know they belong to Minami!). We were meeting Makoto and a few others at 7pm for David's welcome party so once everyone had arrived we headed on down to Sabo - the nearest Izikaya to the station.



Photo - Makoto, David, Yoko, Makoto's wife, Jo and Belinda. Later on, Tanaki from the city office also joined us.

Makoto ordered the beers straight away for everyone and chose some 'safe' food options from the menus. We had Tofu and *natto, salads, potato wedges, chicken bones, cheese platter and mini green torillas. A random selection but tasty all the same. The beers were flowing nicely and Makoto even commented that it was so hot today that his beer had evaporated! He then went on to say his glass must have a hole in it! My Japanese friends even surprised me by presenting David with a welcome gift from Iiyama. Very cute!