It's been a busy few days, what with IST departing on Saturday & units arriving to start their mimasu Tokyo experience. After welcoming almost 400 scouts to Narita airport on Saturday afternoon along with their solidarity patrols from countries all around the world & getting them checked in it was time for activities to begin. On Sunday I was based at one of the earthquake centres with Paul where units learnt all about earthquakes in Japan & got to experience one through a simulator too. It also gave us chance to do some exploring so we wandered around the grounds of the Imperial Palace before heading back to the hotel. On Monday we were doing similar things but also got chance to visit the Meije Jingu shrine at Harijuku & the Kit Kat shop. Before heading out to Osimbashi hall for Tokyo live that evening, Caz, Paul & I had the most amazing lunch of prawns, ramen & soup dumplings to set us up for the night ahead! & what an evening it was, half of the contingent came together to celebrate Japanese culture. It was an amazing venue with lots of great stalls & different things to see & do including sumo, tuna filleting, J pop bands, drumming & more!
Tuesday was the day we headed for site! Another early start loading groups onto 2 bullet trains including 1200 on the party train that I was on. We had more than the usual 90 seconds to load but it was still a bit of a mad rush & we only had 90 seconds to get off in Yamahuchi as there was another train of Swedish scouts only 3 minutes behind! We did it though, A team!! & then everyone was on buses to the Jamboree to check in & get set up!