Friday, 5th December

Charles: Today we went to lunch at Emi's Dad's Rotary Club. The meeting was held in a hotel conference room and was quite a formal occaision with assigned places on the immaculate tables and the observation of many protocols that went right over our heads.

Before the lunch we mingled a bit and managed to have some conversations in Japanese. Lunch was an enormous bento box which we struggled to get through and we were treated so some speeches which we couldn't follow at all. Finally, Emi's Dad had his turn to make a speech and introduced us a little bit and asked us to introduce ourselves in Japanese. We were a bit nervous to speak to the whole club but we managed to say something interesting and they were very appreciative (thanks Shizuko sensei!). Emi then spoke and showed photos about Canberra and the ANU. She also showed a lot of photos of our adventures together in Tokyo and Emi's town, which we didn't expect but everybody seemed to enjoy watching them.

Afterwards, we were thanked by lots of people and a few of them were able to speak a bit of english to us. The chair of the meeting gave us and Emi presents.

On our way home we were invited to go to a sweet shop (I guess the japanese equivalent of a fancy chocolate shop) which is owned by on of Emi's Dad's friends. The shop was beautiful and they gave a us a selection of sweets to try with some tea. They were amazing!

When we got home we opened our presents. Each huge box contained about 12 big rice crackers, most of which featured prawns (one kind was actually an entire prawn somehow melded into a rice cracker). Chrissy LOVES prawns so were happy to share them with everybody.

In the evening we celebrated Emi's Mum's birthday. They had bought an enormous mountain of food and each age bracket of the family had go at eating it. It was delicious. Afterwards we had a birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday in English! Apparently this is what they normally do and Moka-chan called the cake a Happy Birthday To You. After dinner we had fun speaking to Emi's siblings who were trying to ask us questions in English using a totally useless English phrase book. Hilarity ensues.

Chrissy: Some excerpts from the phrasebook include but are not limited to: Out of the frying pan, into the fire; I'm speechless with sorrow; That's like the kettle calling the pot black, etc.