Saturday November 8th

Saturday morning I toured the Muramatsu family business and then we traveled to the Hamamatsu rail station. It was difficult to say goodbye to my first host family. Three Hamamatsu Rotarians went with us on the train trip to Shizuoka City. The assistant governor Nagamine san would went fishing with me, Fugiwara a Rotarian who is always there for every event, and Obata san (I call him Obama san) who must be the sharpest dressed in the district and may one day be the major of Hamamatsu. It was raining in Shizuoka so the delegation of Rotarians that met us had umbrellas for us to use. There were many nice shops at the railway station and it was only a short walk to our hotel. They had welcome party #3 waiting for us. This was our second lunch where we sat on the floor. We didn't know in advance that we were the program but we were. Our schedule had at least five presentations this week! We needed both my laptop and the PowerPoint projector that we brought to be able to present our program. One of the Rotarian's daughters Mia (she just recently finished college in California) was able to translate for us. There were about thirty people all sitting on the floor around a large table. We had an orientation session following the luncheon. Mia arranged our three members (and me) to go out with her friends for the evening. There were nine of us at a dinner sitting on the floor. All of the young people enjoyed drinking beer and osaka (I drank one beer) and really enjoyed visiting with her friends. They seemed interested in hearing our opinions with Mia and one of her friends translating they enjoyed our humor. After dinner which was 23,500 yen they walked my back to the hotel around 9:00 p.m. and they went out to enjoy themselves some more. My bogs never show the correct time here. It is now 4:40 a.m. and I plan to listen on the Internet to PSU's last football game which will start in about 20 minutes. I will be the only person in Shizuoka (and probably Japan) listening.
Always a gorilla
Ken