We woke up in the middle of the night (it was still dark!) at around 4:15 to go and retrieve breakfast and lunch for the day. We had bacon sandwiches! Mmm…

After breakfast, we then got ready to leave on a coach at 7:00 for Suo-Oshima-cho.

We got very excited about the air conditioning on the bus and I actually got some refreshing sleep!

We arrived at Suo-Oshima high school, accompanied by Mexican, Korean and Taiwanese Scouts, and we were instantly greeted by a man who took us to the school main hall. There, there were people standing at either side of the doorway clapping as we entered; there was also a wind band setup and ready to play to us.

After 2 performances from the wind band, we were taken to a room which contained activities based around environmental science. We got to hold and look at some shells, crabs and other sea-creatures out of a basin; we then got the opportunity to ‘freeze’ the shells in a plastic cube to be used as an ornament.

We were then escorted upstairs where we experienced a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, consisting of biscuits (with fillings in them) as well as, of course, some green tea!

In another room, we closed the visit to the high school with a closing ceremony, where I volunteered to make a speech about how thankful we were for the preparation and hospitality given to us for the day.

An energetic farewell was presented in the car park as our coach departed.

We stopped for lunch and then walked across the car park to a small stadium which had around 20 patrol units in. We were then shown how to make bamboo dragonflies by some Japanese volunteers (bamboo dragonflies are fan-like flying toys that are mounted onto a small wooden dowel). Like always, there was a group photo opportunity where we sat outside on some ridiculously hot tiles for 10 minutes whilst the Japanese media collected all the pictures they could gather.

Soon, we went back to the bus and made the journey back to Yamaguchi where my patrol (Coquet) made dinner and made use of a lot of bread — we haven’t been getting a great deal of food the past few days, so, in true Scout fashion, other units have been sharing their unused food (usually bread).

After dinner, I went for a cold shower and applied a lot of after-sun to the behinds of my legs… They’re very sore!

Goodnight!

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