Woke up at 5:30, out of the house by 6:00 and drove through the dark and pouring rain to the highway bus busstop.
By the time I caught the bus I was tired, wet, had soggy socks and was ready to just go home- and it wasn't even 7:00am yet.
But, soldiered on and headed to Nagano City where I was hobnobbing with people with very important titles and self-important speaking styles.
I spent the day being followed around by two Japanese men with clipboards and cameras and a host of local media.
Everything I said they nodded and wrote down. Everything I looked at they took a picture of. It was exciting for the first ohhh 20 minutes and then it got kind of annoying. I mean when you're just standing, waiting for someone to call a meeting to order and suddenly a news camera is right in your face you get a bit dithery- should I look serious? confused? smile beatifically? definitely not bored, right?
Six foreign residents of Nagano were chosen to represent their language group (so I wasn't from Australia, I was from 'the English world') and tell Nagano City, Nagano Prefecture, JR East, Nagano City Tourist Bureau, Nagano Prefecture Tourist Bureau, Nagano Allied Bus Union etc etc how easy Nagano Station/ the bus from the station to Zenkoji Temple is to navigate for foreigners.
I think this is a fabulous idea.
I also think it would have been a lot more real if they had of picked a few backpackers off the street- real tourists, with real tourist level Japanese language skills and followed them around for a day.
Instead, in order that all the above important organisation's representatives would not actually have to communicate in any of the target languages they arranged to have 6 foreign residents fluent in Japanese come along.
So, while pretending we are completely reliant on the foreign language signage at the station we are dashing off comments in Japanese- remembering to use our politest and most showoffiest language as we are being paparazzied by the press the whole time.
Rather odd....
and for a 10 second glance at me being interviewed you will have to wade through the news slot here.
Caught the bus home in the rain and the dark, picked the girls up at 6:00pm- they were the second last kids to be picked up and Meg has satisfied her curiosity as to what everyone does at kinder after she goes home, and came back to a cold dark house in a bit of a state as K had done the morning routine by himself with the girls, almost perfect, they ate, dressed, brushed teeth and fed animals but he left their hair in the same plaits it was in from the night before. Oh well. Not bad. So tired and caught up in the evening routine I almost didn't even see myself on TV but B mailed to say she'd seen it and I remembered I had been paparazzied just a few hours before... amazing how quick the limelight fades back into teatime/ bath time/ bedtime/ night lights...
Thanks B!