Secret Santa and Christmas Dinner

Hi there guys so... just got back from my 3rd (I think) BeKeHaBu training weekend and damn was it  good fun. The weekends theme was a Christmas Party! We already feel like a family, which will help in Japan, and we can't wait to meet again. 7 weeks is too long without seeing all the amazing people in my unit.

When we arrived on site on Saturday morning we dumped out kit in the scout hut and may the greetings begin. The were people hugging everywhere as we hadn't seen each other in what? 7 weeks!!! After a hello from the leaders, those who had arrived sat around a table and met a special visitor who came to answer some of our questions about Japan and to teach us some need to know Japanese such as arigatou gozaimasu (thank you).

Once everyone had arrived we spoke to our visitor some more and tried some call and response with him. We then said goodbye, Sayōnara, to him and started to play some games to get to know each other again. Meanwhile I prepared our 'Guess where the BeKeHaBu is' game for the school fete stall we would be running. We were then split into our patrols. These would be very similar to the patrols we will be in when we go to Japan next year. Throughout the weekend we did many activities in our patrols to grow closer together. We split into groups, some people cooking, some people putting up Christmas decorations, everyone took a turn making their own place-mat (with their name in Japanese) and 8 people (2 from each patrol) going to the school fete.

At the fete we set up our stall. We had two game:

- Wine, water and Shloer.

- Guess where the BeKeHaBu is

- We also attempted to sell some badges.

We ran the stall to create some more unit funds to spend in Japan. It also means we could potentially buy more equipment for the unit. We had lots of fun running the stalls and a fair few people came to visit us. We also met some people from Unit 7 who were also fundraising there. I even managed to organise a swap with one of them! Yay!

 

Day 2

Saturday 25^th July 2015

Today we spent most of our time in the air flying to Japan. We stopped off in Seoul, South Korea for around 2 or 3 hours so it was just enough time to have a wander around the huge airport. Before we went off around the airport we took the first, of many to come I’m sure, BeKeHaBu unit photos. After having a wander around we met up with our leaders in the relaxing lounge area, where there was reclining chairs for you to nap in and massage chairs which were very popular with my unit. There was also free Wi-Fi which for some reason seemed very over loaded, I’m sure my unit had nothing to do with that aha. We eventually made our way to the boarding gate to find out our plane was delayed again! Argh! However, it ended up only being delayed by half an hour or so. We were soon in the air again.

After another interesting Korean plane meal and a 2-and-a-half-hour plane flight, we finally landed in the land of the rising sun and many adventures for our unit and all the other scouts who would be there for the World Scout Jamboree.

As we arrived late in the evening by the time we had got to the place we we’re staying, which just so happened to be the National Olympics Memorial Youth Centre, we were all exhausted. Luckily the Youth Centre was only an hour away from the airport. On the bus journey, we got out the BeKeHaBu playlist and sang along to some of the songs we had all chosen together. Tokyo was quite cool when we arrived so we did not expect the following day to be that much dramatically warmer. We would be mistaken… very mistaken.

Before we left the airport, the toilet was something on everyone’s mind. There’s only a certain amount of times you can use the airplane loo. Now we all knew that we would have to be open minded about experiencing new things… but… having to use a squat toilet less than 5 minutes after arriving in Japan took us all by a bit of surprise (Personally I actually preferred them by the end of the trip as they seem more hygienic).

After the hour journey to the Youth Hostel, we stood around for a while whilst our leaders sorted out the room. The temperature was quite warm so we didn’t really mind but we were all very tired and in need of a shower. This brings me onto another Japanese custom we were thrown into straight away. Once we had all found our rooms, my friend Mimi and I decided to have a shower. We were not expecting all the showers in the hostel to be communal… or for swimwear to be prohibited in them. Being pretty close we thought what the heck and got on with it and honestly it’s really not as bad as you think it would be.

After an eventful shower, we all hit the deck and dreamt of the amazing adventures that would await us tomorrow.