On November 8 (Saturday), from 4:30pm at Shinya Ominami’s house, there was a big tea ceremony held with thirty guests from the Netherlands. Before they arrived, Claire and the general manager of Kamiyama Onsen, Mr. Wada, held a little dress rehearsal.

Ms. Sasaki from Orono came to help out.

She’s the one in the kimono.

Wow! Look at all these people. This must be the largest number of Dutch people to visit Kamiyama in written history. Could it be we exceeded the number of Dutch who were on Nagasaki’s Dejima Island during the Edo Period?!? (ha ha)

But with all these visitors, Mr. Ominami and his wife must have had a huge cleanup job. (Nevertheless, those Dutch people sure are tall!!)

There were also some people peeking in on the scene from the sidelines. Our guest from Tokyo, Mr. Tom Vincent, and Ms. Keiko Ishihara from Berkeley, California.

Here’s a shot of Ms. Ishihara enjoying Mr. Ominami’s lovely garden before entering the house. She looks like she’s having fun, doesn’t she!

In fact, there were a lot of visitors. From the left, Mr. Nikishima, Claire, Tom, Ms. Inagaki from Naruto University of Education, and Mr. Hayabuchi from same. Before the main event, we had a little photo shoot.

By the way, which of the thirty Dutch guests do you think owns these pink shoes? Ms. Inagaki was puzzling over this, but whose shoes do you think they are?

Here’s the answer.

Sitting between Tom and the clown in the orange sweater… Yes, they’re Claire’s. (Claire, you stand out plenty already without wearing bright pink shoes! …heh heh … have I said too much again? ha ha)