Saturday arrived and our last morning was spent having fun with our homestay families. Mrs Fellowes-Prynne was invited to the Graduation Assembly for the Amaji Kindergarden class and spent a super morning watching their fabulous performance-singing, dancing and playing instruments to a very high standard.

After this ended Mr Matsumoto took her and the Nursery staff for a quiet lunch at a beautiful, tranquil golf club in the country. As soon as she sat down she heard a huge racket! When she looked around the corner there was every child from Chopwell and all of their homestay families!!! They had arranged a big farewell party of their own for all of the children and parents-a very generous end to an amazing week for our children.

At 1.30pm everyone met at Amaji station to see us off. There were hundreds of people-parents, children and teachers-waving, hugging, crying.........

.....and shouting as Morgan managed to drop his toy samurai sword onto the train line! Luckily one of the Amaji teachers rescued it for him. The local train came and we all climbed easily on to travel to Himeji Station for the bullet train.

We strolled through Himeji Station and were all set to say a fond farewell to Mr Matsumoto and his wife BUT.........

someone didn't check the train times properly and when we got to the top of the escalator the shinkansen was already pulling in!!!!! 30 seconds to get 10 children, 5 adults and 15 suitcases loaded on!

To make it worse we were in carriage 15-about 200 yards along the platform! 

Mrs Fellowes-Prynne sprinted like a gazelle closely followed by Mr Coates. Morgan tripped and did a full army roll sending all of his homestay gifts across the platform including the toy samuri sword! The children dived on one door with Miss Dobbin, Mr Coates and Mr Matsumoto threw suitcases into another door and we managed one quick handshake before the door snapped shut and we were off like a bullet!

If Mrs Wigg thinks that the last time was traumatic-think again!!! 

Mrs Fellowes-Prynne needed to lie down after all of the excitement!

On the train we waited patiently for the spectacular moment when 

Mount Fuji would home into view.....

Unfortunately it was very, very foggy so the poster on the train had to do!!

At Tokyo station we had a 30 minute journey on the JR line and the underground to get to our hotel-9 escalators down and 7 back up again! 

Morgan managed to drop the samuri sword yet again (down the escalator this time) causing even the very placid Mrs Jackson to threaten to put it in the bin!

 But once in Tokyo we all relaxed and got really excited. After a walk around Asakusa to see the fabulous Sensi-ji temple we had an evening meal and headed home for bed!!

 Tokyo lights-a taste of things to come!!

THANK YOU MR AND MRS MATSUMOTO for getting us onto the train safely!!