Ibaraki-paparazzi

The people of Ibaraki prefecture were perpetually curious about why we selected it as the location for our camp. Other prefectures are better known for tourism or arts or nature, but we were perfectly happy in the little town of Makabe and around Mount Tsukuba. It was filled with craftspeople that were eager to share, and frankly, that’s all one could ever ask for, right?

Our Coko was interviewed for the radio and we had newspaper reporters follow us around when we visited the elementary school, making sure that the kids thought we were extra important…!

More on our school experience in another post, but here you can see Zara being taught by two attentive schoolgirls. This is a few minutes after she astonished the entire classroom by not only being tall, blue-haired, and blue-eyed, but by introducing herself in Japanese! (All of the kids responded with ‘WWWOOOOWWW!’)

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