Exhibition at Shaw Ridge Primary School

The Club was asked to do a display as part of the School’s fundraising event in support of the Japanese Tsunami Appeal. It seemed like a worthy cause and with an indoor venue and tables supplied by the School it was fairly easy to do. With the Club’s A Team on the beach at Exmouth it fell to Mike, Alex and I to do the work, with me relying on the others for decent trees.

The event was run by members of the local Japanese community who obviously had lots of enthusiasm and support. I met them at the school to check on table sizes and location etc. but declined the offer of a drawing showing the event layout since it was all in Japanese.

An interesting day since the event included a demonstration of the work involved, and the assistance required, in getting into a formal kimono, and demonstrations of calligraphy, origami, karate and kendo.  There was also music, refreshments and face painting for the children, and the opportunity for female visitors to wear a kimono, which my daughter and granddaughter took advantage of.

I hadn’t seen kendo before but its clearly not for the faint hearted. I was a bit concerned by the leader’s warning that the demonstrations can be dangerous for small children who get too close and for bonsai which are being displayed in the immediate vicinity. However, all was well and the event organisers seemed impressed with our display and very grateful for our input. Plenty of adverts for our Winter Show were picked up by visitors during the day so it will be interesting to see if we get some Japanese attendees in February.