Hello, Readers!

Today we have a group of special guests here at Gongendo, our activity base in Asuka.
Who do you think they are?
They are the famous Japanese drummers, “Kodo”.

They have come to Nara prefecture to give a concert in Kashihara city, which is next to our hometown, tomorrow. So we invited them to join us for dinner. We’ve been in touch for two years since we had them as special guests at the festival in Asuka. We decided to prepare two of the specialties in this Kansai Area, Takoyaki (fried balls of flour with a piece of octopus in each of them) and Okonomiyaki (Japanese savory pancake with shredded cabbage, meat and sea food in it), and Yakitori (barbecued chicken), too for the hungry people.
We began to make an open-air dinning place at the parking space in the afternoon. We prepared some kitchen tools such as stoves and grill plates, and went shopping.

In the evening,
The members of “KODO” arrived in their tour bus with the words, “ONE EARTH TOUR” on it. They all looked fine even after a long drive. We enjoyed talking one another for a while. Mr. Saito, a member of “KODO” proposed a toast and the banquet started. However instead of eating, we all began to cook Takoyaki and Okonomiyaki, standing in front of the grill plates, which we enjoyed a lot.
While cooking, we learned how to cook well and the members of each group sometimes competed as to which Takoyaki tasted better. We even made special Takoyaki which had mustard or Japanese horse radish in it. We really enjoyed the evening like a festival.

How fast time flies when we are having a great time!
We finished the merry party with taking pictures with the members of “Kodo”, who were going to have a concert the next day.
We said “Good by,” to them, hoping they would put on a good concert.