The Abingdonian 2019

68 The Abingdonian First Orchestra and Big Band Far East Tour From the 30 June until the 9 July, the Abingdon First Orchestra and Big Band toured the Far East of Asia. Two coaches left the bus park at 7.15am on Sunday 30 June. After a comfortable journey to Gatwick, lengthy flight to Hong Kong and a connection to Tokyo, we met our guides, Simon and Patrick. Once we’d checked into our hotel, we went for some local food, Italian to be precise. The next morning, we went to the Harajuku district to Takeshita Street, a popular shopping destination. The street is lined with colourful and irreverent shops which were great fun to peruse. We then walked to the Meiji Jingu, a shrine dedicated to the deified spirits of Emperor Meiji before setting up for our joint concert with the British School Tokyo (BST) in the Showa Women’s University Hitomi Memorial Hall. The concert was part of BST’s 30th anniversary celebrations and it was great to see the other musicians play to their incredibly high standard. On Wednesday 3 July, we visited the Tokyo Sky Tree. Constructed in 2008, it is the world’s second tallest building, standing at 2080ft. After a stomach- churning lift to the top floor and a slow walk around the observation deck with both hands clutching the rail the entire time, we came back down to ground level and sighed with relief. Then we went on a boat trip to the Hamarikyu Gardens, home to a 300-year-old pine tree. After a lovely walk through the gardens, we left Tokyo on the Shinkansen bullet train to Nagoya, where we met our host families from Toho High School, who were going to look after us for the coming days.This was my personal highlight of the trip as it was incredible to live with a Japanese family, even for a short period of time. After staying with the family for a night, we had a day at Toho High School, joining in with English lessons, trying our hand at origami and even wearing kimonos! We then rehearsed with the Toho Marching Band for our joint concert. There is only one word to describe the marching band – phenomenal! Their synchronisation and precision were absolutely mind- blowing and made us wonder how we could possibly follow such a spectacle. It was a truly memorable experience to be on the stage with 65 Abingdon boys and 65 Toho students. A real highlight has to be playing Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 and Vaughan Williams’ English Folksong Suite , 130 players strong. After a second successful concert, we went back with our host families for the night. The farewell the next day was a hard one, but no sooner had we said “Sayōnara” than we were off to the Toyota Motor Museum, home to cars from the late 19th century to the present. After this, we visited Nara Park, home to around 1,500 deer. The Shinto religion believes that the white deer were protectors of the city and thus have resided there ever since. You can buy deer crackers (shika senbei) to feed them — this led to some interesting and humorous encounters with some hungry and impatient deer. Nara is also home to the Eastern Great Temple with the 15m tall Vairocana Buddha, which was truly a sight to be seen. The next stop on our jam-packed day was the Kinkakuji Golden Pavilion, a Zen temple in northern Kyoto where the two top floors are completely covered in gold leaf. Once we checked into our hotel in Kyoto we were ready for bed. The next day (6 July) we were up at 4.30am to see the monks perform their daily prayers, which was a really special experience and definitely worth the early start. The main proportion of the