Everbody Loves Australians

Tomoe and I are considering giving special discounts to Australians who join our tours. We just had two Australian groups in a row and just can't get over how laid-back and smiley and love-every thingy they are. The father and son who will be biking with us for the next four days are also Australian, so the pressure is really on them to live up!

Among the highlights of last weeks trip for me was a visit to the Akiyamago grade school, where there are only eight students of various ages. It is the smallest elementary school in Nagano prefecture, and there are more teachers and staff than students. We spent an hour or so teaching each other games and the grand finally was the Akiyama kids wowing everyone with their ability to ride a unicycle.

On the last night, we had a BBQ with the visiting family and a few of of our friends and their children at the local shrine. Everyone had fun playing tag and trying to speak Japanese or English to each other, but what made Oliver (the son in our visiting family) claim that this had been "The best night of my life!" was the chance to use fireworks at the BBQ.

I don't want to give away any secrets to our competitors, but fireworks seems to be the only thing we need to provide to make customers happy if they have children and especially are from a dry region where fireworks are banned. If the kids leave saying "That was the best night of my life!", then likely the parents are happy too. (Then again, I have not yet tried hiring a prostitute for family trips with teenage sons - while the son's reaction may be the same, i suspect the parents' reaction may be a bit different)