NOTES FROM HOFU

1. Hofu is a small town in southwest Japan, 800 kms away from Tokyo. It was founded in 1936 and, since then, it has been an industrial town. Mazda has here one of its main factories.

2. The photo here is the Hofu Tenmangu Shrine, god of learning and literature. It is one of the three main Tenjin temples in Japan. Dates back to the X century.

3. But the reason I came here has to do with Europe's Day. Hofu Commercial School is part of a European project on Japan and has been selected to receive a visit from a speaker coming to explain what the EU is all about. I spoke for one hour with 480 students who have been studying the EU mechanisms and who posed me some tricky questions! Amazing reception I had here with the usual courtesy and sympathy that the Japanese have to foreigners. Great day. Tomorrow, I will visit another school, in Hiroshima.