I hurried myself to Tokushima International Association (TIA) office. Almost all the participants had arrived when I got there. There were 48 of us including the organizers and foreigners from seven different countries viz. China, India, USA, Kenya, Australia, Mongolia and Bhutan.
We departed at 9.00 AM as scheduled. We passed through Kamiyama. As our driver deftly maneuvered the bus along the winding mountain roads through the lush green forests, I felt like I was in Bhutan.

After taking a rest for a while, we divided ourselves into eight groups and started making boxes for the birds'nest. We then went into the forest to put up the boxes on the tree trunks for the birds to come and make their nests inside them.
As the evening approached with cool mountain breeze, we started preparing for the barbeque.
The meat sizzled over burning charcoals. Beer flowed aplenty. Soft drinks too were abundant. Meat was in good supply. Funny jokes were inexhaustible. Alcohol opened up even the most reserved persons. And thus, new friends were made, and old friendships were reinforced.
As the night progressed, the portable Karaoke system really came in handy. First on the stage were some Chinese students who crooned some modern-sounding Chinese songs. But it was the TIA Director, Mr. Morino and Ms. Zhang Juan, a Chinese exchange student from Tongji University in China, who really broke the ice with a melodious Chinese number.


Next rose Mr. Sanmoy from India. As he began to sing a song composed by India’s Nobel-laureate Rabindranath Tagore, his wife could not resist but join her husband on the stage. “What a lovely couple!” someone whispered to my ears.
Others followed with English songs, oldies, Elvis, Beatles, Japanese Enkas, Japanese Pop songs, Chinese pop songs etc. While some sang, others danced. And so the merrymaking continued. The beer kept flowing. The gentle moon continued to look on from above too.

I retired to bed around midnight with Mr. Bayar and Mr. Sanmoy. Others continued chatting around the bonfire and I was told that some of them went to bed at around 4 am only. We all slept on the floor in the same hall, but it was quite comfortable.
We cleaned up, loaded our stuff on to our vehicles and said good bye to Fagus no Mori at 9.00 AM. On the way back, we stopped to see two waterfalls, Ogama no Taki and Otodoro no Taki in Naka town. At Ogama no Taki waterfall, to everybody’s surprise, Mr. Mark from USA took off his shirts and plunged right into the stream to take a cool natural shower under the waterfall.

We then headed back towards Tokushima city. If anybody was hungry, there was Onigiri (Japanese rice ball) inside the bus. We arrived back at TIA office at around 1 pm, safe and sound.
It was one hell of a friendship camp, thanks to TIA!