New friends

You may have noticed that there are two extra people in Ruben's group photo at the temple steps (with the umbrellas). That's Cathy and Violet.

When we got off the local bus in Kyoto, they asked to follow us to the temples since both groups were going that way. Of course, we just folded them into our group, which grew from 11 to 13 on the spot.

As it turns out, Cathy lives in the San Jose area, and she was on vacation with her sister Violet, who lives in Australia. They were vacationing together, first to Hong Kong and the Japan. Their heritage is Chinese, and were just as touristy as we were. It was a good fit, and we had a lot of fun with them for the rest of the day, lunch included.

I hope we get to see them again. Cathy is going to try to come to our January concert in Walnut Creek.

And speaking of friends, we bumped into four members of the Glenn Miller Orchestra on tour. They were at the Outback Steakhouse in Osaka too. And now that we've moved to Tokyo, I see that the Count Basie Orchestra will be here in a few days too. We had met up with them a few years back while at the Tokyo Dome Hotel. And there's the good samaritan lady that helped Jukka, Missy, and Lois find their way to our Osaka hotel the other night (they were really lost), and came back later to have dinner with us. Then she came back the next day with a bag of Universal Studio promotional snacks, since she works in their marketing department. I don't know much more about that, and hope that someone else posts about it.

Anyway, it's always a better adventure when we interact with the locals, whether they be local to our hotel or our home in the USA.