201811031AIRA dispatched interpreters to the event “Japan Bird Festival” (JBF) which is held every year in Abiko city with a theme of “Coexistence of Humans and Birds”. (No.18-11)
  Period: Nov 3rd(Sat)~4th (Sun),2018
  Venue: Ooban (coot) square of Mizu-no-Yakata
  Dispatched interpreters: Hawaii booth (Masahiko Miyake, Fumiko Oi, Mitsuru Sato, Chikara Igarashi), Philippine A booth(Rie Hama, Michiko Kurata), Philippine B booth(Hiroshi Osaki, Joselin Kobayashi, Fe Kawata), Thai booth (Wasana Kida, katsumi Nakajima), Yasuhiko Hesaki   12 people in total
 
“Japan Bird Festival” is one of the biggest bird festivals held once a year in Japan for which lots of relevant organizations gather not only from the whole country but from abroad. This year, at first, AIRA received requests for  interpreters from five groups in four countries. But finally we dispatched  interpreters to four groups in three countries since an Indian group could not participate due to delay of the issue of visa.
The interpreters were allocated to AM or PM on both days while some were in charge all day long. Some interpreters who were familiar with the groups participating every year seemed to renew their friendship.
Also, some interpreters worked for the booth of their native country and enjoyed talking about their native topics. The interpreters who joined JBF for the first time seemed to fit in well with their activities.
At Philippine booth, they set up another booth this year specializing in “Raptors”.
 The Costa Rica booth was next to the Hawaii booth, wherein a photo of “Quetzal”,  the model of “Fire Bird”, was exhibited.  Mr. Hesaki voluntarily helped the booth to attend visitors though no requests for an interpreter had been received.
 Each interpreter explained about the selling goods or answered the questions about bird names or bird watching areas of the country with assistance of the native guide.
On the evening of the first day, Nov 3rd, Welcome Reception was held at the square in front of “Maimai-Tei” of Mizu-no-Yakata. The interpreters: Ms. Hama, Ms. Kobayashi,
Mr. Miyake and Ms. Oi were engaged in interpreting greetings by the Executive Committee Chairman (Mr. Takuji Okuno) and Mayor (Mr. Junichiro Hoshino) as well as greetings by each participant in charge at the exchange meeting. As such, they were too much occupied to take dishes. Ms. Hama helped the Costa Rican with his greeting as an interpreter on his sudden request and was much appreciated by him.  Ms. Wen Ming, AIRA member, took care of the participants from Taiwan. The greeting by a representative of Taiwan was made in Japanese in whole. We heard that they had made a practice to speak in Japanese using the translated draft sent by Ms. Wen Ming before they left Taiwan. 
(Translated by Mr.Katsumi Nakajima)
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