A week to cherish - IV

Hi hi sisters ...... You can say the next segment was really the business side of this event – to promote Korean tourism. I think it fits well with the theme of Yong Joon’s travel book and his role as Tourism Ambassador. Yong Joon came out from the back with the President of Korean Tourism, Mr. Lee Charm. Yeah yeah, the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ guy!

Yong Joon seemed to enjoy an amiable friendship with Mr. Lee, he smiled a lot when Mr. Lee was addressing the audience. There was a lucky draw for air tickets to Korea, Yong Joon was reading out the winning seat number in Japanese, so cute! I had a feeling 99.9% of the fans were hoping to win, not because of the tickets, but the slim chance that Yong Joon ssi might glance at the direction of the spotlight that shone on the winner's face! Hehe of course, I was nowhere near any of the winning seats :( Oh oh, you know Mr. Lee promised that if you visit Korea and mention you are Yong Joon's family at Immigration, he will give you a bottle of makori; so don't forget, huh?


What follows was the ‘lengthy’ speech by the Ambassador of Korea to Japan and his recognition of Yonsama’s influence on Korea-Japan relationship. Since this was a formal segment, Yong Joon seemed to be quite solemn and in deep thought. In hindsight, maybe his high fever was getting to him and he was dazed and tired, sob sob :(


By now 2 hours had gone and it looked like the show was still going strong, not that I was complaining. The turntable slowly rose up again, and our prince was sitting on a park bench holding a pen and his book, next to him was an old fashioned red mail box. He smiled to us, put his handsome head down and started writing. The camera zoomed in from behind and we saw him writing on a postcard in Japanese!


With his slow but smooth pen strokes, he was cautiously sculpting each word, then each sentence. For me, I was amazed at how Yong Joon could memorize a passage with so many kanji and hiragana! Yes, I was very moved and felt so much closer to him by the fact that I could actually read what he was writing this time. I notice tears started streaming down some of the Japanese sisters' faces. Even though we were not on the road with him this past year, but we had read wonderful little stories of how diligent, humble and tiring he was during his journey. We understood and ached for him, now we breathed a sigh of relief and were happy that he has come back to us :) I have extracted flowerbossa’s translation of his postcard here, thanks flowerbossa :)

"Completing a long journey, I have come back.
When I was seeing , listening to, or eating good things,
the very first thing that came to my mind was you, my family.
I would like to continue dreaming the same dreams with all of you."


Hehe, I think his act of mailing the postcard symbolized that it was sent to all our hearts, so sweet! He then began reading a poem from his book written by a monk where he learned about tea (p. 171). I was totally lost again even though he read it in Japanese. Afterwards Yong Joon went backstage, the MCs appeared and gave us instructions to make a little pouch with the colored bojagi cloth we had in our loot bag. FYI, when we entered through the Dome ticket gates, we each received a loot bag containing some promotional pamphlets and a colored handkerchief for waving. Haha, I guess that furoshiki lesson does have some use :) The MCs asked us to keep very quiet when Yong Joon came up again, then he would signal us to surprise him with our 45000 colorful bouquets.

Look at how curious he was wondering why it was so dark and quiet, hehe he usually is greeted with thunderous applause and cheers .....

hehe, thinking where were they all hiding?

Then all of a sudden, the light came back on and we cheered at the top of our lung and waved our little bojagi pouch with all our might, disregarding our arthritic shoulders and arms. That was quite an impressive scene inside the large Dome, you could imagine how touched and happy Yong Joon was. Haha, later Olivia told me the MC Miyamoto san joked that lucky he could only see the 45000 colorful floral bouquets and not the faces holding them. He was probably teasing about how 'not young' our faces are, haha so mean! I always have a good impression of Miyamoto san because he was the first Japanese TV interviewer of Yong Joon in 2004 and just love his sarcastic sense of humor :)

Next Yong Joon drew 10 ultra lucky fans who could receive a personal autographed book from him, so envious! Sigh, I knew I would not win since I didn’t even fill in my entry, I almost want to bang my head on the ground at that time! By now, we really didn’t know what kind of luck we were having, but were very fulfilled even if the show would just end this way because Yong Joon had spent so much 'alone' time with us already. What more could we ask for from the man we love? But NO, there’s more, not only more, he saved the best for last! to be continued ........