Today, we went to the station, to the airport, and to the ferry terminal to welcome groups from Russia, Thailand, France, India and Latvia. Hakodate gave everyone a warm welcome with a beautiful summer’s day, and the forecast is also reasonably good for next week. Two more international groups arrive tomorrow. You can join all the WMDF crowd, including some of the in-Japan groups, for the Opening Party in Daimon’s Green Belt area. The Motomachi Stages run from Aug 5 to Aug 10.

The first artists to arrive for WMDF 006, Alex & Jan Grant, of Toozalii International Community Arts, are pictured below enjoying some Japanese green tea at Future University Hakodate (FUN). They will be running two workshops at FUN’s  “Open Campus” on Sunday Aug 4, as part of WMDF’s Outreach program. WMDF 006 is revving up!

WMDF planning continues apace. We held our main meeting for this year’s group guides. We think we have another stong team again this year, and we are looking forward to being great partners for our overseas groups from Aug 2. Next full staff meet is on Jul 31 in Motomachi Park, when we will go around all our friendly concert neighbours to give them passes for the event. First-time staff also welcome! We are gearing up for a bumper year six.