This is quite a month for Bet (Elizabeth) Davies. On Nov. 28, she will receive an award from the Japanese ambassador in London on behalf of the government for services rendered to to the Japanese community in Wales, and her work in bridging Japan and the U.K. in general.
We meet in Kamakura, where she has just arrived -- all dressed in black but bubbling with joie de vivre and with a bright pink scarf artfully slung around her neck -- from visiting the British War Cemetery in Yokohama's Hodogaya on Remembrance Sunday, and staying with friends in Fujisawa.
"The Fujisawa Male Voice Choir first visited Wales in 1997," she explains. "There was amazing media coverage. One paper wrote a six-page article, headlined 'Tokyo Jones.' Now when the choir sings here, they have the Welsh flag on the stage."