Jambo Countdown: 500 Days to Go

エキサイティング
('Ekisaitingu' - exciting!)

There are 500 days to go until the 23rd World Scout Jamboree opens in Yamaguchi City on 28th July 2015! In 500 days' time, Unit 42 will already be out in Japan and will have spent a few days either exploring Tokyo or living with Japanese families.

To celebrate, I've found you lucky things some 500-themed facts about Japan.

Around 500 AD, Japan was rapidly becoming one of the most civilised countries in the world. They borrowed script, artistic and architectural styles from China, and Buddhism was starting to take off. Around this time, Japan was seeing agriculture overtake the hunter-gatherer method of finding food.

The 500 Series is a Shinkansen high-speed train operated by the West Japan Railway Company. They are capable of travelling up to 200 mph. The Japanese often employ people to push passengers on to trains: the average delay to rail services in Japan is 18 seconds.

National Route 500 is a highway connecting Beppu, Oita and Tosu, Saga. Its total length is just under 100 miles.

The #JamFam is complete!

Andy is the 40th and final member of the #JamFam to confirm his place

Unit 42 are MEGA EXCITED to announce that our #JamFam is finally complete! Andy will be joining the team as our brand new Assistant Unit Leader ready for our first Unit training weekend in April.

Andy is 23 and is a cast member of WAGS Gang Show. We're expecting amazing things from him for our Unit's dance to the Jamboree song!

We're so pleased to have Andy on board and we know he can't wait to get stuck in either. It's going to be an incredible adventure.

So long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye!

Unit 42 is saying sayounara to our Coventry patrol, who are off to join Unit 72

During February, the UK Contingent received some Super Exciting News: the whole of the UK had been given extra places to take even more deserving young people to the 23rd World Scout Jamboree. Yay! From the extra places, both Warwickshire and Coventry Scout Counties were awarded a whole shiny new patrol each. Double yay!

The new patrols mean that Unit 42 is changing a bit. We're now no longer the 'Warwickshire & Coventry Unit' but rather a whole Warwickshire Unit made up of four patrols and four Leaders entirely from Warwickshire Scouts. Unit 42's current patrol of Coventry Scouts will be joining the new patrol from Coventry, and other patrols made up of Scouts from Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Jersey, in the newly formed Unit 72.

We're going to miss our Coventry #JamFam and we wish them the best of luck in their new Unit.

Mike, Steph and Shaun are SO EXCITED to be welcoming our new patrol of Warwickshire Scouts to Unit 42 later on this week. It's a crazy family and we hope they'll love being a part of it just as much as we do.

We'll see you there!