River Thames<\/a> seemed a natural destination for a royal long interested in the waterway that runs through the heart of London. Naruhito studied 18th-century commerce on the river as a graduate student at the University of Oxford some 40 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe chronicled the interest in his memoir \u201cThe Thames and I,\u201d together with his fondness for Britain and its people. The future emperor got a chance to experience life outside the palace walls, including doing his own ironing, going to the bank and taking part in pub crawls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Tuesday’s ceremonial welcome seemed warm. Charles and Naruhito, who have known each other for years, settled into the back of a carriage and chatted like old chums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Masako wore a mask in her carriage because of a horse hair allergy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Both countries look to each other as a source of stability and mutual reassurance at a time of potentially destabilizing global political change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had a long history of engagement,” said John Nilsson-Wright, the head of the Japan and Koreas program at the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge. \u201cBut … this current visit (is) a reflection of both the personal ties of affection between the two royal families (and) perhaps most importantly of all, the geopolitical significance of the relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ABC: LONDON —\u00a0LONDON (AP) \u2014\u00a0King Charles III\u00a0welcomed the Japanese emperor and empress for a state visit that began on Tuesday, offering the best in pomp and circumstance as the U.K. seeks to bolster its role as the most influential European nation in the Indo-Pacific region. Emperor Naruhito and Empress of Masako are to attend a banquet hosted by the king, lay a wreath at Westminster Abbey and tour one of Britain\u2019s premier biomedical research institutes. But the emperor began this week\u2019s trip by visiting a site that has special meaning: The Thames Barrier. The retractable flood control gates on the River Thames seemed… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40127,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40125\/revisions\/40127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}