KYOTO, Japan (Reuters) - Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao chatted with a farmer and sipped bitter tea in Japan's ancient capital of Kyoto on Friday in a visit underscoring a thaw in ties, but he said time was needed for all the ice to melt.
The trip to Kyoto came a day after Wen -- the first Chinese leader to visit Japan since 2000 -- gave a milestone speech to Japan's parliament, talking of friendship but warning not to forget the wartime history that has long plagued relations.
Wen's three-day visit has combined summitry with a common touch in a performance intended by both sides to appeal to ordinary citizens and build on a fragile detente that began with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's October trip to Beijing.
The Chinese premier's effort to reach out was widely welcomed in Japan, but on Friday he said the task of forging better relations between the wary neighbours -- at odds over energy, territory and regional influence -- was far from finished.
Kicking off a busy schedule that was also to include a bit of baseball, Wen took part in a Japanese tea ceremony at a guest house on the grounds of the palace where the emperor resided when Kyoto was the capital.
"People in Japan and China drink different types of tea, but we share a custom of opening up our hearts through drinking it," grand tea-master Soshitsu Sen said as he prepared the tea.
In a sign that tensions remain, however, members of Japanese right-wing groups cruised the streets in dozens of trucks with loudspeakers blaring anti-China slogans, and security was tight.
"Sino-Japanese relations will certainly brighten more in the future and the flowers of friendly Sino-Japanese relations will increase their beauty," he said.
"Although it takes more than one day to melt the thick ice, the trend of improving bilateral ties is irreversible," said a commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily.
Later, Wen exchanged his suit and tie for a windbreaker and running shoes to visit a Japanese farm, where he planted two tomato plants before drinking tea and eating a rice-and-red-bean sweet while chatting with the farmer's family.
"I saw him on TV and he seems to be nice," said housewife Yasuyo Komori, 66, as she took her daily walk inside the palace grounds. "But I don't have a good image of China," she said.
"The Chinese people seem to think Japan is bad. We've given them money and their leaders should tell them that because there is a lot of ill-will," she said.
Between his smiles and handshakes, Wen has issued pointed reminders that China remains wary of Japan's handling of the legacies from its military aggression in Asia up to 1945.
Still, his speech, the first by a Chinese leader to Japan's parliament in 22 years, was a landmark in the thaw between the two Asian giants, whose economies are deeply linked.
Tokyo and Beijing fell out during the five-year term of Abe's predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, who paid his respects each year at Tokyo's Yasukuni war shrine, seen across much of the region as a symbol of past militarism.
Wen did not explicitly mention the shrine in his speech, but in an interview before his visit he pressed Abe not to go. Abe has paid his respects before at Yasukuni, but has declined to say if he will do so as prime minister.
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