Duterte, Abe exchange jokes during official dinner in Tokyo

President Rodrigo Duterte and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe both were in a light mood for the official dinner during the Filipino leader’s second visit.

In his toast remarks, Duterte said he would skip the two pages of his page so they could proceed with the dinner.

“I will skip two pages of my prepared speech and go to the last page because I am hungry,” he said amid the crowd’s laughter.

“I am going to change my writer. He is a book author not a speechwriter,” he added before ending his speech.

Duterte also made the audience laugh when he forgot to pause to give way for the interpreter in the first minute of his ceremonial toast.

For his part, Abe said his video of his visit to Davao City in January received 1.3 million “access counts” on his office’s Facebook page, “the greatest ever.”

“I had to confess that 90 percent of those who actually saw this web page were actually the all of the Filipino people across the globe, so only the 10 percent account for those of us in Japanese,” he said.

“So I would like to encourage Japanese to pay more attention to my Facebook account,” he added.

LOOK: Some of the Palace photos of Pres. Duterte's official visit to Japan @gmanews pic.twitter.com/Xa7ChWXt2X

— Trisha Macas (@trishamacas) October 31, 2017

The two leaders were joined by their respective partners, Honeylet Avanceña and Japanese First Lady Aki Abe, for the official dinner.

In Duterte’s toast, he said that the Philippines and Japan’s recent interactions are “friendship that goes beyond official lines.”

Abe, meanwhile, described the two countries’ relationships as “family-like.”

Before the official dinner, Duterte witnessed the signing of 18 letters of intent between Filipino and Japanese companies worth $6 billion and thanked Abe for fleshing out the ¥1 trillion aid package earlier pledged for the Philippines. — RSJ, GMA News