Kathryn and Derek in the Japanese art class |
Steph and Ryo in the Gym class |
By Nagai sensei and Zurn sensei
Today we spent time at Hakuyo H.S. in Yokohama. Last night we stayed at Hakuyo H.S student's house.
Darryl Zurn: At the high school we helped out with English conversation classes. The Japanese students asked about our favorite TV shows, what music we like, and we told them about us and where Wisconsin was.
We also did a fun cultural activity which was to pound cooked rice into a gooey chewy treat called Mochi. We pounded the mochi in a big wooden container with a large wooden mallet. This is a treat they traditionally make for New Year's celebrations, but the Japanese students were learning about it too. It takes about 20 minutes of pounding to turn 12 cups of rice into Mochi. We all took turns pounding, the mallet was heavy and not easy to control but nobody got hurt and only a little bit flew out into the crowd of students and teachers!
Then they rolled some small portions in peanut powder, some in a sweet red bean paste (azuki), and some in a radish (daikon) chutney. It was good but very sticky and chewy!
Hiroko Nagai: We also visited 2 social studies classes. One teacher explained about the differences between U.S and Japan architecture. He talked about a famous old building in Kyoto which we will visit next week. The picture of the building is on the 10 Yen Japanese coin. We are looking forward to seeing the building in Kyoto. He also mentioned about how Frank Lloyd Wright who is a famous architect in U.S., was influenced by Japanese techniques.
We should thank the host families. They made an obentoo (lunch box) for us. The lunch box contained rice, meat, veg, eggs, fishes, fruits, ... etc just about everything. The presentation of these items in our lunch box is amazing. Host mom wakes up early to fix the box for us. Thank you very much. We ate lunch with the host sister/brother and their classmates in their class room. It was a lot of fun.
Derek and Maria gave short speeches in Japanese for our high school hosts. They did an excellent job explaining our trip and where we are from.
One last activity is participating in a traditional tea ceremony. There is actually a club for practicing the tea ceremony, and these students did one for us. It was very interesting. The ceremony engaged a lot of nice little touches such as enjoying looking the tea cup after finishing the tea.
Despite our legs falling asleep during the ceremony, I hope we all enjoyed experiencing a profound Japanese cultural activity.
Hope everyone has a great time with his/her hostfamily this weekend. We will meet again as a group on Sunday for our bullet-train trip to Kyoto.