August 3, 2010
Japan Experience! 2010 Day 5
Day 5 of the Japan Experience was another action filled day!
Also last night (day 4) everyone had another great evening with their respective home stay families;
-Jordan and his host family attended a lesson on Japanese fan making and produced some unique fans by the end.
-Kalani played the board game "life" but this time with a twist, it was all in Japanese.
-Bruce spent the evening working his way through an enormous dinner prepared by his host mother, Ms. Hanai.
-Adele and Sarah strolled through the interesting shopping and restaurant area near their house in Nishi Kawaguchi.
-Binita's host family researched her favorite Japanese idols and then tried to find them on TV and in magazines.
-Last and certainly not least Lizzy (Sarah J.,) attended a festival with her family where the focus was on transporting massive portable shrines known as Mikoshi.
Now here are the picture's from JE 10's Day 5 activities!
The first cultural session this morning was learning to converse in Japanese. Yano Sensei taught the intermediate level students and Richard Sensei led the beginner level students. Here's Richard Sensei's group learning about counting and buying.
Binita and Kalani went with Yano Sensei to talk about transportation in Kyoto, in Japanese of course. Specifically they talked about Kyoto and how to navigate the many overlapping systems of public transportation (buses, trains, taxis etc).
Everyone crowding around the takoyaki
From there the JE10 participants were off for our Japanese cooking lesson led by the same great team as last year, Kadowaki Sensei, Masuda Sensei, and Kohara Sensei. Today we made sushi pockets, rice, yakitori (skewered chicken and vegetables), and takoyaki (breaded and fried octopus balls). Everyone got to try their hand at preparing the food. A good time was had by all! Probably the biggest surprise was that the food that was just prepared was to become lunch! It was alright however as everything turned out to be delicious.
The JE10 group with their accomplishments at the end of the cooking lesson...
...and of course the food itself
Following a short break the group moving to Seiritsu's washitsu. A washitsu literally means a Japanese style room. It generally contains rice straw mats, sliding rice paper doors, and traditional decorations. Today we went to the washitsu to participate in chado (Japanese tea ceremony) led by Nakamura Sensei. The high school Chado Club had already practiced very hard to deliver the explanation and demonstration entirely in English for our participants! Then all the JE students enjoyed special sweets and trying the tea.
Nakamura sensei, the Chado instructor.
Sarah and Kalani partaking in the tea ceremony.
Finally, there was the highly anticipated field trip to Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics and anime district. Akihabara not only has a plethora of huge chain electronics stores, but also an incredible number of small shops catering to a seemingly infinite number of bizarre interests. Where else in the world can you find stores that specialize in all types of vintage cell phone parts or stove fan blades? Akihabara is most famous for its many anime and manga related stores and is considered to be the 'otaku' center of Tokyo.
An Akihabara "maid" advertising for her cafe.
The group in Akihabara with some friendly older gentleman who was kind enough to say hi!