Cultural experience-Tea ceremony and flower arrangement-

It's getting warmer here, but still a little chilly in the morning and at night.
Now, we have some students for 2 week winter proglam in Feb.
It's smaller group than the one in Janurary,but multinational and seems they are having fun.

We tried flower arrangement and tea ceremony today.
First, we studied flower arrangement from the basics.
They all could arrange flowers very well.

Kazaru 'decorate' ⇒ Add(or do) something a little so that the flowers look beautiful.
Ikeru 'arrange'⇒ Put the flowers and weeds in a vessel or something with water to enjoy them.

It seemed they were having difficulty with the arrangement,but still somehow they could manage to
make them look nice.

 Songa's work^^
Jonathan's work^^
Yuria's work^^
Cookie's work^^

We had tulips, sweet peas, carnations and russet willows to use.
They made us feel the spring.

I put them at the reception desk and feel even the enviroment of our office got better.

They said thank you to us, but I'm the one who should say thank you^^

Next, we tried tea ceremony.
We learned how to sit and use the items together.
There are several ways to sit, and today we chose 'Seiza',sitting with one's legs bent beneath one.
 They drank the green tea and
 ate some Japanese sweets and
 tried making tea.

Ireru⇒Make tea, coffee and green tea.

Tateru⇒Make tea with green tea powder.

It seemed to be a little difficult for them to make it.

They kept looking at the teacher as if they don't know when to stop.

You need to stir until a lot of bubbles appear.

I guess their hands will be stiff after making it.

A party with Japanese students

The winter proglam for January has finished and the students went back to their own country.
We spent great time together for a month.
I guess there were some little problems since they are away from their hometown and their parents,
but hope there were a lot more fun things while staying in Japan.
It was snowy on the last day of the proglam and so cold to go out for sight-seeing.
We don't have much snow in Tokyo.They were lucky.. or unlucky. I don't know.

We had a party with Japanese students on 10th of Feb.

First of all, of course we need to introduce ourselves.
But they are shy , so we made it a little easy for them.
It was like a game.
They wrote their own specialty or feature on a sheet and
later our teacher asked questions like.. ' Who do you think bla bla is?'

'Who do you think a good cook is?'
'Who do you think watches baseball everyday?'
'Who do you think has a big dog?'
They just needed to guess just from their impression.


There was someone who could speak Chinese,
so we asked all of the students to say 'Ni Hao'.
We couldn't judge who it was from just a single simple word,though.

Who likes Miss Erika?
Everyone likes the teacher ,but who loves her?
The answer is.....Miss Koan.
All of the Japanese students who joined the party thought it would be a male student,
but actually it was a girl. Girl students also can be in love with female teachers!
I mean, as a teacher and a student^^

And after that, we had some time for asking questions which our students had prepared for this day.


They asked how they think of food,dramas and other things from their own countries.

Not only about their countries, but also something about Japan,

like.. 'Do you like Akihabara?'

  After that, they could introduce the others very well.
 We also played a game with Hiragana and Katakana.
The Japanese students read the words and the foreign students listened to them.
Only Jeesun from South Korea tried the reading part.
It seemed very difficult since there were 2 teams speaking loud at the same time.
 We could hear the students saying ' What did you say!?' from here and there.
 Jiwoo looks fun seeing the others being confused.
We also played Fruit Basket Turnover.
They were very excited.
It was such a relief that there was noone taking a class downstairs.
The loser had to hug Miss. Suzuki.
Well, you can't really call it 'a penalty',though^^;


Instead of fruit names, we played with the feature of the students, like ' someone who is~~'
There was only one male studnet and one teacher,but girls called 'someone who is a guy!' or
'Teacher!'...there was no choice for them.
When someone say 'Fruit Basket!', all of them have to move around and take other seats,
but everyone took the seat next to them..;; They should be sorry for the player in the center;;
 Fortunately noone got hurt, but there were a few accidents.
 Some bumped into each other and others sat on their friend's lap.
Shokin was in a hurry to find a seat,though it was only Japanese who had to move.
We all had a good time.
Jeesun and Teikun won the game.
 Congraturations!

And the one who lost the game was.......
 Shokin^^
They seemed to have fun interviewing Japanese students and playing games with them.

A day-trip to Hakone

We went to Hakone as a part of our winter proglam.


I was worried about the weather,but fortunately it was fine.
Though we had someone who caught a cold and couldn't join us,
The teachers and students headed for Hakone from Shinjuku on ' Romance Car' ;it's a name of a train.
Personaly I feel a little embarrassed to tell you the name...

The train had seets which could be turned to make us facing each other.
I don't really like that type of the seat. It makes me feel nauseous and drowsy.


After the 'Romance Car', we got on 'Tozan densha' which means 'climbing mountain train' in Japanese.There were quite a few people on the train.



It was cold and couldn't expect the weather, so I just guessed there wouldn't be
many people going there. Well, apparently I was  wrong.
They might have thought in the same way as I did.
It took us 40 minutes to get to the station where we changed to a cable car to go further up.
Every one of them transfered to the car, so it was very crowded.
You can see that from the picture^^;

After 20 minutes in that crowd, we finally...........! got on a ropeway;;;;;;;;;;;;;
But the scenery from the window was exellent. Our students were excited and looked fun,
but when I looked in the other direction, our principal was silently gazing somewhere else.
I asked him why and found out he was scared of hights.

 The students were very happy to see the view saying ' Wow,look! There is some snow on

 the mountain!' ' I've never seen snow before!!' ' We are so high up!' ' It's beautiful!' and so on.

There's a point where you can see Mt.Fuji on the way up, but unfortunately the top of the mountain
was covered by clouds and couldn't see well.
We could barely see the foot of it,and they were taking photos of it.
If I only could control the weather!


We had 'Tendon' Tenpura with rice, Ramen and Black egg,that was the name of the dish, for lunch.
Why do carry and ramen seem more delicious on the mountains? I don't know..

 Black eggs.

We took a picture in front of the place covered with volcanic smoke of Mt.Hakone.
 I brought a Sully hat to wear so that students wouldn't get lost.
Miss Kouan from Taiwan wore it. It looks so cute, isn't it?


After that, we got on a pirate ship, of course a fake one, though I guess I don't even need to mention it.
It was so comfortable that made them nod off.



Then, we went on a bus to head for a hotspring.
The ones who wanted to go to a hotspring left, and the rest of them just decided to
take a foot bath.


We chatted while looking at the great view.
I actually wanted to eat icecream,but couldn't find anywhere to buy.
We bought souveniors like rice crackers and sweet bun.
I picked up a toy for my nephew.




The train we took, Romance car, was a new model and made us drowsy right after we got on it.
Hope they will remember this day as  a good memory of an experience in Japan.