The beat of the taiko drums

We think that the whole of Tokyo heard us drumming at the Azabu Kumin centre. The sound of the drums is really loud and deep and you can feel it inside your body. We did! We had so much fun with Moko sensei and missed some of our friends who are still enjoying their Golden Week, somewhere outside of Tokyo. You can see from our photos how happy we were; of course

partly due to having our parents with us. Some of us are not used to having our parents with us, when we are at school. Our teachers love it when our parents are with us, so they can see what we do when we are at school. Many of our dads and mums are working but since today is still a holiday, it was perfect timing for

our taiko workshop.

All of us had our very own drum and sticks and we followed Moko sensei’s instructions really carefully. Some of us remember some of the exercises, rhythms and games that she taught us last time, so we sort of knew what to do. We remembered that when you hit the skin it you say “don” and when you hit the rim, you say “ka”. We also knew how to pose and say “yaaaaaah”

as well as dance around the drum when we heard the picnic. She said that we had to pretend that our drum was a park and we went for a picnic to the park. We first hit the skin of the drum twice, then the rim of the drum twice and repeated these rhythms many times. Afterwards, we clicked our sticks above our heads and then made a pose. We watched Lanah’s mum Reina

and Kaitlyn, Alexis’s mum performing one of Moko’s compositions called “Dragon Tiger”. It is about a group of dragons and a group of tigers meeting one another in battle. Reina was a dragon and Kaitlyn was a tiger and Moko sensei was both dragon and tiger. Moko sensei was really impressed with our drumming skills as well as those of our parents. We want to say a huge thank you to her for providing these workshops for all of the Ohana families, twice a year. Arigatou Moko

sensei! You are the best taiko player in Tokyo!

On the way back to school we decided to stop at the local supermarket, to buy ingredients for our Mothers Day breakfast. It was so much fun walking around with a shopping basket and looking for the few items that we needed. We bought tins of tuna, mayonnaise,

cucumbers and nori. We wonder if our mums can guess what we are going to make for our Mother’s Day breakfast! We are really excited for the breakfast on Friday and it felt great that we could go shopping in preparation for what we are going to cook; which our teachers usually do without us. When we arrived back at school, we missed Luka and William L as they did the taiko workshop with Flowers Class. Luka could play taiko with his mum,

Nanako and William L could play with his sister Jennifer and his mum, Rie.

Early in the morning we did a few activities in preparation for Mother’s Day. Some of us completed our cards with Shelley and some of us worked on our gifts. Koh chan is the lucky last and he will work on his gifts when he comes to school tomorrow. We have

prepared table cloths for the table too. After rest time, our teachers asked us: “What colours would you like for the table cloths for our Mother’s Day breakfast?” Manuel chose red, Hana chose white and Luka chose black. We were all satisfied with these colours. So if you walk into our classroom, it looks as if we have some sort of art deco fabric on the tables but it really is paper. On the way to the Azabu Kumin centre and on

the way back, we sang many of our favourite songs which we listen to in the morning at school. Our favourite is the Ohana School Song which we know most of the words of.

By the time that we came back to school, there was not enough time to go to the park. We came back to our classroom and drew pictures of our experience at the taiko drumming workshop and then we read a story. The story today was called “Hiccupotamus” and it was about a hippopotamus that had hiccups and kept on doing things that disturbed his friends, the elephant, the centipede and the buffalo. Whatever they tried, they couldn’t help him get rid of his hiccups and in the end, they had hiccups too, and he was cured.

Thanks for a fabulous day together, feeling the beat of the taiko drum. Love always Shelley, Hisami and Liezel