Ohana Iron Chefs - Singapore - jyaotzu

Where did we go you may be wondering, when we went on our Iron Chefs adventure today? Well, we went to a small place that is full of lots of people from different countries. Goh san comes from that place and she taught us today that it is called Lion City. In Malaysian the word for Lion City is Singapore. She told us the story of a man called Stanley Raffles who went walking in the jungle before they built all those giant apartment blocks and buildings there. When he was in the jungle, he saw a lion and this is how the place got its name. In fact there is a very famous hotel there called Raffles which was named after him. In Singapore there are five dialects spoken and Goh san can speak all of them. Today, she and Jennifer taught us many things in Chinese; we learnt how to count to ten; we learnt how to sing some songs; we learnt how to say some words in Chinese too e.g. Hello is “nee how ma”; thank you is “sheshe ni”; goodbye is “jai chyen” and good morning is “tzao sung hao”.

 The numbers from one to ten in Chinese are ee, aa, san, su, uu, liyu, chi, pa, chiyuu, suw. We sang a song called “Daddy finger” which is called “Sotsu papa” and “There was a farmer had a dog” and this is “Pingwo” in Chinese. Jennifer sang all of the words to us and it was such fun to learn these new words and songs in Chinese. Goh san said that we had a two week lesson in twenty minutes today.

Now the big job that we had was preparing everything for the “jyotzu” which is the Chinese name for “gyoza”. We started off mixing chicken mince with chopped up nira, salt and a little bit of soy sauce. We mixed it all together and there was a strong smell of the interesting vegetable. It smelled like onion a little. Then there were circles of dough which we used to wrap the mince mixture inside. We also learnt how to pinch the wrap closed so that it stayed like a small envelope, when we cooked it.

We had so many other activities to do at the tables and really enjoy our full days at summer school. We have so much to do, so many things to learn about and we are so grateful for the loving care and commitment from our teachers.

One of the activity tables had flags from Singapore to make. The flags were red and white with a crescent moon and some stars on it. Once again we put glue on the paper and then rolled it onto a chopstick and that became our flagpole.

The second art activity was making lanterns. Downstairs we especially kept our vegetable and fruit printing papers for this activity and our teachers drew lines on them for us to cut. Some of us were able to cut on the lines and our teachers did the cutting for the rest of us. When we made the paper into a round shape and attached them at the top, they became a lantern shape. These lanterns are similar to Chinese lanterns and we have a handle on the top so we can hang them in our rooms at home. Upstairs we were all able to cut along the lines and make our very own lanterns. We used orange, red, blue and brown paper for the lantern shape and then we used a ribbon for the handle.

Upstairs whenever we learn about a new country we look on our world map and try to find out where it is in relation to us here in Japan. We saw that Singapore is small. We looked at the other countries that we have visited this week and attached a ribbon to them and placed a heart on each country. We have visited four countries so far and we are not sure where we are going tomorrow…..mmmm!

The third and final activity that we did was using paints and sponges for stamping. Today our stamping was with a bunch of celery and some broccoli. We used black, green and pink paint. Nanako had seen a beautiful art project using these colours and vegetables and the end result was a tree. We used the vegetables in our own way with some of us making trees and some of us making patterns. Upstairs, we read the book called “The Five Chinese Sisters”. It is a Chinese folktale and it was quite long, however we all sat and concentrated really well. Tomorrow will be the last day of our Ohana Iron Chefs and we have had a wonderful time. We want to thank Goh san for being our teachers with Jennifer today and for all her preparations for our “jyotzu” cooking. We ate so many at snack time and could have finished them all, even after we had eaten our own snacks.

Love always Shelley, Darren, Nanako, Ayaka, Christine, Goh, Liezel and Sabine