Welcome to Japan

Today started off upstairs, with us doing Japanese Day with Ayaka. We looked at the map of the world and Tokutaro pointed out where Japan was. We practiced saying “Hello, goodbye and thank you” in Japanese. In the morning we say “Ohio gozaimasu”; towards midday we say “Konnichiwa” and then in the evening we say “Konbawa”. Goodbye is “sayonara” and thank you is “arigatou gozaimasu”. Ayaka asked us what was our favourite Japanese food and we had so many different answers.

Clodia – mame;

Tokutaro – momo;

Ethan – chahan;

Ava – sushi;

Ryan – mochi;

Noa – onigiri;

Blue – Japanese candy (we think maybe he likes Hichews);

Arata – onigiri;

Beckett – rice and mame and mochi;

Sean – sushi.

 Ayaka read a book called “Omusubi corori” which is about a character called “Omusubi” and his adventures. Ayaka read the whole book in Japanese and we all were able to understand it. Sometimes when you look at pictures, you can use them as your guide to help you understand a story and we did this today.

We sang “Hajimaru yo” with hand actions and the obento song in Japanese. We made our own obento using the plastic trays from our real obento that some of us have for lunch each day. We used newspaper and tissues to make onigiri; black paper for nori; origami paper for carrots and cherries and we pushed white paper clay through a play dough tool which makes the play dough come out in thin stringy shapes. We pretended that this was yaki soba or spaghetti for our obento. Ethan made sushi with egg on top using yellow paper. We wrapped our obento with plastic wrap as if they were real.

Some of us worked on our canvasses when we first arrived at school and Elana and Arata spent time working on the graphics tablet, so that they could make their faces for their canvasses.

Noa was the Immigration Officer this morning and she welcomed all of us off the airplane this morning. She looked carefully at our passports and checked to see if we were who we said we were. Our International Month has really been fun and it is not yet over!

 Downstairs, seven of us went up to the top floor of the building to copy our hands on the large photocopying machine there. We were so surprised to see the photos of our hands which our teachers are carefully placing on our canvasses, which is the real finishing touch. Some of ours are already complete and they look amazing, even if we say so ourselves. Sofie and Taiyo painted theirs today and they had fun using rollers and brushes and seeing the colours appear on their canvas. We only have two more weeks so the pressure is on for everything to be ready long before the actual day. At the other activity tables, we played with flubber. Koh kun especially loves playing with flubber and Elisa too. We did some more work on our Hina Matsuri pictures and we made some more flowers to take with us tomorrow to give as gifts.

   Hisami sang some of our songs so that we are well prepared when we go and sing tomorrow at the community centre across the road. We sang “Okinakuri no” and “Higeji san” and “Gu choko pade”. We played a fishing game and did a lot of bead threading. We held fishing rods and had to try to catch the fish by putting the hook inside the fish’s mouth. The fish were read, yellow, green and purple.

We went to the park early today as the weather was warmer and sometimes the park gets so crowded, there really are too many children there. We had a wonderful time with our friends from upstairs too as they went out early as well. When we returned to our classroom, we went straight to sit on our circular shaped cushions. Our teachers think that these cushions are really important to have in our classroom as we sit more quietly and pay attention to what our teachers are saying. It was a busy day at school as it is every day. Tomorrow we will remind two more of our friends to copy their hands on the big machine upstairs, and then our teachers can complete all of our paintings. In fact, tomorrow we are travelling to the Philippines with Carmen, Zachary’s mum, which we are really looking forward to.

  Love always

Shelley, Darren, Hisami, Ayaka, Liezel, Nanako, Goh, Christine, Maryna, Sharee