Cultural Experience

Today was Monday 15th of July. The 15th of July in Japan is known as "Umi No Hi" (Marine day) . This is a Japanese national holiday. For us New Zealand students instead of considering it as a long weekend, we considered it as a normal weekend. Why? because this meant that we didn't have to got to school for two days. The purpose of this holiday is to give thanks to ocean because Japan is based as an Island nation. Making use of this public holiday and no school, we had a cultural experience of Japanese sweet making. Today we were going to make transitional and famous Japanese sweets. ​​

​​We all went to Reo's house as his dad was a pastry chef, so he was going to teach us how to make Japanese sweets. Today, we were going to be making MANJU. This is a Japanese sweet with red bean filling. Before we actually started making it, we had a little bit of practice. Even though, we were not there yet, we started making the real thing. It was hard at first but eventually, it came around. I actually ended up making some good ones. 

Reo papa, put the sweets in the oven and told us to wait. While we were waiting for our sweets to be made, Reo mama took us to their store. WOW! was all I could say. As soon as I entered, I was embraced with the smell of delicious mouth watering sweets. We were also given permission to choose a sweet of our choice. I choose a sponge cake, it was good. Once our sweets were done, we went back and packed the sweets. It was now time to head home and get ready HANABI
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THANK YOU TO REO FAMILY
for allowing us to come to their shop and making sweets. Thank you for teaching us how to make it and allowing us to taste test some.