Japan trip: Day 8, Hakuyo high school, classes, tea ceremony, kendo

From Ashley:

Today was really fun! We went to a Japanese high school and spent class time with the students! Most know an adequate amount of English, and you can generally understand what they want to say.

[We gave a presentation to all teachers before school, and Hope gave one of her drawings to the principal]

The first group was an English class. We made name tags and talked about the differences between the U.S. and Japan. For the Japanese students brave enough to do a summary in English, they got some candy with a flavor only made in Hokkaido.

Next we went to art class and drew ourselves as something else. I drew myself as a robot without legs because I didn't like to walk. I had fire on my head because my hair is dyed red, and I have a giant fan on the main body because I am always hot. The face kind of looked like Homer so I named my character HSimpson2000.

After art we had another English class and they practiced using their English with many games.

One included a Japanese word given to them by the teacher, then they have to describe what it is without saying it until we guess it. "Space" was kind of hard. I was given "infinity" and "above sky" to work with.

[We also made some origami cranes and shuriken]

In science we made paper helicopters to see which "flew" the longest. We made minor adjustments in several areas to see which one stayed in the air the longest. James won the entire class in the end with 2.92 seconds. Mine only got 2.41 seconds 😢.

We had lunch with our host students. We had obento, a packed lunch from our host families. Mine had omelette, chicken, rice, potatoes and carrots.

[For Savannah's lunch, the mom created a cute Pikachu face on the omelette cut out with crunchy nori!]

We went to a math class next. We played a couple of games, one consisted of moving many blocks into specific shapes, like Tangrams. This was very hard and only a couple groups were able to get the triangle.

Next we went to a tea ceremony put on by the Tea Ceremony Club. Our hosts were dressed in kimonos and participated in it as well. The movements were graceful and everything flowed into each other. They created a very peaceful atmosphere that calmed you.

[We saw a short game of kaado, which is a card-slapping game with chants and rapid reaction. Looks difficult!]

After a short break we went back to the calligraphy classroom and did some calligraphy. It was really hot so I thought of cold things I liked. I like snow and storms so I asked for the kanji for snowstorm (fubuki) the Japanese calligraphy club members who wrote it down for you beforehand were very skilled, but modest. You need a lot of practice to write nicely.

Then we dropped off our finished papers and headed down to a dojo where the students were practicing Kendo (sword martial art). Several of the group members donned the armor.