Episode 5: Koi in the Air

    On the first Friday of the academy, we learned more about the Japanese singer Hoshino Gen, or the Americanized version of his name, Gen Hoshino, and we even learned a dance to one of his songs, Koi. After that, Rie-sensei taught us how to do calligraphy. “The calligraphy was one of my favorite parts so far,” in the words of a fellow attendee. We learned the stroke order to a kanji of our choice to write on our hachimaki, a headband that we are going to wear on Undoukai (Sports Day), which some of us are helping to plan. Later, we had another session of brainstorming ideas for our Oshibai project, a play that we are going to present at the end of the academy that is entirely in Japanese. The story is coming together quite nicely. Finally, we had time to work on our Chihou research projects in which we found a lot of interesting info that you’ll be able to see when we present them at the end of the academy!