What Rhymes with Dango?

Did you know that the first novel in the world was The Tale of Genji, written many years ago in Japan? It’s true! Japan has had a long and rich history of literature, especially poetry. Sana-sensei taught us about the history of Japanese literature as well as the traditional Japanese poetry rules and patterns. You’ve probably heard or read haiku (5-7-5 syllable verse poems) before. We got to write some! Some people wrote in English and some wrote in Japanese. We quickly learned how difficult it really is to keep within the rules of the syllable pattern.

For our final cooking class, we made tri-colored dango; balls of sticky rice mochi. It was supposed to be a lot easier than sushi, but you never know what's going to happen with cooking!

In other news, we worked so hard and efficiently on Oshibai prep that the staff gave us time to watch a movie instead. After taking a vote, we decided to watch the Studio Ghibli classic: Howl’s Moving Castle (in Japanese, of course). Right after dinner, we all went to the theater to watch it, and Rie-sensei even made us popcorn! The theater was full of the sounds of snacks crunching and whispered fangirling.