Our students had an experience to make one of the Japanese meals this time.

Here is a comment from our school;

“We had the best time ever at Furukawa-san’s cooking school!! We arrived to find the school was an older style Japanese apartment, which made the whole experience seem more authentic. We were shown how to make a variety of dishes, tasting each ingredient before it was added and tasting the progress of the dish each step of the way. Then it was time for us to have a turn at preparing 3 dishes, using an entire squid each! It was the first time any of us had prepared squid, and it was much harder than  Furukawa-san had made it look!  

Finally, we were able to tuck into our delicious meal, with a view of Furukawa-san’s famous bonsai trees. The best part was sharing the meal with Furukawa-san, who had made the entire experience very interesting and highly entertaining. He was an absolutely incredible person, and it was a pleasure and honour to meet him and have this experience! I can’t recommend this activity enough! “

We visited another place where you can make Ramen and Gyoza (dumplings).

We have some comments from our students who joined this event;

“For our activity this week, we were able to learn how to make Ramen and gyoza from scratch. We went to Child’s Kitchen, which was a very nice area with great teachers to show us how to make the noodles and gyoza. One of our favourite parts was making the dough for the noodles. We had to stomp on it to make it flat which was so fun! The hardest part was rolling the gyoza dough, we ended up with some very interesting looking “circles”. This activity was so fun and we learnt a lot, but best of all it was very delicious! “

“We went to make ramen from scratch for this week’s event.  I had never made ramen before so this was something I really wanted to do.  I didn’t realize that we would be making the ramen noodles from scratch.  The staff was very friendly and showed us how to make the noodles.  It was amazing how we went from flower to noodles.  We also made gyoza.  Folding it properly was very difficult, but fun.  After we made everything, we cooked it and ate what we made.  It was so delicious.  I really enjoyed this event.  I definitely will be using what I’ve learned here to make ramen and gyoza for myself.”

We visited a tradional products museum in Yame this time.

Here is a comment from our students;

“We made our way to the Yame Traditional Craft Museum, where walked through paper, stone, bamboo and material craftworks to the paper making room. Here we learnt how to make paper traditionally, using wodden boxes to scoop up pulp, decorate our masterpieces and hung them to dry. 

While we waited, we explored the Museum, seeing the many paper based products they produce. We spent some time with one of the few remaining bamboo craftsmen, who showed us his technique to make thin bamboo strips and the products he then weaves with them. His skill was incredible!

Feeling hungry, we went next door to a local produce shop and had a delicious meal of soup and salads. The number of dishes presented on each tray was truly astounding! With full bellies, we returned to pick up our beautiful, handmade paper and admired each others work. 

It was such a unique and interesting experience, we loved each moment of it and now have the best souvenirs to share with family and friends!”

We have some festivals in autumn as well as summer. This is Karatsu Kunchi festival was held on last November in Saga . They move huge floats on the wide road whic is closed for this festival.

We visited the Asahi beer factory.

We visited a place where you can experience making food samples.

We have some comments from them;

“I very much enjoyed our field trip to the Riki fake food factory! It was a treat to get a behind the scenes look at such a unique aspect of Japanese culture.

We had the chance to look around, take pictures, and hear a bit of the background of the process, and then it was time to make our own fake food creations! This was a lot of fun, and a really great keepsake to take back to the US with us.

After that, we got to see a demonstration of the old style of creating fake food: with wax. This was extremely impressive and it felt like we were watching a personal magic show. We then got to take a lot of fun selfies with props that our hosts had prepared, which really let their creativity shine.

Overall a very amusing and fun outing, and I’d very much recommend it to others!”

“Ever wonder why the food in show windows of restaurants in Japan never gets old, stale, or moldy?  We found out on our field trip to the RIKI Sample Food factory.  Actually I had a suspicion because of a traumatic experience of my young childhood with what I thought was a chocolate:  sometimes food is made of plastic.

The current head-honcho of the company is keeping up the tradition of his father, Riki Hashimoto, the founder, who started with this special skill 70 years ago.  We got to see the surprising techniques the artisans use to create plastic masterpieces that are amazingly similar to the real thing.  They use a variety of tools and materials (mostly types of plastics) to form pastries, pastas, pizzas, parfaits, steaks, fish, ramen, eggs, salad, fruit, tempura, and most anything else you would expect to order at a restaurant around here.  Melting, molding, painting, sprinkling, extruding, and decorating produce the results.

After watching the demonstrations we got a chance to make sample food ourselves.  I did a parfait in a tall glass cup with cornflakes, pokki stick and fruit toppings.  The others made creamy fruit tarts suitable for birthday greeting or smart-phone holders.  With very close supervision from the staff, our products looked good enough to eat.  It was a very fun day with major selfie-op occasions.”

Our students had an experience with Japanese style flower arrangement, “Ikebana”.

Here is the comment from one;

“It was a very nice little place and the attendants Japanese was easy to understand!
We all ended up creating some nice aesthetic pieces, and being able to learn the process of Ikebana was pretty interesting!

We also got to take the flowers home, which made my apartment pretty nice!”

A Happy new Year! We all hope you have started good days.

This part has completely recovered, so,  although it’s cold here in Japan, we begin with lost events from last summer.

We visited a museum showing a traditional Japanese crafts last August.

This is the first time we visit the place you can make Japanese traditional braid. Our students were interested in it but struggled to make ones with the wodden maker.

One of our students gave us his impression of this activity;

“We went to make Kumihimo in Tenjin.  I am not good at making stuff like that, but the staff was very kind and explained and helped us make our cord/ribbon.  They even told us about how a famous Korean group came and make braid there.  I had fun making kumihimo with my classmates.”

We are very sorry to stop showing our activity event. We had a problem with uploading photos from last summer. But now, we have finally sort it out.  So we update our ongoing activity and add past ones as soon as we can.

This is the latest activity after we recovered from the uploading problem!

Here are the comments from our students;

” In my first week of studying at NILS in Ohashi, Fukuoka, I was taken for a sushi making activity. This was my first time doing such a thing, and it was a lot of fun. The chef who was showing us how to make the sushi was very interesting and funny, and I had a great time learning how to make different types of sushi, and then getting to eat them afterwards. I would reccomend this activity to anyone who is interesting in experiencing Japanese culture.”

”  I had never made sushi, so I was really looking forward to this event.  The chef was really fun and explained to us how to make sushi and the history behind it.  I got to make some salmon, shrimp, and mackerel sushi.  We also made a tuna makizushi.  It was hard to make right, so I have a greater appreciation when I eat sushi.  Together with my classmates and Kadowaki Sensi, we had so much fun.  I really recommend if you haven’t made sushi, try out the sushi making event at Suito Fukuoka. “