Sweets, Somemono, and Schools

Anime has given us some strange notions of the Japanese high school experience. Immensely powerful sorcerer teachers with a dubious moral code, students with the power to create ice with one hand and fire with the other, or a hyper-intense attitude toward volleyball- these are all anime and manga tropes, not actual Japanese high schools. (Well, maybe the volleyball club anime is accurate...) CIEE students got to see firsthand that high school in Japan is remarkably normal; students are energetic and positive, they stress about exams, they love to play games with their friends, and they, too, get shy about practicing a foreign language. 

And most CIEE students said that the school visit was so fun that they want to do it every. day. One of the Japanese students was so sorry to see us go that he came barreling out of his club room to give jumping high-fives to all the CIEE students!

These past few days also saw CIEE students attempting to make somemono, or a traditional way of dyeing cloth, from a store dating back to the 19th century. The patterns the shop can create were amazing, and we were able to make several different flower designs with different patterns and colors.

We also tried to make different kinds of wagashi, or Japanese sweets, which are always highly decorative and often meant to reflect the season. Made of rice and bean paste, wagashi are not for absent-minded snacking but rather to enjoy the aesthetic value of the sweet, preferably with a cup of tea. We were making two different kinds of sweets, and we absolutely have some pretty incredible sweet-making artists in our CIEE session 1! (I was just happy that mine held together.)

But, while sweets making and tie-dyeing were super cool, it was the high school visit that sold the first half of this week. So, guardians and families, if when your student returns home and asks to go study abroad at a Japanese high school, please don’t be concerned; there are no yokai or peculiar teachers with sorcery powers at these schools. Just loads of fun, positive people who want to say hello and learn more English!