27 June 2014: Cooking Japanese Cuisine

6/27

Today’s word is ryōri, meaning cooking or cuisine. It can also be made into a verb, “to cook,” with the addition of suru.

Today, we participated in our daily Japanese exercise routine, rajio taisou. Rajio taisou is an aerobic exercise which focuses on a full range of mobility of the body, from someone’s arms to his torso and finally to his legs. Rajio taisou helps loosen up muscles and relieves tension throughout the body by combining stretching with consistent movement. Consisting of about ten steps, rajio taisou begins with simple arm flails and gradually evolves into downward stretches as well as side shuffles and jumping in place to get the blood pumping. Also, today we, the oh so wonderful students of the academy, led the exercise ourselves without a senpai or sensei leading us in order to learn the process by memory instead of simply mimicking another’s movements

       - Antoine

Katherine making an obi in Otani-sensei's culture class

      Today, we cooked our own dinner of onigiri (rice balls) and gyoza (dumplings). The advanced Japanese class aided us with visual descriptions of how to make onigiri and gyoza. For the onigiri, we wrapped some rice in saran wrap, shaped the rice ball, added seasoning and enjoyed! The gyoza was a little more complex. We added various ingredients to a bowl of meat, stuffed the mix into a dumpling, and fried them. There was also the option to put tofu into the gyoza, instead of meat, for vegetarians. The food was all so much more delicious with the knowledge that we had made it ourselves!

        - Amy

Suyun (L) , Sara (M) and Javan (R) explaining to the GJA students in Japanese how to make onigiri (riceballs)

Amy and Camilla making the filling for gyoza (dumplings) 

     

      Tomomatsu Senpai’s Taiko Class

   

      Today in the culture classes, one of our groups learned the history of Japanese taiko drumming from Tomomatsu Senpai. When taiko drumming, the drummers do not use sheet music. Instead, the notes are represented by certain sounds: “don”, for the loud drum sound, “ka”, for the rim sound, “ten”, for the sound emitted by a shime-daiko, or small taiko, and “tsu,” for a light tap. Tomomatsu Senpai had each of us play a few notes on the taiko. Many students were surprisingly strong, and the students who enjoyed it will be playing the taiko on a team with Ōtani Sensei. 

     - Christina B. 

Tomomatsu-senpai teaching Antoine how to play the Taiko

Tomomatsu-senpai teaching Erik how to play the Taiko