(1.17.10) Lunar New Year Party
Cold but clear winter day in Kamogawa.
Go back in time a couple weeks.
At the local university, JIU, they've taken in about 60 Chinese exchange students beginning last fall semester. There are a couple people from Taiwan and Korea as well, but the school apparently became sister schools with a university in Dalian, China, so that students of both schools could study for 2 years in Japan and 2 years in China, and receive a degree from both schools. Pretty nifty?
But up until now, the TOTAL population of foreigners in Kamogawa has only been about 500 people. Filipinos had been the majority within that group, although the Chinese population was already close behind (lots of Chinese 研修生 working at the local fisheries). With all of these exchange students, people of Chinese nationality are now the majority. And because the program is over a 2 year period, there will be at least 150 Chinese exchange students at the university alone. And one of the local high schools is scheduled to take in over 50 exchange students beginning next year. Plus all the people working at the fisheries.
Even though the US is only the fourth biggest non-Japanese ethnic group in Kamogawa, we've only done Western/US events. Can't be helped, since the CIR is always an American - and there's actual no problem with that, but there was NOTHING to even try to get any of the other foreign residents involved.
So...we like food! Food is easier to work with, because even if you can't understand the explanation perfectly, you can learn by watching. We decided to have a Chinese New Year Party centering around the Chinese exchange students. Get them to exchange with the Japanese residents, learn about and celebrate Chinese New Year (albeit a month early, haha), and perhaps slowly start getting them involved in our events!
The event was pretty successful - during the first half, we made 水餃子 from scratch (including the wrapper)! Then, after we had it for lunch (since I was running around taking photos the whole time, I got to each the gyoza at the instructor's table....mm so good!!), some of the students made speeches introducing Dalian and Chinese New Year traditions...other students sang. :D It was a nice, relaxing event!
Mini spam of photos from the event:
Very beginning of the event. There were about 2 Japanese people and 4~5 exchange students per table....so we made them introduce themselves to each other first! Can't get the party started if you don't know who's who.
Reaaaal serious about cutting up the ingredients. This stuff makes up the filling for the gyoza.
Making the wrappers! This was apparently reaaaaaaally hard for the Japanese people...you can see just how hard everyone is concentrating :D But everyone did a really good job!
Finally...all done! Poised to attack...
Very randomly, another photo of the beach <3 Taken from the high school where we held the event.
I have photos from the speeches/songs as well but you can't really tell what's going on, so I didn't bother to post them.
Anyway, I'm actually heading out soon to go on VACATION!!! To Vegas!!!! Buuuuuut when I come back I have to start preparing for our next event in March - a dinner themed around St. Patrick's Day. We need to have some sort of "studying" before dinner - but of course, there's no one who is Irish and can "introduce" the theme for us. Anyone have any good ideas?? St. Patrick's was always a pretty big deal in the States (at least, the wearing green/pinching part)...but now that I think of it, I don't know much else besides that. o_O Any advice would be highly appreciated!!