Our Visit to the Embassy!

Source: wikipedia

On Thursday, we had the honour of visiting the Embassy of Japan in London's Piccadilly.

We had a wonderful afternoon learning about Japan and meeting some of the members of staff from the Embassy.

Firstly, we looked at the manga exhibition on display at the Embassy, as we will be beginning our own manga projects soon.

Source: http://www.uk.emb-japan.go.jp/en/event/manga/2014/manga_jiman_14.html

 

Then we were taken through to the spectacular ballroom, where we met Miss Soni. Miss Soni taught us lots of interesting facts about Japan.

After the presentation, we split into two groups. Each group took part in two activities: Japanese calligraphy and Yosakoi dance.

The calligraphy class was fascinating and we had to follow very strict rules. It was important to sit with the correct posture and hold the brush in the correct way. We learned a number of Japanese characters, including those for river, mountain and life.

Our teacher from the Embassy was very impressed by our efforts and said that we were the best behaved class they had had at the Embassy- well done, everyone!

The Yosakoi dance workshop was led by Miss Soni, who had performed in the Japanese national Yosakoi finals with her team in Japan.

We each wore a special 'happi' coat and held two 'naruko' (wooden clappers).

It was great fun to learn all of the moves and poses! It certainly helped us to learn our Japanese numbers, too!