Japan week by Keiko

There were some nice events during Japan week. On April 23rd, there was a Family Festival, so I volunteered to introduce New Year's Cards. New Year's Cards are very popular, like Christmas cards. We usually exchange them on New Year's day with close friends or relatives. Every year, I look forward to receiving the New Year's Cards. (However, recently many people just exchange e-mail. ) Many American people came to the festival, and they seemed to be very interested in Japan. I wore a yukata, and I talked about the New Year's Cards. There were few American people who knew about them, so I had to tell the information for them easily. I talked about them to many American people at that time. They were very interested in Japan, so I had really good time discussing them. The Family Festival was a great opportunity to show Japanese traditional culture. The next day, on April 24th, I participated in the cooking class at JCC. The cooking teacher was a Japanese woman, and she taught the American people in English. She taught them how to make the rolled sushi and the nigiri-zushi. They made a California roll, which includes avocado. It's a new style of sushi! We rarely eat avocado-zushi in Japan, so it was very unusual and interesting. On Saturday, I watched English Rakugo. Katsura Kaishi is a professional Rakugo performer who performs English Rakugo all over the world. His character was really kind and funny, and his English was also easy to understand. We had a lot of fun. I don't like usual Rakugo so much, but I love English Rakugo! Japan week was a very good event for Americans and Japanese people. To tell about Japanese customs to foreign people is sometimes hard, so I want to learn more about my mother country, Japan!