A big thank you for Mr. Kobayashi and artisans for all the preparation, and we also say thank-you to Prof. Satoshi san for making a special chance to join the workshop with your wonderful students!

Written by Tsubasa Kato (Jojo)

The party was held on 12th of July, 2014 in Studio PETU and 14 members attended the party. It was a Potluck Dinner Party and everyone contributed a dish of food, such as Marinated seafood salad, Avocado mousse, NY style hamburger, Miso cheese with cucumber, Meat-loaf with Mashed potatoes, Sweet cookies and so on.

There was no specific instructions, although it turned out to be an American style buffet!! Party space was decorated in USA color and patterns which was designed by Misato-san, ICT’s art director, and by the cooperation of all other ICT members who decorated the walls, tables and even the cups!! We enjoyed the foods and shared our good memories with Jamie for this past 1 year or so. Farewell parties are always an exciting affair and bring alive a lot of happy memories.

I would like to THANK Jamie who was always with a smile and very gentle “English teacher” for Japanese ICT members. She was definitely one of the largest contributor for ICT’s growth over the past 2 years.

The number of ICT class run up to 60, workshops 15 times, seasonal events 10 times and 30 nationalities from all over the world attended those events.

ICT Organizer

June 15^th (Sun), as ICT Free Event, we watched Free Noh Performance of  “Sessho-seki (殺生石/ The Killing Stone)" at Umewaka Nogaku Kaikan. 21 of us including 9 Non-Japanese members joined, and enjoyed the performance for about 1.5 hour.

The story is about a spirit of Nine-tailed Fox haunting a big stone.

It has been killing people for years, and a high priest who was passing there had dialogue with it.

Finally, the spirit vanished given memorial service from the priest with law of Buddha. This performance conveyed the story in old Japanese with Noh performance.

After the performance, Aza (A member from Kyrgyzstan) told me that he knew the story of Nine-tailed Fox. According to him, it was appearing in Japanese manga of “Naruto” (Do you know Nine-tailed Fox story in your country?).

Thank you very much for joining the event and hope you enjoyed in anyways ;)

We had such an awesome time with friendly members! Perfect weather, amazing delicious food, lively conversations and the great ICT members absolutely made our Sunday more FUN!

Thanks to all the members who brought food aplenty. All attendees enjoyed well-prepared and super delicious dishes! And a big Thank You to those who brought snacks and drinks! Also special thanks to our regular members, Mie san and Misato san, helping us, making this event possible and a big success!

Tea Hand-Picking Experience – Picked tea leaves will go to National Tea Competition

Each of us took a basket, and we carefully chose and picked new tea leaves with the way of picking “一芯二葉” (1 core with 2 leaves), which is used for producing high quality teas (e.g. leaves go to National Tea Competition; Sencha, Gyokuro, Maccha and much more). After 2 hour picking under the beautiful green tea growing terraces, we took a break with tasty teas and Japanese rice crackers which Obachan kindly served us.

Lastly, the most concern in the tea industry is that the products don’t sell because of reduced demand. It's a tough way for small tea farms to make a living. Mr. Tomono said that it was an undeniable fact that Japanese people no longer drink as much as they used to.

I would like to sincerely thank you to the Hiratsuka family and staff for fun and detailed lectures during tea picking, Mr. Tomono for introducing us the tea factory for his kindness, and Haruna san for organizing this wonderful learning experience!!

 

As for Japanese Tempura, all the Japanese attendance was the teacher, who brought each family’s tip for making tasty tempura. Everyone had the chance to fry the ingredients and enjoy the just fried tempura!! It was absolutely the best, and easy to make! Deep fried tempura was especially good with Tentsuyu (tempura sauce), salt and lemon.

Yanaka One-Day Trip: Off to nostalgic Japanese streets for food, art, crafts, old-fashioned architectures, show, history and much more.

One of the happiest news was that the number of 21 participants of our day trip hit new record high. And also we found the number to be the allowable limit. Even though we focused more on our explanations of the spots this time than the last 2 events, it turned out some participants from other countries required us deeper and higher quality of explanations. Those requirements should have caused for their curiosity about Japanese tradition and history, thus we could take them positively.

We wish we could work explanations out much more next time! Thank you for coming out on an early Sunday morning. A great thank-you to the all participants! Hope we have all of you at next events!

On February 11, we had the "Valentine’s Day Sweets" cooking class, organized as a ICT event. Our teacher Mrs. Ellie Homma is a home cooking teacher who worked in a deli/bakery for three years, and made bread, muffins, and cookies as well as soups, stews and casseroles. Most of her recipes were simple and child friendly, and she loves to enjoy cooking with her two sons, age 5 and 9, in her kitchen.

Divided into two groups, we made blueberry muffins and cube chocolate truffles following her recipes after learned fundamental skills of sweets cooking. We really liked her way, which just measured ingredients, combined together and mixed them up. How easy it was! All muffins turned to beautiful colors brown and yellow after baked for 20 minutes! Crumb toppings were so delicious. Her homemade cube truffles were also incredible!

We almost took 3.5 hours and we were so involved in her cooking, and

thoroughly enjoyed talking together with the excellent sweets. Both the sweats and our ICT members were wonderful! We hope to do it again soon, and we really thank you to our teacher Ellie and her son Yuta-kun for making our holiday very special!