Manga Swap

For the holidays my club wanted to do a Manga Swap and Holiday Party. I had sushi, egg rolls, crab rangoon, sweet and sour chicken and pork (obviously, this was more of an American Chinese party than an authentic Japanese party), Pocky, fortune cookies, and wasabi hot peas (which no one ate). I also gave out packages of chopsticks for prizes for wearing a costume and for winning at guitar hero (which was inexplicably played) and I had chopsticks for the kids too. For the Manga Swap we used the "left / right" Christmas story where you stand in a circle and give your item to the person to your left when you hear the word "left" and vice versa for the right. We could have re-written that story to have a manga theme, but I ran out of time. We had fun, although I spent a lot of money on food. Everyone was happy with the manga they ended up with.

Cosplay!

A fun thing to do with your Anime/Manga Club is to have a Cosplay party...you can either just have the teens show up in their cosplay (costumes based on their favorite anime/manga character) or you can actually have a workshop and make pieces. I've never done that but it sounds fun. I always have to be very careful about insisting on the appropriateness of the costumes. They have a tendancy to be pretty racy, especially the girls, so I am very strict about how much skin is showing, etc. You can have prizes for the best costumes, you can take pictures, you can watch a film while everyone is wearing their costumes, you can eat pocky or fortune cookies or maybe just use pencil and paper and have the kids design future costumes. Have fun!

Manga Tee Shirts

When my club told me they wanted to make Manga tee shirts I was excited. Tee shirts are a fun and easy program and can be adapted to lots of different themes. I had the students bring their own shirts (but I had several extras in case anyone forgot one or couldn't get one by that day) and I just set out our puffy paint and sharpee markers. I also bought a couple sets of fabric markers (they were not cheap). Some of the kids ended up not doing a Manga shirt, but I'm pretty lax so that didn't bother me.

Painting Fans

Sometimes I really love oriental trading! They used to have these DIY fans...they might still have them. We just used water color sets that the library already had. I gave each kid a fan, water, a brush, and paint and told them to paint watever they wanted. You can also do a handout on fan dancing, fan language, or you can give them some Japanese symbols or writing to copy onto their fan.

Once they are dried they are a little difficult to open and close, but you just have to keep working it. The fans I used weren't of the best quality (but boy were they budget friendly!) and I purchased some extras in case of breakage which we did have.

Candy Sushi

This is a really bad picture but doing Candy Sushi is a really fun program. Just make a rice crispy treat mixture (follow the directions on the box) and wrap your mixture in fruit roll ups. You can use licorice in the centers or some other kinds of candy or fruit snack. Roll it up and slice like regular sushi. Get some chopsticks and the teens will love you! We added swedish fish for the tops of our sushi.

This was a big hit. It takes a little time to assemble the ingredients, but this is another food program that you can do with just a microwave. You can make it more of a library-esque program by doing a handout about sushi, you could have real sushi for them to try, have books out about sushi, whatever you want.

Makin' Mochi

Our Mochi didn't end up looking like much, or tasting like much either, but we had a lot of fun making it. The recipe we used was very simple and just used a microwave:

1 cup glutinous rice flour
1 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
potatoe starch for dusting the outside and to prevent sticking

Mix the rice and the sugar in a bowl. Add the water and mix thoroughly. Microwave this mixture for about 4 minutes. After that it is ready to play with. Use the pototoe starch to prevent sticking and to dust the outside of your balls. You can put chocolate in it before you microwave it to give it a chocolate flavor, you can add food coloring, you can add flavor extracts, whatever you want.

I got this recipe from this website: http://www.recipezaar.com/Simple-Mochi-146183
When I did this program I bought "real" mochi ice cream from a market close to my house that way the kids could see what the real stuff looks like and tastes like.

Be forewarned...this program can be really messy! However it is not too expensive to make mochi (moe-shee). The ingredients are pretty cheap.

Anime / Manga Club Artwork

These are a few pictures that my teens did...aren't they great! That is one really easy program you can do for your Anime / Manga Club. Just have the kids draw their favorite characters. If you get really ambitious you can have them create their own Manga. You can have different kids create the characters, write the story, draw the pages, ink everything, lay it out, etc. You can also have an art contest or an art show with your teens work.

The nice thing about a program like this is it doesn't require much set up, it is very low cost, and, if the teens create original characters, you end up with great artwork that you can use on your Anime/Manga Club Flyers (with permission from the teenager of course)!