Poetry and Ramen Noodles

Never in a million years thought this was a particularly stellar idea, but it went really well. We made Ramen noodles and ate them while reading an ENTIRE book of Japanese poetry. We used the book 100 Poems from the Japanese edited by Rexroth. We made two batches of noodles just in the microwave. I had chopsticks for the students and while the food brought them in, the poetry kept them there. This is a great collection because the poems are short, they have the Japanese pronunciation below, and they are almost all about love and longing which my teens relate to really, really well. We passed the book around, they read the poems, and after many the whole group would heave a collective *sigh*.

Manga Art Display!

Manga Art: we are having a Manga Art display in the library. During this meeting, I am just going to set out all my "How to Draw Manga" books with pencils, pens, and crayons and have the participants draw a few pictures for our display. To give the program a little bit of pizzazz, I had a volunteer cut 8 and 1/2 inch by 11 inch cardstock into 8 1/2 inch squares. I'm hoping that having paper that is a little more substantial and of a different size than they are used to might make them feel that their drawings are more "special." We'll see.

The participants will also get to use any manga in our collection for their models for drawing...I am just going to discourage tracing.

When I'm doing programs like this where the finished project stays in the library I like to have them start by putting their name and phone number on the back so I can easily return their items to them after we are done displaying them. I do this at the beginning so I don't forget. :)

Makin' Sushi!

Well, I took the plunge and made sushi with teenagers. It worked out okay. I used some really easy recipes with ingredients like: rice (duh), nori, seseme seeds, shrimp, crabmeat, avacado, cucumbers, green onions, soy sauce, and rice vinegar. I did purchase 24 sushi rolling mats (so if anyone wants to borrow them...) which gave the program a little bit of a "wow" factor. I can't get past the seaweed so I'm not a huge sushi eater, even when I like everything in it, but the teens really seemed to enjoy making it. :)

A couple parasol pics...

Well, it was messy, but we had a great time. Didn't get my powerpoint done, but I read them the picture book, The Umbrella Queen. Did they appreciate the subtleties of the book? Nope. What did they think of it? In a word...sappy.

Painting Parasols

Once again I turn to the DIY crafts of the Oriental Trading Company. These parasols, at 29.99 for 12, are not cheap, but I went ahead and bought 24 of them for my club. I showed them to the students last week and they were all (boys included!) excited to paint them. I will probably do a quick powerpoint on the history of paper umbrellas in Japan to suppliment the craft. We have a great new picture book called the Umbrella Queen about a little girl in Thailand who paints unusual images on her umbrellas. I will go ahead and share that with the club too, even though Tailand is not Japan.