This time it was a small private school located in downtown San Francisco for kindergarten (age 5) to grade 8 (age 14) students. In San Francisco, the crucible of humanity, the majority of the students are Americans (whites), which is rare. It was a class for about 75 students from 6th grade to the second year of junior high school. It was the first time for us to meet elementary and junior high school students, and they hadn't chosen Japanese as their foreighn language of study, so we were a little worried. However, since it is a private school, I was relieved to see that the children were well-bred and very calm and generous. In this Bay Area, there are many Chinese students about ten years ago, and many Indians now. The children at this school seem to be very interested in Japan, and I feel that this is because they have many opportunities to come into contact with anime and games from an early age. One of the recent characteristics is that Japanese has good pronunciation.
As usual, we first give a tea ceremony demonstration, and at the same time, we explain the history of tea, Japanese culture, and give some guidance such as simple Japanese greetings. They are cute. Here too, everyone drank tea and enjoy sweets. I feel safe! Because some children have allergies, so we took great care, but since Children's Day in May was approaching, we used cute Jerry sweets in beautiful colors and decorated them with small carps decoration. One art teacher was very interested and said, 'I can make this! ’ she seemed happy. Thank you for great opportunity!!
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