Asami in her casual Kimono with the girls.
This year we started a geography curriculum called “Expedition Earth” and it’s been a lot of fun. I plan on doing blog posts for each continent, but our study of Japan featured special guests so I wanted it to be a separate post. We have friends named Danielle and Mattias who were missionaries in Japan that moved here in September. Danielle found our blog online while in Japan and started communicating with us because of adoption. It’s really neat and I asked her if she could come and present to us about Japan during our study. She has connected with the Japanese community here in town and she asked if she could bring a Japanese friend over too. I said YES! Her friends name is Asami and she brought over her casual kimono and Japanese money. Danielle brought origami paper and Japanese snacks. After they taught us a lot about Japan we had a nice Italian lunch because that is what I was in charge of 😉
Origami
Learning to write numbers and our names in Japanese
Some of the snacks Danielle brought to share
Asami told us all kinds of interesting things about Japan. The girls thought this was so funny – you are supposed to slurp your noodles, especially if you are a guest so you don’t insult the hosts cooking. She explained the difference between casual and fancy kimonos and why they are worn. She told us about how hard it is to tie the bows correctly and how uncomfortable the wooden clogs are (she brought a pair to show us). She told us about all the hours that children go to school there plus the extra curricular activities and that by the time you are in high school, you are not getting a lot of sleep each night. She ended by doing a lot of Origami with the girls which Nadia was so excited over because she likes to look up origami ideas on the web. It was such a treat for our Japan study to have Asami and Danielle come to our home.
*If you are interested in the curriculum we are using for this study, please check out Confessions of a Homeschoooler.