我孫子市国際交流協会

Date/Time：December 17,2011  Saturday from 13.00 to 15.30
Place: Abista Mini hall
Master of ceremonies: Ms. Imelda Ono
Number of participants: About 40 (Adults 20, Children 20)

To start with, all participants ate food and had drinks which they brought. Those were rice balls, Bara-zushi (a bowl of vinegar rice topped with chopped raw fish, cooked vegetables and other ingredients), rolled sushi, rice balls, roast pork, Katsuretsu (breaded and deep-fried cutlet), spring rolls, Nishime (vegetables and chicken stewed in a soy-flavored broth), pickles, potato salad, macaroni salad, homemade sweet biscuits, fruit, and various kinds of drinks. We had several helpings of everything.
After enjoying the food and drinks, they played several kinds of games.
A ball carry game and a balloon carry game: Matches between two teams and the winner was the team that could carry the ball or balloon faster.
A musical chairs game: The number of chairs was one less than that of players. They walked around the chairs to music and sat down when the music stopped. Several kids even started sobbing for a moment when they could not get a chair. Adults also participated. To get the last one chair was really a fight. Someone sat on the knee of other’s which provoked a burst of laughter.
A janken (scissors-paper-rock) game : About ten players formed a line with candy in their hands. After janken, the loser gave candy to the winner. Thus the final winner got ten pieces of candy. Just then kids screamed for the winner to give them candy. So the real winner was kids.
All attendees exchanged gifts which they had brought. They formed a ring and hand the gifts one by one to the next person for about 10 seconds. The gift in one’s hand at that moment was taken by him or her. It was an exciting moment to imagine what the gift was.
The last game was bingo. There were many players who almost had bingo (li-zhi or called riichi in Japanese). Some sighed not having bingo.
Thanks to the MC for her wonderful job, all adults returned to the innocence of childhood, and all participants really enjoyed themselves and were moved to big laughter. (vol.153)