By Jenny Jimenez

On November 30th, our Japanese class went to Youth For Understanding’s headquarters to participate in the World Food Day Campaign by Table for Two! Youth For Understanding is an international organization that sends students in exchange programs all over the world and they allowed our Japanese + class to make onigiri in their kitchen!

Onigiri is the Japanese word for rice ball and we learned that our class would participate in creating these rice balls and that if we posted an image of our onigiri creations on social media with the hashtag #OnigiriAction, food would be provided to other people in African countries with our support. Onigiri was chosen because, as research shows, Japanese food is healthy and rice is a product that fills you up when you eat it. We learned about how to form the rice ball as well as the toppings that can go on the onigiri. The most popular topping was nori or seaweed; personally I liked eating my onigiri with tuna! Our teacher also mentioned that a popular topping in Japan was pickled plums. A couple students, including myself, tried eating the pickled plums, only to find that they were really sour, yet they had honey in them!

Some of the more creative students made onigiri with designs like cats, pandas and other animals or characters. Two students, Skyy and Amee, won the “Most Creative Onigiri Award” with onigiri that looked like the character Pucca and also a crying man!

A lot of students loved our onigiri making day because we were able to express our creativity as well as learning about Japanese food!

Below are images of our winners Skyy and Amee with their onigiri as well as my own onigiri! Congratulations to them for winning the award!!