On February 16th, Thursday, the Cosmo House was seriously packed with lots of people, who came to join the Japanese Coffee Hour. I believe that day was one of the most crowded and most successful coffee hours I have ever attended since last September. I am really proud of being one of the organizers for the Japanese Coffee Hour and having such a wonderful time with my tens of friends from different countries. I would like to share my experience with the Japanese Coffee Hour with you all in order not to forget our precious memories.
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| Japanese friends at the coffee hour (click for larger image) |
I started to prepare for the Coffee Hour in October with four of my Japanese friends, who came to UIUC as exchange students for one year like me. Since I live in Cosmo and I know about the house and Coffee Hour the best among us, I became a kind of leader and distributed our work for the Japanese Coffee Hour to my friends. Some of us were in charge of deciding what to cook. Others were responsible for a presentation about Japan. I was in charge of asking more Japanese people to help us and thinking about time schedule of all of the organizers. This process really reminded me of my high school days, since almost every high school in Japan has a cultural festival and we prepare for the festival for a long time with well-planned ideas. As February 16th approached, I got more and more excited and nervous.
At the end of January, thanks to Andrea’s suggestion, I decided to start going to some grocery stores to ask donations for the Japanese Coffee Hour. To tell the truth, this was the most challenging thing in the process of preparing for it. I went to several small international shops and big supermarkets with housemates, Kate or Ajay, to ask for donations. I have never tried to get donations like this back in Japan, so I was quite nervous how to do that in English. However, thanks to Kate’s and Ajay’s help, I got lots of donations, such as rice, soy sauce, a 20-dollar gift card, which were all helpful! Through this experience, I learned not only how to explain why we need donations in a polite manner, but also I understood how generous people in Champaign are! I was so amazed and moved when I got donations. Although it was a bit stressful work, I am strongly satisfied with trying it.
And finally, the 16th of February came! Our plan was a bit different from other Coffee Hours. We really wanted turnouts to enjoy Japanese food and Japanese culture, so we served food not only at the beginning of the coffee hour, but also at the end of it by showing how to cook Japanese dish. We made more than one hundred rice balls of different tastes, as well as cooking gingered pork, flavored spinach, beef and potatoes, and pancakes.
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| Naoto Nitta and Sayuri Koda sit in the swing on the Cosmo front porch (click for larger image) |
Although we cooked a lot of dishes, almost all of them were gone within an hour. (You can see how crowded it was at Cosmo! Actually, it was really difficult even to walk around in the house.) Also, my friends really dedicated themselves to the presentation in order to show our culture to non-Japanese properly. Many of my non-Japanese friends who saw the presentation told me that it was well-planned and easy to understand Japanese culture. They seemed to like especially its small Japanese language lesson. I was so happy to hear that turnouts enjoyed our food and presentation!
After the coffee hour, I went to IHOP with other organizers, since nobody among us could eat anything during the party. I really had a precious time in the process of preparation, during the coffee hour, and after that, I learned a lot about how to organize people, how to ask for donations, and how to show my country to people who do not know about it. Also, I made a lot of new Japanese friends thanks to this Coffee Hour. I am sure this will be one of the most memorable experiences at Cosmo and in Champaign during my exchange program.
I have to go back to Japan soon, but I am really proud of being one of the housemates of Cosmo and I really feel lucky that I was able to meet lots of wonderful people here! I will never forget what I ate, what I talked about, what I saw, and what I experienced at Cosmo with my cool, wonderful friends! Thank you so much for one year! I really hope to see you soon somewhere in the world!!
Sayuri is an exchange student from Japan and organized this semester together with her many international friends the Japanese coffee hour.