UHC students studying Japanese at Years 10 and 11 were challenged to pick up M&Ms with chop sticks as part of their trip to the Japanese Embassy. Students Elyssia Shaw & Anastasia Stone give first hand accounts of how the day panned out.

On the last day of Term One, 17 students from Year 10 & 11 Japanese went on a trip to the Japanese Embassy in Wellington. We went to the 18th floor and were ushered into a small room with a view of Wellington Harbour. 

We learnt the names of different Japanese foods, before honing in on our chopstick skills by picking up M&M’s with them. 

The aim of the next game we played was to pick up soy sauce bottles with our chopsticks and put them in a bowl before our opponent did. This bought out the competitiveness in everyone who played! 

Then, we lined up in two separate groups and whispered a phrase to each other, and when it reached the end of the line, the end person had to run up to the board at the front and write the phrase we heard in either Romaji or Hiragana. We left the Embassy with our heads full of knowledge and our bags filled with a goodie bag each. - Elysia Shaw, 10VH.

The next stop we made was to the Daiso store for some quick shopping. There were so many Japanese things in the store! 

Our pockets full of items and our wallets empty, we hopped back into the bus and took the drive down to Lower Hutt to head for lunch at Angry Ramen, a positively oishii (delicious) lunch! 

All the food was amazing and we were all stuffed by the end of it! We traveled back on the bus and returned to school during lunchtime to show off all the amazing stuff we got to our friends who had to stay behind. - Anastasia Stone, 10LB.