Friday, September 26, 2014

Poppin Cookin' - Fun With Japanese


Several of the girls' favorite Youtubers have posted Popin Cookin' tutorials, and the girls have been very keen to give the Japanese candy mixes a try.   I noticed the kits weren't very expensive (in the $3.00 to $5.00 range) on Amazon, and ordered a bunch as a look-what-you-get-to-do-once-we-get-moved-in kind of incentive to lessen the bitterness of moving.

The kits come with everything you need to make tiny treats.  All you have to do is add water, and pop a few of them into the microwave, and just like that, you have adorable little cakes and candies.  The catch being, that all of the instructions are in Japanese.

Of course, as I mentioned, there are a number of video tutorials in English, that you can follow along with, if like us, you don't know any Japanese.


On the other hand, the colorful boxes can also provide a fun inducement to learn a little of the language.


I printed off Hiragana and Katakana (Japanese "alphabet") charts, so the girls could write down the English alphabet, phonetic spelling of each symbol, basically translating the words into romaji, the Romanized version of the Japanese spelling.


Then, they were able to type the English letters, or romaji words, into a Japanese/English translator online...


...to cherry pick a few of the easy, or often repeated words from the instructions.  It was more like code breaking than translating, but by the time the girls were done, they were becoming fairly familiar with the symbols and sounds of the Katakana and Hiragana "alphabets", had learned a few simple words...


...and had a good time creating tiny, tasty (or at least tasty looking) treats...


...as a reward for all their hard work.  Whether miniature ice cream cones, and frosting filled tarts will really lessen their sadness over leaving friends behind, or not, remains to be seen.  Now, at least they have something to email home about.

7 comments:

Die fantastischen 5 said...

I have never seen these japanese sweets before! Great way to introduce a foreign language!

Phyllis said...

This is SO cool. I would love to do this. I have never seen them before.

Ticia said...

Those are really cool! Both the activity AND the language lesson.

MaryAnne said...

Those are really cool! I've never heard of these.

Aadel said...

Oh my oldest daughter would love these! At first, I thought they were little clay kits. We had bought similar boxes in Korea at Daiso (Japanese/Korean dollar store) and they included air-dry clay and instructions for making pretend desserts.

Natalie PlanetSmarty said...

I have never heard of them either. Your girls are "girls of the world" through the power of YouTube :) You should write about their favorite channels.

Unknown said...

I enjoy EVERYTHING about these kits- the food, the culture, the language- excellent!!!