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.