Grace Gaffey (Lower Sixth)

On Monday 24th May, the Lower Sixth IB English hosted our version of a Japanese tea party to experience the culture of the book we are currently studying, Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. To go along with the international mindedness of the IB curriculum, our English literature course involves many different types of text from many different places, including Norway, Iran and Japan. 

Snow Country is a novel set in a remote Japanese town detailing the love affair between a man from the city and a geisha. The author, Kawabata, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968. To gain a better understanding of the book, we researched different aspects of Japanese culture, including Geishas, Samurai and food and drink, which led us to come up with the idea of furthering our research by making Japanese food. The dishes included sushi, gyoza, yaki onigiri, chocolate mushi pan, a Japanese cheesecake and of course green tea and green tea cookies! 

This was a great experience to not only further our understanding in a creative way, but to also add to our learner portfolios, in which we show how we extend our learning of the texts outside of the classroom.