chiba city international fureai festival

This weekend was the Chiba City International Fureai Festival! This is a big annual event hosted by the Chiba City International Association, and this year the International Relations Section also took part for the first time! The downside to this was that I was there in a work capacity so I didn't actually have a chance to look around at all, though this was probably also because I had a couple of other events going on that day - futomaki sushi-making and English storytime at the library! All in all, it was a busy day. :)

I got to Qiball a little bit before the opening of the festival to help set up. The International Relations Section had a little booth next to the stamp rally table (because what's an event in Japan without a stamp rally?! Gotta have one) where we had some posters introducing our sister cities as well as a bunch of commemorative gifts from them, which we gave to anybody who donated money (to be used for international exchange things like youth exchange programs, sister city events, etc). I think at the end of the day we'd managed to fundraise a decent amount of money, which was great!

From our perch on the third floor (the first and second floor were full of booths with food, arts and crafts, and goodies for sale from all sorts of international organizations in the city), I had a good view of the opening ceremony, which included a speech by the mayor, singing of 'It's A Small World After All', the appearance of Chiba-kun and Fuuta (the Zoological Park's mascot red panda), and an African drum performance!

The mayor and African drum performers!

Afterward I popped over to the CCIA to try making futomaki sushi, aka a really fat sushi roll whose insides were shaped to look like a rose! It was run by the Chiba Local Food Study Group, and they had all the ingredients and even aprons prepared for us already (which I think is probably the hardest part, haha). After showing us how to do it once, they helped us to do it ourselves - it was surprisingly simple, and they gave us a recipe to take home, so in theory I could totally do it again! Again though, the hardest part is probably making nice flat sheets of egg to wrap up so I don't know how successful I'd actually be. :P Still, I think mine turned out pretty well, and my coworkers seemed to appreciate them when I went back to the Festival and shared some with them. :)

Successful futomaki sushi!

Then I headed over to the Central Library to read for their English story time! This was my second time doing story time, but my first time in the story time room, which is a really cool round shaped room with a mini planetarium on the ceiling. I read The Snowy Day, which I remember reading when I was a kid, and the English version of two Japanese picture books, Groompa's Kindergarten and Miki's First Errand. All the kids seemed to know the last two books already, so it was pretty cool to watch their reactions to hearing them in English instead of Japanese! We also did Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes together (just like last time), which they seemed to enjoy - and they all actually said the words out loud instead of just doing the motions, which I thought was great.

Imitating the book; don't worry, I don't actually stand like that!

So it ended up being a long and busy Sunday full of work-related activities, but they were also interesting and fun so I can't complain! :D