By Louise Horsburgh

As we welcomed in the beginning of spring, our school’s Japanese students got to experience Ohanami. Ohanami is held in spring where traditionally people go outside picnicking with friends, eating Japanese obento, which are Japanese style lunchboxes, whilst admiring the cherry blossoms. Students had studied this in class in preparation for the big day.

A gigantic thank you to Mrs Day, Mrs Dach, Mrs Coleman and all the Year 11 Hospitality students for preparing 125 obento boxes. In the lead up to Obento Day several days were spent prepping the food and then all-day Friday cooking and setting up the obento boxes. Much of the food needed acute attention to detail, such as carefully placing two sesame seed eyes on 125 egg faces, cutting legs in the frankfurts to make them look like octopuses, cutting out 600 small circles out of ham for flower petals or cutting out 200 cheese stars, just to name a few. The outcome was very professional looking obentos.

Our expectation for a beautiful spring day for going outside was not met and instead students huddled together in the very fresh wind and rain to munch through their obento. The feedback from the Obento Day was that the torikatsu (chicken schnitzel) was the favourite part with many students expressing how much they enjoyed it and wondering if they could have it again next year. Year 8 students have since written a review in Japanese to express which foods they liked and which one was their favourite.

A special thanks to my elective 9/10 Japanese class who helped clean up after lunch including helping recycle the food scraps, chopsticks and boxes. A little bit of help goes a long way, so in finishing the day and the term with this class was a real privilege.