Cooking

Today we made two different dishes in cooking class; cheese & onion pasty, and shortbread.

Pasties have been popular in England since 1200. They were first eaten in Cornwall by men who worked in the mines. They were a semi-circular shape and quite big. Inside there was a meat, a vegetable and a jam section each separated by a pastry wall. On the outside the miners' wives wrote their husbands' initials in pastry so they could find their own pie. The special shape meant that there was a thick crust that the miners could hold and then throw away when they had eaten it. This was useful so they didn't have to wash their hands and they could give some food to the gods in the mine. The original pasties were made from short crust pastry, but today we made them with puff-pastry.


The second recipe was a sweet biscuit called shortbread. These were first eaten in Scotland in 1500. The word "short" is old English meaning crumbly or easily broken.

British Cooking Part 2

Today we cooked Egg Custard in the third Zenrinkan British Cookery Class. My house in England is in East Anglia, a region that is famous for this dessert, so I often ate them growing up.


Custard tarts were first served in Britain in Medieval times when they were known as doucets. Henry IV is said to have eaten them at a meal when he became king in 1399. Now we make them with milk, but long ago they used almond milk when they weren't allowed to eat rich dairy products on religious fast days.


This dessert was exported to many places in the world. It is the basis of the French Creme Brulee and a similar product has been eaten in Portugal since 1800. If you visit China now you will find Egg Tarts (Dan Ta) at many dinner tables. These were brought from Britain in the mid 17th Century, probably via Guangdong.

English cooking

Today was the first of five lessons about British cooking. Today we made a popular English dish called Cobbler. The casserole base is made from sauce, beef and three kinds of vegetables, then scones are placed on top and cooked in the oven.

After we finished making it, we enjoyed eating it just as much!

Christmas Party

This year's Christmas party was on a slightly smaller scale than previous years, with about 40 people in attendance. We started with a beautiful performance from the Nikko group who played a selection of pleasant Christmas tunes.

Other musical delights of the evening included the Let's Sing group's Christmas carol recital, including Walking in a Winter Wonderland and Jingle Bell Rock. The Tuesday reading group also sang Jingle Bells, with the twist of a high-energy game thrown in. Competitors had to make as many steps as the could register on a pedometer by dancing throughout the song!

The other game of the evening was pass-the-parcel, except instead of music, the competitors listened to a story and passed the parcel right when the narrator said "right" and left when they said "left".

Along side the music and games we also had two theatrical performances. The Tuesday evening reading group did a recital of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, and the sign language group treated us to a performance of The Tongue Cut Sparrow.

The evening was of course complimented with Hiroko's wonderful Christmas dinner including a whole turkey and delicious stuffing and bread sauce.

We ended off the night with a traditional New Year song, Auld Lang Syne.

Halloween Party

Today was the children's Halloween party. We had almost 200 kids come to join us in an evening of tricks, treats and scary stories.


The event began with a play put on by the English-speaking staff that told the story of how the Jack-O-Lantern got its name and was narrated by our guest story teller in Japanese. The storyteller also did her own story and told many spooky tales all through the night.


Afterwards the children were free to enjoy all the stalls and activities. The Haunted House was as popular as always and created a few screams. The new events included a science corner where they could make a tree grow icicles, play with slime, make a head foam at the mouth and experiment with air. The treasure hunt was also popular, but a bit much for some with some tricky clues.


The regular events were the pumpkin carving, craft and cooking. This year the children made their own candy-floss. Thanks to all our helpers it was a very successful night.

International Festival

On September 19th, Zenrinkan hosted its annual International Festival, Lunch, and Bazaar in the hallowed halls of the chapel. Events started at 10 o'clock with the doors opening so guests could peruse the many items in the charity bazaar. There was quite a menagerie waiting to be recycled into new homes and bargain hunting browsers eagerly bought up the goods.

At 11 o'clock the International Lunch began to satisfy the appetites of the curious and the convivial. For 200 yen, a person could buy a ticket which entitled them to sample food from far away lands. The countries represented at the International Lunch came from Peru, Columbia, the U.K., the United States, Bangladesh, Korea, Zambia, and China. The foreign fare was ravenously consumed by the hungry horde which represented the diverse international community in Morioka and the monies contributed to charity.

Summer Party

Tonight was the summer party at Zenrinkan. It was a lovely party, but it was also a little sad because it was Ryan's farewell party too.


We had a pot luck style dinner. Hiroko made some yummy quiche, cottage pie, guacamole, hot dogs and salsa and people brought many other dishes, such as corn, jelly, biscuits, rice and so on.

The evening started with an ice-breaker where everyone had to find someone who fitted the description on their paper. Then we had an evening of entertainment with many songs and recitals.

There was also a quiz all about Ryan, and we learnt lots of new information about him!

Finally, everyone joined us for a dance with Ryan. He taught us a short dance and then we all danced together. It was a lovely end to a lovely evening.