In July, a 4th grade student of mine eagerly invited me to visit school on a particular day in August to eat Nyuzen's famous jumbo watermelon (an expensive commodity). He was very persistent! And how can you resist this face? So, I hesitantly showed up at school yesterday, hoping I'd understood his Japanese correctly! Hurray for me...I got it right!
What I didn't get from his invitation was the reason we were going to be eating watermelon. It turns out this little guy's family is The Family that sends jumbo watermelon to The Emperor of Japan. Wow! And his family donated two watermelons to his class.
Before we could eat the watermelon, the students had to prepare and cook Curry Rice. They each brought their share of vegetables (probably from their own gardens) and their portion of rice. The washing, 
cutting, chopping and cooking began...with very little supervision! I joined the group to the left. The girls took charge and gave the boys orders. The boys stood at the sink and filled the veggie bags with water and poked holes in them and watched the water squirt out. The girls got mad at them for playing and not working. The boys ignored the girls. These are 4th graders!
Unfortunately, my group was a bit over eager about making curry and missed a few steps. So we ended up with curry soup instead--too much water. Oh well. We still stuffed our faces. And there was a lot left over!
Next we ate two jumbo watermelons. They were so sweet and delicious!! I can see why the Emporer wants to eat these. I could have eaten an entire one myself if I hadn't just stuffed myself with curry rice.
Overall, it was a great morning! I'm glad I showed up for it! The only bummer about the day--my school emptied the pool. Boo hoo! So I had to go to the beach instead--summer sucks!
Blogger is being annoying and not letting me upload any more pictures...so I'll try to post a few watermelon pics below in another post.
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