Azabu Juban Challenge
By Tomoyo

Today, the children were divided up into three separate teams to go exploring the city of Azabu Juban.  Each team was assigned separate tasks and was asked to make a presentation of what they had done in front of the group.  For example, Aaron and Jimmy (rising first graders) had to figure out how many toy stores exist in Azabu Juban, then to sketch of their favorite toy and finally buy 100 pieces of origami paper.  Leona and Ricky had to interview storeowners (in Japanese) to find out the oldest store in Azabu Juban.  The group recorded each store's year of establishment (eg. 1951) and then compared the data to figure out which store existed before all the other stores.  [The oldest store in Azabu Juban was a barber shop located next to Zenpuku Temple. It opened in 1818.]  The last group (Aya, Kaitlyn, Eve, Abby, Michael and Risa) was asked to go to a Chinese/Asian antique shop and interview the storeowner about their products and buy three packages of Mamegen rice crackers.  After all three teams reconvened at the Global Kids Academy, the children video recorded their presentations.  Afterwards, everybody sampled the Mamegen rice crackers during snack time. The output is here.