Japan Club hosted a snack tasting event during long lunch today, featuring various Japanese treats in an effort to encourage students to try new foods and join the club.

“Last year, we wanted to do a cooking event, so early in the year we had a cooking demo with a Japanese dessert,” Japan Club president Suchita Nety (12) said. “Usually our club doesn’t have that many members, but when we did the food thing, we got a lot of people, so we thought that we should do more things related to food.”

Japan Club held the event to rouse interest and encourage students to attend its meetings. In addition to cooking Japanese food, Japan Club also watches movies, makes crafts such as origami, and plays games.

The club set up a table with plates full of Japanese snacks, including seaweed, sea urchin and curry flavored crackers, wasabi peas, jelly cake, and different types of candy. For the main dish, Japan Club members and Japanese teacher Keiko Irino prepared takoyaki, or octopus balls, by pouring a batter into a special takoyaki pan with round holes, placing octopus in the middle, then rolling the dough over to form balls.

Although members initially prepared the dish inside Irino’s classroom, the heat from the miniature stove caused the smoke alarm to go off, forcing them to move the cooking to outside.

Students, both Japan Club members and others, milled around the classroom while chatting and enjoying the Japanese treats. The event allowed several students to sample various types of Japanese cuisine.

“It’s a really fun event and it encourages people to come out and try new things,” Maya Nandakumar (10) said.

Later in the year, Japan Club hopes to take a field trip to a Japanese restaurant to continue with the tradition of experiencing Japanese culture through food.