Visiting a Cooking School in English

English is booming now and cooking school is also popular. How would you like the citizens’ course where you can enjoy both of them? Such a plan has been realized as a “Cooking School in English” at the Women’s Center. There were more than 40 applications to this course of 24 and finally 23 attendees gathered on September 15 for the first lesson. The teacher is Mrs. Sudipta Nundy Datta who comes from Colcutta India. She came to Hitachi in 2001. She taught English as an ALT of Meishu-Hitachi high school and got an opportunity to teach cooking at several occasions due to the request of the students to teach Indian cuisine at the School’s Cultural Festival. There are a total of four lessons being held, the dates are September 15, 29, October 6 and 20. The total fee is 4,900 yen, which includes material cost. The motivation of the attendees varied: “I usually study English conversation but it is useless, then I thought that I could acquire it if I spoke English while cooking.” or “I am weak in English but I would like to just study Indian cuisine” and so on.
The menu on this day was Chicken Curry and Chai. The lesson began by dividing the class into four groups. A

recipe written by the teacher was handed out and it was very clear because the handout was attached with photos and explanation of cooking terminology like “chop”, “stir”, “fry” and “boil”. Most attendee spoke in Japanese and those who were good at English interpreted the teacher’s instruction. Throughout the lesson, everyone seemed to enjoy cooking and conversing. Some attendees looked puzzled when they came across cooking instructions they were not used to, such as marinating the chicken meat before boiling, not using the chicken skin, adding tomato to curry or using spices they are not accustomed to, and adding huge amounts without tasting it first. At the end, each of them was satisfied with the completion of a real Indian cuisine. Mrs. Datta gladly said, “All the members of this class are good at cooking, were very interested and the quality was superior.”The next couple of lessons seem to be quite promising thanks to the charming Mrs. Datta and the attendees who are eager to interact with foreigners.
The Women’s center where this plan was created was established in 1969 as “Home for Working Women”. In 1986 “Tomono Kai

(Members Club)”began and now more than seventy groups are active in the field of cooking, handicraft, decoration, art, tea ceremony, gymnastics, music, research, volunteering and so on. Courses for development of social affairs and support for job search are also prepared widely and especially recently there are also classes targeted for men.
We hope that the Women’s Center will continue to make plans for international exchange courses which are closely connected with the local region in accordance with the promotion of cooperative planning between administration and the citizens.
　