Ten guests from Canberra, Australia came to Kura Cooking.

They love cooking and invite a teacher every month to teach them to cook. In Japan, they learned how to make sushi, other Japanese food, ramen and gyoza, and they enjoyed the taste of Japan at various restaurants.

They were all over 70 years old, but they walked well, ate well, and talked well!

They also walked 15 minutes from Iwakura Station to Kura Cooking (pick-up service is usually provided, but they said it was unnecessary).

At Kura Cooking, they wanted to make ramen and gyoza, so they made Japanese-style miso ramen and gyoza made from scratch.

We started with how to make Japanese-style kelp and tuna broth, and then made miso-flavored soup, which we tasted many times as we seasoned it to get a feel for the change in taste. They enjoyed tasting the soup while they cooked.

Everyone enjoyed the process of kneading the dough, forming it into small balls, rolling them each out, filling them, and boiling them, even though they struggled to make the dumplings from the dough.

They loved all the dishes and finished all of them. According to the questionnaire, everyone wrote that they would make the dumplings at home because they were so delicious.

Canberra is surrounded by nature. One of the guests has a kangaroo farm, another guest raises pigs and chickens, and another guest has farms on a large scale. They told us stories about kangaroos crossing the road and their chickens eating noodles and other leftovers.

They also looked at our fields and garden. They asked me who looked after the garden, and they were surprised when I told them that the gardener comes only once a year, and that my husband and I clean and weed the garden the rest of time. When they saw the large field, they asked, “What do you do with the vegetables you harvest?” I told them that we use the vegetables in the cooking school and give them away to neighbors, and they said, “What a nice cooking school!”

To be honest, it was a lot of work for my husband and me to teach a class for ten guests, including the preparation. But when we saw the happy faces of the guests and saw their finished plates, we were filled with happiness. I can’t say that it blew away my fatigue, but it gave me a burst of energy.

I thank them so much for coming to Kura Cooking all the way from Australia.