Japanese Day

The school week at The Beacon began with a bang as the boys were presented with ‘Japanese Day’, a celebration of many fascinating aspects of Japanese culture. Perhaps you saw the Japanese flag flying high above the school?

Our boys enjoyed an exciting whole-school Japanese-themed Assembly hosted by Madame Jones and Madame Cook, who taught the audience a few facts about Japan and its culture.

Our Years 1 to 3 boys confidently impressed the rest of the school by reciting and hand signing numbers in Japanese, which they have been studying throughout this term during their International Studies (The Beacon’s very-own language programme, which features nine global languages, including Mandarin, Hindi, Russian and Japanese).

We were also delighted to be joined by two former Beacon parents who are native Japanese, one of whom kindly brought her grandfather’s 400-year-old Samurai sword to school that very much impressed the boys.

As a special surprise guest, a gorilla sumo-wrestler showed up halfway through Assembly and danced its way around the Sports Hall creating a huge amount of laughter. The garish gorilla is still to be named and a competition is now currently taking place to guess which member of staff might have been beneath the costume.

Following all the excitement of Assembly, our boys went off to their lessons whilst our wonderful Catering Team began preparing a Japanese-themed lunch. They rustled up Japanese ramen noodle soup and a delectable soy chicken and fried rice main course with prawn crackers, finishing off with a delicious tea-infused cheesecake.

The highlight of the day was the opportunity to try on authentic Japanese clothing and play with various props and traditional toys, including fans, lanterns, kites, kaleidoscopes, and masks. All of which was generously loaned to the school by the Embassy of Japan in London.

A wonderful day was had by all, and it was, we hope, a memorable day for all of our 500+ pupils.