Above: Two students plan their presentation (this one on the benefits of traditional Japanese cooking vs. fast food) first by a kind of mind mapping and then in storyboards in their storyboard books.

Ichi ju san sai
Japanese cooking is more or less built on the principle of "Ichi ju san sai" or one soup and three side dishes (plus rice and maybe a few small veggies like tsukemono). Usually one of the side dishes includes soy beans in some form (such as tofu, etc.) It is very easy to follow the hara hachi bu principle (eat until 80% full) while still feeling quite satisfied. This formula is good for achieving a relatively low-calorie but nutrient-rich diet (most fast food reverses this equation -- high-calorie, nutrient-weak -- especially when sugary drinks are added). It's wonderful to see young college students in Japan concerned with the slow but steady shift by some younger people away from traditional Japanese food. These particular students see this as a troubling and foolish trend.

Above: Here is one of their slides sketched first on the whiteboard. The actual slide will look different, but this is the basic idea. Later they will search for images and then build the slide in ppt. (Once a couple of students sketched all their slides like this on a whiteboard and then took pictures of each sketch with text and used those full-screen images for their slides in ppt. It was different and effective and had a simple analog back-of-the-napkin feel to it.)

Above: One of their slides features the phrase 温故知新 (onko chishin) which means something similar to "visit the past to understand the new" or "learn from the past." My students are calling this "Back to the Future." That is, there is much to be learned, they say, from the past and that we are well advised to bring some of those things from traditional "old Japan" with us to the future, such as the healthy, sustainable, and delicious eating habits of the past. The secret to the future, at least when it comes to cooking and eating they say, is by looking back to Edo period and beyond.

I learn more from my students than I could ever teach.