The Faculty of Education Affiliated Special Education School hosted an exchange gathering with international students on Saturday, December 2, 2017, which was attended by international students from Russia and Ukraine and their families. This gathering is held each year for students of the school and their guardians to enjoy exchanges with international students through listening to their stories about their home countries, cooking their local specialty dishes together, and so on. It had 27 participants including teachers of the school this year.
  The gathering began with presentations about the culture, climate, etc. of Russia and Ukraine given by two international students. When participants were introduced to the Russian alphabet, both children and adults practiced pronouncing the letters out loud in union, and laughter arose from them when an international student said to them, “Well-done!” This helped bring the international students and participants closer together.
  After this, they were divided into three groups, in which they cooked dishes representing Russian and Ukrainian cuisine, namely borscht, cutlets, fried potatoes and apple pies. The recipe for borscht, attesting to the vegetable-heavy nature of the cuisine culture, surprised participants when they learned that they had to grate half a carrot for each person. The recipe for cutlets was so similar to that for Japanese hamburger steak that students said “hamburger” in place of “cutlets” again and again, which was corrected by their teacher each time, saying “You mean cutlets,” bringing laugher to them.
  Then, they had a great time tasting the dishes they had cooked, some even having seconds, while talking about a wide range of topics, including the international students' families and their dietary habits. 
  At the end of the gathering, students said words of thanks and presented international students with woodcrafts, etc. which they had made in class as a token of their appreciation. The international students happily received them and said, “We had a very good time today. Thank you very much.”