2025 Spring Picnic

On Sunday, we had our 2025 Spring Picnic. We hadn’t done this event for 6 years. We took a break from holding it when Covid started. We were excited to schedule it again this year, but we were very worried about the weather because it was raining a lot last week. The weather turned out to be very nice, not hot at all and mostly cloudy throughout the day.

Over 30 NEO students, plus friends, parents and younger siblings all gathered together at Futsukaichi Park behind the Central Library. In total, there were over 50 people participating, including all of NEO’s staff.

First we made hand squeezed lemonade. The kids each squeezed their own lemon and then got the reward of a delicious and refreshing drink. We made regular lemonade and also pink lemonade. If you want the recipe, please ask Nick-sensei for it.

Next, we had some some races. We did a potato sack race. The kids were hopping like rabbits across the park.

Then we did a three-legged race. It was surprising which pairs could move forward so smoothly. The winner for each race got a bag of umaibo as a prize.

We had a super-ball scoop game set up and the kids were really good at scooping up a lot of balls.

The next event was watermelon breaking, which is a very classic game in the summer in Japan.

The kids put on a blindfold and tried to break open a watermelon with a bat.

After the watermelon was finally broken in half, we sliced it up and everybody got a slice.

The final game of the day was a water balloon toss. Each pair of players got one water balloon and had to toss it back and forth over increasing distances. Some of the kids and the parents were pretty good at this game.

The event was a great success and everybody had a fantastic time!

If you want to see more photos, click the link here: 2025 Spring picnic の写真