Shaler Area High School students in the Japanese National Honor Society get a taste of Japanese culture in after school cooking lessons.

About once per month, Steve Balsomico, high school Japanese language teacher, and his co-teacher Shunji Iwasaki, of Osaka, Japan, who is teaching at Shaler Area as part of the Japanese Language Education Assistant Program, or J-LEAP, take students into the kitchen to learn about traditional Japanese ingredients and foods.

In the first cooking lesson of the 2015-16 school year, about 25 students learned to cook gyudon, a popular, quick, easy Japanese beef stew served over rice, and miso soup.