Communications Production Manager at the Japanese American National Museum. I coordinate printed publications, manage web-based projects, and lots of other stuff. I also write an occasional column for our DiscoverNikkei.org project.
GRB3 Opening Party Saturday, September 22
6PM – 10PM FREE!
Giant Robot Biennale 3 opens with a party on Saturday, September 22.
Join us as we celebrate the exhibition opening with curator Eric Nakamura, GRB3 artists, and a performance by Money Mark!
The third show in conjunction with Eric Nakamura, owner of Asian American pop culture juggernaut Giant Robot. Giant Robot Biennale 3 will feature a gallery of eight emerging artists along with a customized vinyl figure collection.
Following two previous successful exhibitions at the National Museum, the Biennale continues to push the envelope with a creative, fresh, and uniquely interactive experience. This year’s exhibition highlights the works of Rob Sato, Deth P. Sun, Ako Castuera, Eishi Takaoka, Saelee Oh, Sean Chao, Albert Reyes, and Zach Gage.
Using figures designed by Uglydoll creator David Horvath, Nakamura curated Project Remix, a custom vinyl show with over 80 artists from seven countries—including the rare combination of both established customizers and fine artists.
Special additions to the exhibition include an original piece from Japanese painter Masakatsu Sashie as well as arcade machines running Jeni Yang and Beau Blyth’s new indie video game, Catburger.
Check janm.org/grb3 for more info about the exhibition and related programs.
There’s just 1 month left until the deadline to submit your Nikkei food story for our Itadakimasu! A Taste of Nikkei Culture project!
Please join us and share your favorite food stories on Discover Nikkei!
All stories that meet our guidelines will be published on our DiscoverNikkei.org website. Plus, our editorial committee will be selecting their favorite stories to feature, translate into all of our site languages (English, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese), and selected stories will be printed on our partner Nikkei publications.
The deadline to submit stories to be included in Itadakimasu! is September 30, 2012 at 6pm (PST).
Since our last update, we’ve published 4 more Itadakimasu stories online with more waiting to be published:
Erik Matsunaga’s story about JA enchiladas in “Farm Food”
Janice D. Tanaka’s shares about how her Maryknoll classmate took her on a Little Tokyo food adventure in “Elsie Kikuchi’s J-Town”
The Odyssey is another humorous Itadakimasu story by Rachel Yamaguchi about how her father led their family on a “quest” to find a Japanese restaurant he remembered from the “old days” when traveling through Fresno, CA.
d) good sports who would like to learn some interesting JA sports trivia
or just competitive…come participate in our JA Trivia Challenge at the free Summer Festival on the Courtyard event this Saturday! Our Discover Nikkei team is putting together a fun, highly interactive game with prizes for both contestants and audience members. It’s free to participate and attend!
All teams of 2 must check in between 12:30-12:50pm on Saturday at the Democracy Forum. In addition to winning medals, the top 3 teams will win gift certificates to our award-winning Museum Store (1st place: $100, 2nd place: $50, 3rd place: $20).
Location: Democracy Forum at the Japanese American National Museum
Schedule:
12:30-12:50pm: Teams check in
12:30pm: Forum doors open for teams & audience
1-2pm: Game time!
4:30pm: JA Olympics Medal Ceremony for winning teams
The Game
The JA Sports Trivia Challenge will consist of…
Round 1—Selection Round: All registered teams will participate in a single-elimination round with all multiple-choice questions. The top 3 teams advance to Round 2.
Audience Questions: Our game show host will have trivia questions for the audience to win some prizes!
Round 2: The top 3 teams will come down to the stage to answer multiple choice and a few fill-in questions for points.
Bonus Round: Identify 10 JA athletes and their sports. Audience members can play along to win more prizes!
At the end of the Bonus Round, we’ll tally all the points to see who will capture the Gold, Silver, and Bronze!
Hints: If you want to “train” for the event, we will have questions about past & present Japanese American athletes from the Olympics, and both amateur and professional sports. To be the winning team, you don’t have to answer all questions correctly, just get more points than the other teams. Questions will be a combination of mostly multiple choice and a few fill-in, so even if you don’t know all the answers, you could still do well if you’re lucky.
Our 14th Annual Summer Festival on the Courtyard is this weekend!
Summer Festival is our BIGGEST event of the year. We’re preparing a full day of FREE family fun. If you couldn’t make it to London for the Summer Olympics, come out to JANM for the JA Olympics!
LOTS of free activities and crafts to keep kids of all ages busy all day, or just stop by in between checking out the various Nisei Week and Tanabata Festival festivities going on throughout Little Tokyo.
There’s now just 2 months left to submit your Nikkei food story for our Itadakimasu! A Taste of Nikkei Culture project!
Our Discover Nikkei website is collecting and sharing stories about Nikkei food culture and its impact on identity and communities. We want to collect together as many diverse stories from around the world as we can, so we invite you to submit personal stories and essays, memoirs, academic papers, book reviews, and other prose genre.
All stories that meet the guidelines will be published on Discover Nikkei as part of this special series. In addition, our Editorial Committee will select their favorite articles per language to be featured and translated into our site languages! Some of the submitted stories will be selected to be published in various Nikkei newspapers and partnering organization newsletters around the world (including The Rafu Shimpo in Los Angeles, Peru Shimpo in Lima, and Nikkeiy Shimbun in São Paulo, Brazil) after the conclusion of the project.
Since our last update, we’ve published 4 more Itadakimasu stories online. There are also more that we’ll be posting soon. The deadline to submit stories to be included in Itadakimasu! is September 30, 2012 at 6pm (PST). That’s just 2 months away from today!
Please join us and share your favorite food stories on Discover Nikkei!
Itadakimasu stories published since our last blog post:
The ESGVJCC Leisure Chef Kitchen Brigade pose with tsukemono, from Edward Moreno's story, "Our Lady Queen Of Pickles"
Family photo from Thanksgiving 1951 from Troy Ishikawa's story, "Three Generations of Japanese American Cooks and Food: From Grandma to daughter to grandson"
Her mother's jubako, from Lily Yuriko Nakai Havey's "Food for New Year" about her mother's cooking before and after WWII, and the foods they ate while at Amache
There are no tantalizing photos to accompany this story, but it’s well worth the read! “Look’it” Food by Rachel Yamaguchi is a humorous story of how the “hoarding” of treats for company isn’t a tradition that works well when you don’t entertain guests often.
Congratulations to Judge Bruce Iwasaki who was appointed to a judgeship in the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Governor Jerry Brown on May 18. He is a former board member of the Japanese American Bar Association.
The photo below is from The Rafu Shimpo, taken by Mario Reyes. The very proud-looking woman to the right of Judge Iwasaki is his mother Sumi, who happens to be a long-time volunteer at JANM! To his left is his wife, Evelyn Yoshimura, a long-time staff member at the Little Tokyo Service Center. Both Bruce and Evelyn were part of the collective that produced Gidra magazine which was featured in our Drawing the Line: Japanese American Art, Design & Activisim in Post-War Los Angeleslast year.
Also in the picture are his daughter Naomi and son-in-law Casey Eiseman.
The Japanese American National Museum will be closed on Tuesday, July 31, 2012 from 11AM to 2PM for a Staff Retreat. We will be open to the public from 2PM to 5PM with last admission at 4:30PM.
We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
For many Nikkei around the world, food is often the strongest and most lasting connection they have with their culture. Across generations, language and traditions are often lost, but their connections to food remain.
The Museum’s Discover Nikkei website has launched a project to collect and share stories about Nikkei food culture and its impact on identity and communities. We want to collect together as many diverse stories from around the world as we can, so we invite you to submit personal stories and essays, memoirs, academic papers, book reviews, and other prose genre.
All stories submitted for our Itadakimasu! that meet the guidelines will be published on Discover Nikkei as part of this series. In addition, our Editorial Committee will select their favorite articles per language to be featured and translated into our site languages! Some of the submitted stories will be selected to be published in various Nikkei newspapers and partnering organization newsletters around the world (including The Rafu Shimpo in Los Angeles, Peru Shimpo in Lima, and Nikkeiy Shimbun in São Paulo, Brazil) after the conclusion of the project.
We’ve already published 6 Itadakimasu stories online, and have received several more that we’ll be posting soon. They range from holiday food traditions to sushi therapy. The most recent story features 100th/442nd veterans, Jake Shimabukuro, and of course, food!
The deadline to submit stories to be included in Itadakimasu! is September 30, 2012 at 6pm (PST). That’s just 3 months away from today!
Please join us and share your favorite food stories on Discover Nikkei!
Jake Shimabukuro with 100th & 442nd veterans from Jayne Hirata's story, "Health, Happiness, and Bear Hanakuso with the Wine Gang"
Giant tempura from Silvia Lumy Akioka's story, "My gastronomic habits in Brazil" (Portuguese & English)From Jean Oda Moy's story, "Sushi Therapy" -- a touching story about the power of food memoryBen Arikawa's mother on their Fresno family farm. From his story, "Cooking Traditions with Mom"From Keiko Fukuda's story, 我が家の定番、県民食の鶏料理 (Japanese only)Plastic kagami mochi and sparklers from Laurie Iwami's "Soba, Firecrackers and Home"
We have so many dedicated & wonderful volunteers, without who we would not be able to do all that we do here at JANM. Every year, we honor our volunteers at our annual Volunteer Recognition Awards.
Mary Karasawa receives the Program Award from G.W. Kimura, JANM President/CEO. Mary was unable to attend the Volunteer Recognition event, so staff surprised her the following week.
On May 19, 2012, we honored our outstanding volunteers for 2011. All together, Museum Volunteers contributed a total of 33,800 volunteer hours from January through December 2011. Eight individuals even volunteered over 500 hours each!
During the awards program, Volunteer Service Year Pins were awarded. One Year pins went to: George Gonzalez, Sergio Holguin, Kyle Ishii, Nao Magami, MariAnne Nguyen, Pearl Punperk, Kihachiro Tajima, and Joy Takeuchi. Five Year pins went to Wayne Iwahashi, Terri Kishimoto, Carol Miyahira, and Mas Yamashita. Ten Year pins were awarded to Eiko Masuyama, Fred Murakami, Julia Murakami, Larry Oshima, Chieko Sakuno, Carol Takafuji, and Mitsuyo Tanaka. Fifteen Year pins went to Nancee & Roy Iketani, and Marge Wada. Twenty Year pins were presented to Kimiko Oriba, Bill Shishima, and Helen Yasuda.
Carol Miyahara received the 2011 Administration Award
After the service pins were presented, next came the presentation of the various outstanding award winners:
Administration Award: Carol Miyahira
Carol is an active member of the Organizational Support Committee and the Volunteer Leadership Council. She also assists with origami for school tours and with various volunteer activities.
Community Award: Glenn Oshima
Glenn helps out in the Hirasaki National Resource Center assisting visitors with access to the databases and other resources. He is also co-editor of Volunteerly Speaking, the volunteer newsletter, and helps out with the membership table at various events.
Sergio Holguin received the Lois & Elman Padilla Student Award
Program Award: Mary Karasawa
Mary is a long-time volunteer docent who leads tours of our Common Groundexhibition for school groups and other visitors.
Padilla Student Award: Sergio Holguin
Sergio began as a docent while still in high school. He continues to volunteer on weekends now that he’s in college. [Read his article on Discover Nikkei: Nisei? Sansei? No, I’m just a Gakusei]
Museum Family Spirit Award: Roy & Eileen Sakamoto
Roy & Eileen Sakamoto both contribute to the Museum in their own ways. Roy is a docent and a former chair of the Volunteer Leadership Council. He also coaches new docent trainees, and helps out wherever he can. Eileen volunteers in both Visitor Services welcoming guests to the Museum, and also in the Museum Store. [Check out their 30-second volunteer videos on YouTube: Roy Sakamoto – Citizenship Papers; Eileen Sakamoto – Baseball Team Photo]
Eileen & Roy Sakamoto received the Family Spirit Award
Miki Tanimura Award: Julia Murakami
The Miki Tanimura Award honors outstanding volunteers who have made exceptional contributions to the Museum. It’s always amazing to me that every year we honor someone totally deserving, and yet they are always completely taken by surprise. The twenty volunteers who make up this exclusive club are an incredible group of “all-stars” that have helped the Museum in enumerable ways with such dedication and modesty.
Julia Murakami is a worthy addition to this group. Although she works full-time, she helps out in so many different ways around the Museum. A former member of the Volunteer Leadership Council, she has taken charge of recruiting and mentoring many younger volunteers, especially on the weekends. She helped coordinate the Community Marketplace at the Museum’s 2008 National Conference in Denver; helped to develop guidelines for recruiting off-site volunteers to help with Discover Nikkei; is a regular volunteer in the Hirasaki National Resource Center; assists with entering in data for the Museum’s annual Gala Dinner; helps with administrative tasks for the Volunteer office; is currently assisting with Xploration Lab visitor surveys; and so much more.
Congratulations to all of the winners!…and thanks so much to all of our volunteers!
2011 Miki Tanimura Outstanding Volunteer Award Winner, Julia Murakami with past Tanimura award recipients, Kirby and Terri Tanimura, and G.W. Kimura
Photos by Russell Kitagawa, Richard Murakami, and Vicky Murakami-Tsuda.
Summer Festival is our BIGGEST event of the year. We’re preparing a full day of FREE family fun. If you couldn’t make it to London for the Summer Olympics, come out to JANM for the JA Olympics!
