I was excited to see today’s Groupon discounts for our very own Chado Tea Room! There are three options:
For $10, you get two tickets to the first annual Los Angeles Tea Festival on August 13 and 14 (a $20 value).
For $30, you get afternoon tea for two people and $25 worth of loose-leaf tea (a $61 value).
For $48, you get afternoon tea for four people and $25 worth of loose-leaf tea (a $97 value).
Have you been to our Chado Tea Room? It is a wonderfully civilized place to have Afternoon Tea. A hidden gem. I love it!
Well, I just wanted to point out these fabulous deals, especially the discounted tickets to the Tea Fest in conjunction with our Saturday, Aug 13 Summer Festival — our most popular event of the year! — just in case there are a few rare JANM blog readers out there who do not get the Groupon alerts. The Chado Groupon is available until the end of day Saturday July 30th!
After many check-ins last night where the bid was stuck at $510, I finally decided to call it quits and go to bed.
I woke up in the middle of the night and was plagued by work thoughts, but didn’t sneak in to check the computer and risk waking the household with whoops of excitement. It was like waiting for Christmas morning and it was worth it to see that the final bid was $721.00!
Again, thanks to Mike Shinoda, proceeds benefit JANM & Music for Relief/Japan Relief.
Next auction starts August 1, with Kip Fulbeck’s ingenious ikebana Labbit entitled, “More than the Sum of Our Parts.”
I have been enjoying the opportunity to create flower arrangements every few days. It’s a nice way to start your day…contemplating art and beauty.
Come celebrate museums & cheer on the hometown Dodgers at Museums Matter Night at Dodger Stadium!
Join JANM and other participating museums at Dodger Stadium on Friday, August 26. Special discounted prices available for variety of stadium seating sections. Click on the link below for prices & to order tickets.
Game against the Colorado Rockies starts at 7:10pm. Stay for fireworks following the game!
Baseball fans…we also have a program on Saturday, July 23 at 11am:
How to Succeed in Baseball
Shigetoshi Hasegawa (former pitcher for the Angels & Mariners) and Scott Akasaki (traveling secretary for the Dodgers) will be at JANM next Saturday to talk about how they were able to succeed in baseball. It’s free, so come check it out!
My name is Maya Kochiyama and I am the new Discover Nikkei intern this summer at the Japanese American National Museum through the Nikkei Community Internship program. I am entering my junior year at UC Berkeley as an Integrative Biology major.
As part of the Discover Nikkei staff, I would cordially like to invite you to take our Discover Nikkei Survey!
We are conducting this survey in hopes of learning more about the diverse array of Nikkei communities around the world. The results from this survey will be analyzed and presented at the XVI COPANI (Conventions of the Association of Pan American Nikkei) Discover Nikkei Conference in Cancun, Mexico in September.
It’s a quick and easy 10-minute survey that may even get you thinking about your own cultural identity.
On June 29 at 6:30 pm, JANM will host a public meeting about the new regional connector plan here in Little Tokyo (Los Angeles).
From Blog Downtown:
“Little Tokyo, the community that had been most vocal during Regional Connector planning, got a preview of changes to its part of the rail line in January. The refined 1st and Alameda station takes up only half the space of the previous design, fitting into the northern half of the block bounded by 1st, Alameda, 2nd and Central. More importantly, it creates a gentle curve onto 2nd Street that could allow Metro to use open land at 1st and Alameda to insert the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) needed for construction of the underground line.”
On Saturday JULY 9, 2011, Year of the Rabbit: Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo opens to the public.
Admission is also free because July 9th is our Target Free Family Saturday! And for all you Stan Sakai fans–he will be at JANM for a demonstration, talk, and signing of his new book, Usagi Yojimbo Volume 25: Fox Hunt.
The Japanese American National Museum held its 2010 Volunteer Recognition Awards breakfast on June 10 and honored six volunteers for their dedication and excellent service to the Museum, its visitors and supporters. Recognition was also given to volunteers for length of service, including the presentation of the first 25 Years of Service pin to Masako Murakami.
The Museum’s Volunteer Recogntion Awards event is unique in that the recipients do not know they have been chosen for their awards. Only the committee members and Museum staff know the names of the recipients. Museum staff make the presentations and all work very hard to describe the merits of the awardee without revealing his or her name.
The highlight of the event each year is the presentation of the Miki Tanimura Outstanding Volunteer Award, the highest honor given to a volunteer, for exceptional contributions to the Museum. Miki Tanimura was a member of the Museum’s original board in the 1980s and she was in charge of the volunteers. She and her husband were killed in a plane accident. All of their children (Kirby, Teri, Lori and Cheri) attended this ceremony. Kirby spoke for the family and 2009 Tanimura Award recipient Helen Yasuda made the presentation this year. The 2010 recipient (and much to her surprise) was Irene Nakagawa.
Community Awards were given to Fujiko Takeda, who could not attend, and Ruthie Kitagawa. Julia Murakami received the Administration Award, while Wayne Iwahashi was presented the Program Award. James and Midori Uyeda, recipients of the Museum Family Spirit Award, had to be lured to the event by their relative, George Takei, Chairman emeritus of the Board of Trustees. The Uyedas were not intending to come to the event, so Museum personnel told them that it was George who was going to receive a surprise award.
Masako Murakami (2nd to left) received a 25 years of volunteer service pin from Akemi Kikumura Yano (President & CEO) and George Takei & Manabi Hirasaki (Board members)Allyson Nakamoto presented the Program Award to Wayne IwahashiAkemi Kikumura Yano presented the Community Award to Ruthie Kitagawa. Ruthie is our resident origami expert!
Darryl Mori presented the Administration Award to Julia MurakamiLynn Yamasaki, Brad Altman, & George Takei presented the Family Spirit Award to James & Midori Uyeda
Helen Yasuda (2009 Tanimura Awardee) & Kirby Tanimura presented the 2010 Miki Tanimura Outstanding Volunteer Award to Irene Nakagawa
Thanks to Nobuyuki Okada for the photos & thanks to all of our wonderful volunteers for their dedication & commitment to the museum!
One of our neighbors here in Little Tokyo is the The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. They have a wonderful exhibition going on right now Art in the Streets, which is the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art. It was amazing. Here are some pics we took while in their galleries!
If you’re in LA between now and August 8, make a day of it and check out Art in the Streets, then stop by JANM, and then grab a bite in Little Tokyo!
Miss Kato, Canadian Rodeo Queen, Los Angeles, California, 1955. Japanese American National Museum Toyo Miyatake/Rafu Shimpo Collection, photograph by Toyo Miyatake Studio, gift of the Alan Miyatake Family. (96.267.316)
Nikkei newspapers like The Rafu Shimpo in Los Angeles and the Nichi Bei up in San Francisco have served important roles since the early Issei immigrants began establishing communities across the United States.
Last spring, our Discover Nikkei team began working on a project to share stories about some of these publications and organize a public program. On April 2, 2011, we presented “From Newsprint to New Media: The Evolving Role of Nikkei Newspaper” in the Tateuchi Democracy Forum in partnership with The Rafu Shimpo, Nichi Bei Foundation/Nichi Bei Weekly, Cultural News, and Nikkei Nation.
The program included a historical overview by Gil Asakawa and presentations by panelists Gwen Muranaka (Rafu Shimpo), Kenji Taguma, (Nichi Bei Foundation/Nichi Bei Weekly), Shigeharu Higashi (Cultural News), and George Johnston (Nikkei Nation). The presentations were followed by a moderated discussion and questions from the audience covering topics such as the coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, as well as local relief efforts; the viability of Nikkei media and the closing of some longtime newspapers in recent years; how can Nikkei media change to be relevant to younger demographics without alienating older generations; and the use and role of social media.
The Museum Store was recently featured in an article in Hyphen Magazine, entitled “Curated Retail”. Ironically, I just read an article about how the word “curate” has been appropriated by all things pop-culture and is consequently over (and incorrectly) used.
But for years I have been describing the work we do in the Store as curatorial. This isn’t necessarily the case with every museum store, although it should be. Selecting or developing merchandise that reflects the museum’s mission is harder than slapping your name and logo on to an otherwise generic souvenir (magnet, spoon, thimble, or—shiver—shot glass.) If a person buys something from our store without going into the exhibitions, I want that person to remember where that object came from and take away a story that will make the name of the museum resonate in his/her memory whenever it is handled. Maybe next time, they will actually come into the museum to see the exhibitions!
When a customer wants to know where our logo mugs are, I steer them to the flowerpot mugs produced for Landscaping America. The mugs include a haiku written by a Japanese American gardener. They are also printed with lead-free glaze, which I felt was an important (and surprisingly difficult to implement) aspect for a product that represented custodians of the garden.
We don’t have a lot of the expected tchotchkes in a museum store, but each item has been selected for how it relates or reflects Japanese Americans and their culture—which is vast and diverse. It rankles me to meet with a vendor who assures me that his product is a “hot-seller in ALL the museum stores” as if all museums had the same mission or should sell the same things. And don’t get me started on shot glasses—the only places where I think these really work are at Alcatraz (they have Mug Shots) or museums that are about the Old West or cocktails.
