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.
Judge Kerry Hada, a member of JANM’s Board of Governors, has recently been awarded the Foreign Minister’s Commendation by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Richard Clark and Judge Raymond Uno also received this prestigious commendation. All of the details are available here.
Thanks to George Yoshida, our “eyes and ears” in Colorado, for passing along this info, as well as for providing the above picture of Judge Hada and his family.
Registration details will be available in September 2012, but starting immediately you can reserve your room at Sheraton Seattle at the preferred room rates. (The conference rates are quite a deal!)
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.
Price: $10/person (for each scouts, for each adult, for each sibling)
RSVP: education@janm.org. In your rsvp, please be sure to include (a) the name of each scout; (b) the age of each scout; (c) the name of each sibling; (d) the name of each adult. Space is limited and advance registration is required.
This is a great chance for Scouts to see the Folding Paper exhibition before it closes on August 26.
Photos by Richard Watanabe and Richard M. Murakami
As I near the end of the 10 weeks here at the Museum, I revisited the job description out of curiosity – how accurately did the description match what actually transpired?
Media Arts/Public Programs Intern
Example of the assignment include:
1) Videography and editing of public programs that feature world-renowned scholars, artists, musicians and community activists.
Public Programs by Dr. Cherstin M. Lyon and Dr. Diane C. Fujino? Scholars.Check.
Interviews with Ako Castuera, Sean Chao, and Rob Sato? Artists. Check.
Public Program by Anabel Stenzel and Isabel Stenzel Byrnes and combing through Gidra footage with Mike Murase and Evelyn Yoshimura for Discover Nikkei? Community Activists.Check.
2) Research, production assistance and transcription of life history interviews with notable Japanese Americans.
3) Design and implementation of motion graphic elements for short video productions that will be broadcast on local television and featured on the Museum’s websites.
4) In addition to receiving training for the specific duties and responsibilities of the internship, the Museum’s volunteer docents will introduce the intern to the history and work culture of the National Museum as well as the history of Americans of Japanese ancestry.
Japanese American History Classes, tour of Common Ground, and Little Tokyo Walking Tour? Check.
The only thing not listed above: Time Traveling.
Professor Lloyd Inui
One of my greatest joys of being here at the Museum has been sitting in on the Life History Interviews. This past week, John Esaki, Akira Boch, and Chris Aihara and I had the opportunity to interview Professor Lloyd Inui [Professor Emeritus at CSULB in the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies and a senior adviser at the Japanese American National Museum]. In a way, each of the Life History Interviews is but a single time capsule that saves and preserves one’s individual experiences up until that moment in video form.
Over the course of about 3 hours, we traveled from before 1930 to the present day as Lloyd told stories of his childhood, incarceration, post-war employment, time in the military service and the beginnings of Asian and Asian American Studies at CSULB. Not only was it was amazing to hear eyewitness experiences of the effects of war and living through the incarceration camps, it was impoartant to realize how the major that will be written on my diploma next year was formed – through struggle, perseverance and a desire for remembrance, a passion for critical thinking, as well as progression forward.
Lloyd’s vivid recollections of warfare, the meetings of some of the first Asian American Studies classes, and perspective into his journey to the present day were truly insightful, stark and honest – treasures that I hope future generations will learn from and appreciate. Each person has a story to tell. Lloyd’s unique experiences, the seemingly insignificant details, every friendship he formed over the years, added to the person he is today and the ideas that he calls his own. It’s striking to realize that someday, maybe in the far future, the next generation will be asking us to tell our life story.
What histories are being written right now? What is your story only you can tell?
Lloyd Inui, Chris Aihara and Akira BochJenni Nakamura is one of three Getty Multicultural Intern working within the Watase Media Arts Center, a senior studying Asian American Studies at UCLA with an interest in culturally relevant social services and the social networks of Asian American churches, and a passion to explore the use of visual arts to preserve and give light to hidden personal histories and community issues.
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.
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!
