The past 20 Years...Where am I now?

Looking back at the last twenty years, I came a long way. But where am I now? Back in 1988, I was in the 9 th grade and 17 years old. My mom and I started going to the Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple and around that time we some how signed up to be volunteers with the Japanese American National Museum, when they had a small exhibit upstairs in the Japanese village plaza, upstairs up above where the frozen yogurt place is now. When that happened, it was a start to my community activist years. I had made dozens of new friends along the way. It really cemented my interests into the Japanese culture. Some of my Japanese American friends tell me that I am more Japanese then they are. Even though I grew up around Asians, and Native Americans, I became pretty much what I am today.

With JANM in the beginning, I still remember working on the Spark Matsunaga exhibit, Since I had written an article for the museum newsletter. I had alot of memories volunteering at the museum, all the life long friends I still know today, and recently found again on facebook. Then in 1992 the year after I graduated from Franklin High, my Temple YABA group sent me to Japan for the Dobo Convention. One of the older members from West Covina Buddhist Temple, became my father figure since then, because my father died when I was 7. His name is Ted Hamachi, we became really close. We used to go out to eat lunch alot after that but lately since he is up there in his years, we only see each other during our Annual O'bon festival. I was 20 when I went to Japan, Now this coming Sunday I will be 37. So that's a full 20 years since all this started.

So where am I now? I will get to this a little bit later on in this blog. From that time I went to Japan, I was also apart of a few other non profit organizations in Little Tokyo, through the years this is what I have done: Volunteered with A3m, AISAREMA/Disorient, JACCC, JACL-APAN, Higashi Honganji YABA, Zenshuji Zazenkai, and JANM. Outside of Little Tokyo, I worked with the Los Angeles Friends of Tibet, and the Pasadena Friends of Tibet. To my clubs at Pasadena City College, Started out in the Chinese Student Association, was on the staff of the Asian Student Coalition, then to me founding the PCC Buddhist Association.

So 20 years later, now married, I am still active at Higashi Honganji. My wife and I helped out at East West Players a few times. I would like to start to be active again in Little Tokyo, before the town I grew up in disappears. Parts of Little Tokyo are changing, and I don't think its for the better. Yaohan plaza, became the Little Tokyo mall and now is turning into a Korean Mall, My favorite stores and restaurants are closing down. The old look of Little Tokyo, in my opinion changed when new stores like Office Depot, 2 Starbucks, Quiznos and new condos popping up. The small J-town feel is almost gone. I am going to be 37, and hope what we have left will still be there when I turn 80. Ending here on a sad note....I miss it

So where am I now? I am back to where I have started, back in J-Town...Little Tokyo, the place I have always called Home.

Me and Ted

Higashi Honganji O'bon 2007