Nisei Week

This past weekend on Sat August 15th, Phuong and I were special volunteers at the Japanese American National Museum's 11th Annual Courtyard Kids Festival. We worked in the Lily Pond game booth. Its the game with the small swimming pool full of water with glass bowls floating on little donut shaped lily pads. The object of the game is to throw a ping pong ball into the bowl. It was a fun game for little kids, not the adults. Adults had trouble getting the ball to stay in the bowl. The kids were winning like crazy since we had Boogie Boards for the main prize if you got two balls in the bowl. Phuong and I had fun, but now we are both really sore after running after ping pong balls all day.

Last night we went to the Nisei Week Parade and this is the first time we actually staked out a good spot. Note to self for next year, get a spot on Second street. The spot we were in across from JANM's historic building was at the end of the parade this year. It took forever to finally get around to us, and when the end hit it got really cold out and alot of people were freezing. My highlights of the parade were, Our Temple's Taiko group Bonbu playing on the back of a a truck, the Nebuta Float from Japan, The Mikoshi and seeing my friends in the parade.

So hopefully next year, Phuong and I will most likely be real volunteers for JANM, we should be out of debt by then, to have some free time to help out in the community. Other news, we have started going to the Tuesday Night Cafe's outside East West Players (EWP), which is on the first and third Tuesday of the month. Its kind of like a Asian American Variety show, with Music Bands, Spoken word artists, open mic, and other community presentations. Well, this is it for this weeks update. Next weekend is we are going to try to dance in Nisei Weeks Bon Odori street dance, which closes the week long festivities.