Category Archives: japan & asia

2012 was a good year for Denver’s Japanese and Japanese American community

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Campai at Emperor's Birthday Reception in Denver

Kimiko Side, recipient of the Order of the Rising Sun award from the Emperor of Japan, toasts “campai” during the Emperor’s Birthday reception Dec. 3, with Consul General Ikuhiko Ono at the left of the photo and Denver Mayor Michael B. Hancock behind her.

This was a good year for Japanese and Japanese Americans in Colorado. A lot of the credit goes to Ikuhiko Ono, the Consul General who came to Denver late last year, and has made a concerted effort to reach out to the local JA community.

Previous Consul Generals have invited local JA leaders to the official residence for private dinners and to special receptions and events, including an annual reception at a downtown Denver hotel to mark the birthday of Emperor Akihito, celebrated Dec. 23 as a national holiday in Japan on his actual birthday.

The birthday reception is a lively annual reunion for the local Japanese and JA community. We end up seeing a lot of people only at this event, and get to catch up with each other.

But Consul General Ono and his staff do much more than just hold a birthday party every December. During the past year he’s interacted with the community in lots of other ways. Partly, that’s because of the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated northeast Japan. Ono arrived in Colorado in the wake of a number of fundraising efforts for disaster relief, including events and donation drives by the Japanese community.
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New United direct flight between Denver & Tokyo on 787 Dreamliner is a dream about to come true

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787 Dreamliner at DIALiving in Colorado has its benefits: Great weather, great outdoor recreation, great people and a central location for traveling to either coast. But it’s not the most convenient place if you want to travel to, say, Europe or to Asia. In my case, it’s a huge undertaking to plan a trip to Japan.

That’s because there’s no direct flight from Denver to Japan, and we always have to juggle connecting flights to the West Coast — LAX, SFO or SEA — and have to rush to the international terminal or wait a few hours for the flight over the Pacific. It’s not horrible, but it is a pain, and a time- and energy-suck.

Or it has been, until now. Earlier this year, the City of Denver and United Airlines announced a new direct route on United from Denver International Airport to Tokyo’s Narita Airport, flying Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, the “limousine of the skies.” The inaugural flight departs DIA on March 31, 2013 and the first direct flight from Japan will arrive the next day, April 1. Expect a lot of hoopla and fanfare both those days — it’ll be a big deal.
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PSY performs on American Music Awards, and racist haters come out on Twitter

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PSY, the Korean pop sensation whose viral hit video, “Gangnam Style,” has been viewed alomst 800 million times on YouTube (that’s the official video, never mind the countless other users’ uploads and all the spoofs and tributes), closed out the American Music Awards on Nov. 18. In a savvy, surprising and ultimately, ironic, collaboration, the 35-year-old PSY (real name: Park Jae-sang) was joined for a mashup of his hit with MC Hammer’s “2 Legit 2 Quit” (above) and brought the house down, with celebs and fans (Hammer too) mimicking his horsey-cowboy dance moves.

Within minutes, blowback flew out over Twitter. Most of the messages were gut reactions to the irony of a song sung mostly in Korean being featured on the “American” Music Awards. Here’s one example: “Seriously psy is closing the show?? It’s called the AMERICAN music awards not the Korean..” and “I’m pretty sure this is called the American Music Awards #gobacktoAsia.” (Okay, the “gobacktoAsia” hashtag is pretty offensive — I’ve had that yelled at me in the past.)

The fact that the tweeters didn’t catch the awesomeness of the irony and only expressed their xenophobia and ignorance was disappointing but not surprising.

Some of the tweets, though, were flatout racist, like “Why is chink PSY at the American music awards he doesn’t make American music what is going on” and “are you kidding this chink is on the AMA’s? #sad #keywordAMERICAN.” You can see a sampling of offensive tweets at the Public Shaming Tumblr blog.
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Does Buddhism have a diversity problem?

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Bronze Buddha at Todaiji Temple, Nara, Japan

This bronze statue of Buddha, at 15 meters (almost 50 feet, or five stories) tall, is the largest bronze statue of Buddha in the world. It sits in one of the largest wooden structures in the world, Todaiji Temple in Nara, Japan. I shot this photo during a 2011 trip.

An excellent, thoughtful and thought-provoking article on Huffington Post about the lack of diversity in the Buddhism community in the U.S., “Buddhist ‘People Of Color Sanghas,’ Diversity Efforts Address Conflicts About Race Among Meditators” got me pondering about race and religion. The article, by Jaweed Kaleem, HuffPo’s National Religion Reporter, focuses on Buddhist groups throughout the country but specifically in Seattle, which are almost entirely run by older white practitioners of Buddhism and meditation. This lack of diversity, Kaleem says, has led to a subculture of Buddhist “sanghas,” or groups, of color — white folk not allowed.

Here in Seattle, one of the least racially diverse cities with one of the largest Buddhist communities in the country, a controversial movement in American Buddhism is forming. A handful of exclusive “people of color” Buddhist groups have started to meet each week, far away from the long-established — and almost entirely white — major Buddhist meditation centers that have dominated the Pacific Northwest’s well-known Buddhist scenes. Many members, who have until now shied away from meditation and Buddhism, say practicing away from the white majority, among whom they say they don’t feel welcome, has spiritually empowered them — and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s part of the same demographic tsunami that washed away hopes of a Republican White House and Senate a few weeks ago, but scaled to spirituality. As someone who often enters a room looking for people of color as a measure of diversity, I certainly understand one black woman’s reaction in the article when she attended an all-white Buddhist group’s meeting — she felt she didn’t fit in.
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Elena Moon Park’s “Rabbit Days and Dumplings” serves Asian children’s music for all ages

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rabbit days and dumplings - elena moon parkI have a soft spot for children’s music, especially if they’re traditional folk songs of any culture. But the children’s music that really tugs at my heart are the timeless melodies I grew up with as a kid in Japan.

So when I listened to Elena Moon Park and Friends’ beautiful and fun album, “Rabbit Days and Dumplings,” I was most enchanted by “Akatombo” (“Red Dragonfly”) which opens with fingerpicked guitar and is joined by a flute whistling the gorgeous, lazily floating melody I remember from my childhood. Park and executive producer/guitarist Dan Zanes sing both in English and phonetic Japanese, and the music is rounded out with flutes, the buzuk, an Arabic stringed instrument, and koto, the Japanese harp that looks like a surfboard with strings.

The album is chock-full of such world music mashups of culture while the songs are treated with respect for their cultural origins. On some of the songs, Park brings in guest singers to handle the Japanese, Chinese and one Tibetan song.
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