October 21, 2009
Denver gets a backstage look at kabuki, traditional Japanese theater
Like any school kid, I loved going on field trips when I was young, But, since we lived in Japan until 3rd grade, my earliest memories of field trips weren't the typical ones that American kids remember. I remember looking out of a school bus and seeing steaming lumps of sticky rice being pounded into mochi for New Year's celebrations, for example (I think we were on the way to a shrine where we learned about Oshogatsu, or Japanese New Year, traditions).
And, I have a distinct memory of going from Green Park Elementary School, on a U.S. Army base in Tokyo (it's no longer there), to a grand old theater in the heart of Tokyo to see a form of traditional Japanese theater, kabuki.
A lot of Americans probably know the word "kabuki" because it's been used for restaurants and hotels and other products. Like "Sukiyaki," "Mikado" and other words, they've become shorthand for "something Japanese." But many Americans who've heard the word probably don't know that kabuki is a cultural treasure in Japan, an artform dating back to the early 1600s that's a bit like a mix of stylized Chinese opera and melodramatic Western-style opera.
The Japanese government is hoping to change that, and make more Americans aware of the traditions of kabuki. They're sponsoring a U.S. tour of a lecture/performance called "Backstage to Hanamichi," starring two of Japan's kabuki masters, Kyozo Nakamura and Matanosuke Nakamura (no relation) from the world-renowned Shochiku Company. Denver gets its introduction to kabuki this Saturday, Oct. 24, at the June Swaner Gates Concert Hall at Denver University, 2344 East Iliff Ave. (303-871-7720 for the box office). The performance costs $25.
I have vivid memories from my childhood field trip:
I learned a whole lot about 
Tak Toyoshima, creator of "Secret Asian Man," and Jeff Yang, one of the editors of the recently-published book "Secret Identities," sign copies at the 2009 AAJA Convention in Boston.
“Where are you from?†“So, where are YOU from?†“Hi, where’re you from?â€
I was in Boston a couple of weeks ago, at a convention where everyone asked each other “Where are you from?†and no one got offended. It cracked me up, hearing the question over and over.
Let me explain, for my non-Asian readers: Just about every Asian American I know – seriously – has been asked this question sometime (or many times) in their life. It’s often preceded by a variation of the statement, “You speak English so well… where are you from?†And once we answer “California,†or “Denver,†it’s often followed by a variation of “No, you know what I mean, where were you born?†Which might be followed, after we answer “California†or “New York City,†by “No, where’s your FAMILY from?â€
That’s when we can cut off the silliness and get to the point: “Are you asking what’s my ethnic heritage?â€
I just don’t see European Americans having this conversation, unless they have, say, a British or French or German accent. People assume Asian Americans are foreigners even if we "speak English so well" because of the way we look.
Anyway, I heard the “where are you from?†question dozens of times and we all answered eagerly without getting defensive. It’s because the ones asking were also AAPI, and we really did want to know where each other was from. We were at the annual convention of the 
Since the fastest-growing population in the United States is mixed-race and we live in an increasingly global and multicultural world, it makes perfect sense that a restaurant like 
We drove an hour north from our house last night, to dine in Hawai'i.
Well, not exactly Hawai'i, but an outpost of Hawai'i, in the most unlikely place: On a quiet Main Street corner in Windsor, a typical small, old-fashioned mid-western town on the plains of northern Colorado. Definitely not a tropical paradise, although inside the clean modern restaurant, you might as well be along Oahu's North Shore, or somewhere in Kauai.
But 
On the eve of its release today in India, the British independent film "
Jamal's devotion to Latika, even though they're repeatedly separated, sometimes for years, and his dedication to finding her again, is the film's narrative thread.
But "Slumdog"'s visual leitmotif is the chaotic and tragic backdrop of modern Indian life. The story follows the characters from childhood through their teen years and into adulthood, in and out of the utter poverty that pervades the teeming slums. It's structured as a series of flashbacks with Jamal, who's been arrested for suspicion of cheating after winning 10 million rupees on India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," explaining to a detective how he came to know all the answers he was asked on the show.
His life experiences coincidentally gave him the knowledge and prepared him to reach the next day's final question, for a possible payoff of 20 million rupees.
Almost immediately, viewers are taken on a breathless tour of the shantytown as a group of kids are chased by police, the camera moving as if the audience is one of the fleeing kids, looking for the next escape route. Then the view shifts to the cops' perspective, or others in the alleys, even a sleeping dog who's not the slightest bit fazed by all the commotion. The colors, the clatter and closed-in settings convey claustrophia ... and incredible excitement.
The movie opens up visually and feels pastoral only when the brothers get out of town atop a train and live like hobos, then spend some time scamming tourists at the Taj Mahal, and in one striking scene where the grownup Jamal meets up with his brother Salim (played by Madhur Mittal), now a low-level gangster, in a skyscraper construction site high above where their shantytown had been located.
Modern Mumbai's financial wealth has paved over the poverty and pushed the poor elsewhere.
OK, I can stop whining. I've been on a ramen hunt for a couple of months. But I've finally sated my jones, with a trip top Bento Zanmai on the Hill in Boulder.
Unlike Los Angeles, where a row of ramen shops take up most of a block along Little Tokyo, and San Francisco's Japantown, which has a several stellar restaurants that specialize in ramen, Denver is a ramen-lover's desert island. We're stranded in a place with no ramen in sight, and we're left holding an empty bowl and a pair of chopsticks.
I overstate our condition. We used to go to