By Elias Lovos

Throughout the year, Japanese Plus students had been learning and practicing Rajio Taiso (or radio exercise in Japanese). Rajio Taiso is a stretching warmup to music that Japanese people do every day either at work or school or even at their own house – it could be anywhere. You can look on Youtube and find a lot of Rajio Taiso videos to practice to. It was pretty funny as we were learning it, because everyone was messing up as people looking through our classroom windows at MLK Library were able to watch us. So it was pretty surprising to learn that we were invited by the hip hop education organization Words Beats and Life and the DowntownDC BID to do Rajio Taiso to open their Jazz and Blossoms event at Franklin Park downtown on April 8 as part of the Cherry Blossom Festival.

So after our regular class that Saturday, where we received our new Japanese Plus t-shirts, we walked the few blocks to Franklin Park where we’d be doing Rajio Taiso. When all of us got there, we enjoyed ourselves with the minigames around the park that were set up for whoever wanted to play. They had games like chess with huge pieces, a huge version of jenga and a big connect four as well. They also had a small concert stage where a band would perform some songs that were very relaxing. But as time was passing by, our performance was nearing. We all gathered in front of the stage as other people in the park were joining in to see what was up.

Most of us were nervous since we didn’t expect such a crowd to rise as we were waiting for the staff to set up the video as we were beginning. Once the staff got the video going up, we began to do the routine. Personally, I was nervous and others were too, but when I saw that other people were doing the routine as well I started to feel a little less nervous. For some reason it felt like I was up there for an eternity but it only really lasted for about 3 minutes and a half. But once we finished, the crowd started clapping and we proceeded to walk over to the side as they continued with the festival at the park. It was genuinely a fun experience and we all parted ways afterwards.