By Chi Onyeka

Cherry blossoms are trees that bloom once a year that were gifted to the U.S from Japan in 1910 as a symbol of friendship between the two countries. They (sadly) all died at first, because it was unknown how to take care of them, but later in 1912, more trees were gifted to the United States and were better taken care of. Now, in DC, we annually celebrate the blooming of the cherry blossoms in spring from their peaks until after the time their petals gracefully fall. There is another festival in DC dedicated to serve the same purpose, except organizations and different programs involved with Japanese culture get to gain awareness and if an organization gets lucky, someone might become a donor. There’s also other booths that are just for fun and music from J-Pop bands as well as traditional Japanese dances. This festival is called the Sakura Matsuri, which I had the pleasure to attend this year with Globalize DC.

I arrived at the festival around 7-8:30 in the morning with Ms. Sally and met two other students there. From there we set up and discussed about how we were going to address the wind issue since our tent activities were primarily paper-based whether it be coloring sheets or papers providing more information about the Japanese Plus program. We ultimately decided that we would use water bottles to set on top of the papers. Though it wasn’t the most aesthetically pleasing, it was helpful even though at some times during the day the wind was so strong it knocked the bottles over and papers ended up flying anyway. Once we finished setting up the tent, we began to explore the festival before people were let in. Since 10:00 (when people started to enter the festival) until 2:00 (when my shift ended) I was primarily tasked to draw people to the tent, take a picture of people with puni puni, explain the meaning behind puni puni’s name and to provide more insight to people about our program. I’ve seen many interesting people in doing so, and the hardest part was coping with rejection, because a lot of people were blunt and said “No” off the bat, then others (the majority) said things like “I’ll come back later” or “Not right now” which was easier to accept.

Before the Sakura Matsuri, we spent a lot of time in class deciding what we were going to do for the children that happen to encounter our booth. My group had the idea of teaching participants five different types of sushi then playing a matching game and those who remembered the most types of sushi got a booklet with pictures of the sushi, the name in romanji, as well as the name in hiragana/katakana. When it came time to run the booth during the festival 90% of children were drawn to the coloring section and most people who came to participate in our activity were adults interested in our program. Many people were excited to receive the booklets, but I didn’t give out all that I made. When I finished running the sushi activity, my shift ended so it was time to go explore.

So, the first thing I did once I was free was to go see what music they were playing and it was really interesting how it wasn’t just traditional songs or J-Pop. There was dancing and we even played and interactive game with the host (It was pretty much “If You’re Happy and You Know It” in Japanese). Then I roamed around a little bit to see what other activities they had with friends. There were so many things that I wanted to buy I didn’t have the money for them because I made the horrible decision to blow $9 on ramune, leaving me with $2 left :(. There was also a Karuta booth. I had never played karuta before so I was rendered clueless throughout the whole thing asking things like “wait, what?” or “what do I do now?” pretty often. I beat two other people playing (surprisingly) and was up against a girl who spoke Japanese and read hiragana like lightning. I was kind of intimidated, but I was still optimistic. If you wanted to know, I got 2/10 cards and she got the rest. It was still surprising to me that I got similar to 2nd place, having never played Karuta before. It was fun. We also ventured to other booths where they had really cool things like optical illusions through mirrors and coloring! Excuse me, I really like coloring. I got a Ponyo mask and boy am I happy to have it! We also saw anime booths that had merchandise for one of my favorite animes but once again, I only had $2 so I sadly walked away from the anime booths.

It was high time to leave around 6:00 so on they way home I discussed the best encounters with people I made with my transit buddy. We talked about how useful the experience was in terms of exposure to Japanese culture as there were SO many activities to do regarding Japanese culture. We both loved it, both our time in the booth, and our time roaming elsewhere in the festival. If I had the opportunity next year, I would definitely clear my schedule to come again. As well as bring a lot more money next time.

By Chi Onyeka

For starters, I wasn’t able to go to Tono Sushi because my school forced me to be there on the one Saturday that I would be able to go to a ramen shop for the first time, with the rest of the class. I know. Sucks right? On the brighter side of things, Sally, our program coordinator, offered a complimentary class trip to a ramen restaurant near our class. I was too excited to hear this news, but some of the students didn’t come, making it a sort of class trip.

So we didn’t go to the ramen shop right away. We stopped by Hana (はな) market and picked up things we would need for our Sakura matsuri, or cherry blossom festival booth. While in there, I got to explore and see more of what they have and asked the lovely Eshita-sensei, our Japanese teacher, to help me figure out what items were that were written in kanji. Then.. I came up with the idea that I should ask the cashier where the seaweed was in Japanese. So with the help of Eshita-sensei, I found out how to say seaweed in Japanese and proceeded to the cashier’s desk. I knew I wasn’t in the wrong for this because I’ve heard the employees there speaking Japanese among themselves, so it wasn’t like I was assuming their nationality by speaking Japanese instead of English. And it worked! She showed me where the seaweed was and I looked at the prices and were pretty satisfied since I’m currently planning to make my own onigiri once I get the money (and time) to do so. When we were leaving, Eshita-sensei gave us all newspapers in Japanese. After Hana market, we walked to the ramen shop called: Sakuramen.

Once we got to Sakuramen, we stood outside for a bit, waiting for seats suitable for all of us. We were told to go in and examine the place just to get a look of what we might have to experience, being in the ramen shop. I got to go in first and I noticed that there were mainly people in groups of three or four and the music was fairly loud. And if I’m remembering correctly, the bottom half was dimly lit but it suure did smell good in there! Because we were a large group of people, we ate on the upper half where it was quieter and less crowded. The music was faint and we all got a pretty decent time to order. I ordered gojiramen which was pork, bamboo, onion sprouts, and a thick noodle all drenched in chicken broth. It was very very good and I’d definitely revisit on my own or with a friend. On the way home, when I told my mom what was in the ramen bowl, she was so surprised that I ate bamboo and asked all these questions along with telling me to google nutritious facts about bamboo just to know how healthy bamboo is (yeah, my mom hovers over my diet like that). The thing is, there are so many species of bamboo and I didn’t know which one I ate so I couldn’t just google bamboo and find out “hey! It has a lot of calcium” or something like that, so to calm her down, I told her that bamboo is a multipurpose plant, that I’m pretty sure is good for you.

The trip to Sakuramen was definitely a memorable experience as it was my first time going to a ramen shop. Of course the whole class didn’t go, and I couldn’t order in Japanese, it wasn’t make it as memorable as Tono Sushi would have been, but it made up for my absence. And since the ramen was very oishii, it was totally worth the experience and I would definitely do it again.