Stubborn Twig and Mochitsuki

It’s been quite a week for Japanese-American culture in Portland.

On January 15th, I went to a reading/talk by Lauren Kessler, the local author of Stubborn Twig, the selection for the Oregon Reads 2009 program. The idea is that people across the state will read this book over the next several months. Because of the subject matter — “Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family,” the book cover says — I’d decided I better participate in this program and had picked up the book earlier in the week (with a Barnes&Noble gift certificate that was gathering dust!).

Lauren Kessler proved to be charming and smart. She read some passages from the book, yes, but she went beyond what most authors do at these readings and took some time to just talk, about the members of the Yasui family who are the subject of her book, about the immigrant experience, and about what it means to be an American. To be honest, I started out slightly skeptical of a white author writing about a Japanese-American family, but that seems to have been a result of my own prejudice. It’s obvious that Lauren Kessler, this woman of third-generation European descent, fully immersed herself into all aspects of this book, cares about the Yasui family and others like them, and has given a lot of deep thought into the nature of this Nation of Immigrants.

Over and over, I found myself mentally nodding at what she was saying. To grossly paraphrase, she talked about how America is a “patchwork quilt” and not a “melting pot,” that we can celebrate our differences and not become all the same while still being a cohesive unit, how there are some aspects to the immigrant experience that are universal no matter where you came from, and yet how in other ways things are different for a descendant of a Japanese immigrant versus a descendant of a European immigrant because some of us “wear our foreignness on our faces.”

One thing I found particularly insightful is when she said that it “takes the third generation” to want to recapture their grandparents’ culture and reconcile it with their own, after the first generation tends to cling on to their home country’s culture and the second generation tries to eschew their parents’ foreignness. I find that that’s very true despite the fact that it doesn’t directly apply to myself. But I’m neither first nor second generation, but an in-between “1.5 generation” as I’ve heard it called. Having been born in Japan and spending a short few years there (which makes me technically first generation) and then growing up in the United States (which also makes me have much in common with the second generation), I seem to have somehow gone through and transcended all three of these steps that Lauren Kessler talked about.

So now I go to events like Mochitsuki.

(Picture “stolen” from the Mochitsuki website, since my camera broke in Japan)

This year’s annual Japanese-American New Year’s celebration took place yesterday, January 17th at Portland Community College’s Sylvania campus.

There was the Cultural Fair with booths, an ice-carving demonstration through the Portland-Sapporo Sister City Association (it was definitely COLD enough outside!), and yes, mochi-pounding and mochi-eating. But the big event was the show that occurred in the Performing Arts Center.

And as with last year, the highlights for me were the performances by Portland Taiko. I love these guys. They’re imaginative, loud, and lots of fun. I love their bits of choreography and their powerful sound, and I love that they really have a modern sensibility that works. I actually took a class with them a year ago and thoroughly enjoyed it (I’ve always wanted to be a drummer, too!) but haven’t “gotten around” to continuing to take any more. I feel inspired…I wonder if they have spots left for the next class?

…And if you have no idea what I’m talking about with this taiko, go look it up! There’s other ensembles elsewhere in the country, particularly if you’re on the West Coast.

Free culture by the river

Yesterday (8/28 ) was one of my favorite summer events here, the Oregon Symphony’s annual Waterfront Park Concert. They do a preview of their season, along with selections from Oregon Ballet Theatre’s and the Portland Opera’s seasons as well.

Pictured is Oregon Ballet Theatre’s Yuka Iino (originally from Japan) and Ronnie Underwood, dancing a piece from Swan Lake.

India Festival

One of my favorite things about summer is all the events that go on around town. I briefly dropped by the India Fest yesterday.

I mostly wanted to get food, so I got a masala dosa and split an order of samosas. I also finally tried a mango lassi, which I’ve often seen in Indian restaurants but have somehow never gotten. It was quite good, basically like a mango smoothie, a bit thicker than I’d imagined, but not overly sweet. I don’t generally drink anything other than water when I eat out (unless I’m at a bar), but I’ll have to keep mango lassi in mind next time I get Indian food.

I didn’t stay very long for the performances and such, but as you can tell from the picture, there were tons of people and it was all a very festive atmosphere. You can tell me if I’m being horribly stereotypical here, but I feel like Indian people have more fun compared to say, Japanese people, at least in their celebrations. Japan, particularly traditional Japan, seems to like things a bit more…restrained.

In my book at the very least, you can’t go wrong with a culture whose main contribution to world cinema is musicals!

Bird Men

I love Japanese TV.

…but we’ll get back to that later.

Over the weekend, Red Bull’s Flugtag competition came to Portland. According to local news, 80,000 people showed up at the waterfront for the event. I’d never heard of this thing until this year, and I was sad to have missed it when it was in my own hometown.

It reminded me of the 鳥人間コンテスト (literally, “Bird Man Contest”) I used to watch every year with my parents (we had a Japanese video rental store nearby with taped Japanese TV), which was always fun and exciting. So I was a little deflated to find that the world record for this touring Flugtag event is only 195 feet.

Check out this video from the Japanese Bird Man Contest; this particular person went 417 meters, which is about 1368 feet:

I’m getting the sense that half the point of Red Bull’s Flugtag is to have something that looks showy, and not so much to have something that actually flies but I’d rather see some flying! Oh well, at least it means I didn’t miss much.