Janet – issues

There have been so many different issues that have been continuously brought up throughout the past 5 weeks.  I think that all of these issues are important, from making sure our voice is heard to helping youth become involved with the community to bringing more people in to Little Tokyo.  It’s been an amazing experience to learn and become aware about all these issues the community faces.

The issue that has been brought to my attention that has kind of stuck with me, is based on the presentation Monica Sakada did on obesity and the API community, for the Socal interns.  We all know that the rates of obesity have been rising quickly, especially among children.  We all see the commercials on TV that try to get kids to be more active and playing outside (well if you watch Disney channel and Nick you probably have for sure seen the commercials =).  Exercise is no doubt an important part of staying healthy, but then there’s also how we eat.  When Monica brought up the point about JA basketball and how after practice/game snacks have been spam musubis, bentos, happy meals from McDonald’s, etc.  It’s interesting now that I think about it, I remember everyone telling us how important it was for us to exercise and stay active and healthy.  And then after our 2 hour practice our snacks would be a bento or happy meal.  Because JA sports have become a large part of the lives of our youth, it’s important to educate them about healthy living lifestyles.  Starting to addess just the youth leagues with healthy snacks is a good starting point.  I think that there are other parts of the community that can also be educated.  Even working with college students about learning how to cook healthier; other than top ramen, hot pockets, to avoid that freshman/sophomore/junior/senior/supersenior 15lbs.  Obesity is not just a national issue, it is also a community issue that could negatively impact the health of the API community.  Just by starting with small steps addressing this problem is key to helping the large issue.

One of the other issues, I wanted to just say something about, has to do with the Rec Center and Thomas’s presentation/group work.  All my life I’ve seen how community centers and the facilities at the Buddhist church try to accommodate all affliated groups.  With most centers affilated organizations have priority and any other groups would come after.  But, Just working on the group work for the Rec center, it’s kind of a “reality shock” (for a lack of better words), to see how difficult it is to make sure the Rec Center really does cater to all the groups.  From the information we know the Rec center would be for a variety of community organizations ranging from sports to martial arts to community programs for youth and seniors.  It’s one thing to get all the groups on board in order for the center to be built, and then it’s another to make sure all the groups have the opportunities to utilize the space.  I think that what the facility ends up looking like is important, whether its 4 courts or less. It’s an interesting topic to ponder….

Fiona – Attention! Issues!

The million dollar question seems to be: What’s going to bring young people to Little Tokyo? The fate of JTown, and the Japanese American community with historic, emotional ties to its streets and buildings, seems to rest in the answer to that question. Yet each time I’ve been asked this question (it’s least once a week, if not once a day) I go into a panic, because I can’t answer it either. I am the wrong kind of young person? Am I the wrong kind of Japanese American?

I have grown up hapa in a predominantly white, upper middle class community. I am the twinkie. I am the sell out. I am 71% white. Saturday’s sessions with Diana and Warren really resonated with me not because I, too, fight against racism and injustice on a daily basis, but because their stories literally reminded me of the struggle that our parents and grandparents went through, to exist as equals in American society and to define that existence, to define their own sense of self. Their struggles were against problems that I’ve personally been confronted with maybe a dozen times in my life, the legacy of their activism is something that I simply take for granted. Meeting with Diana, Warren, JTown Voice, and other LT activists reminds me why this question of youth involvement is so important, of what is at stake to them: the continuity of the community that they have fought for and guided, that they continue to fight for and guide to this day. And yet, with that theme of self definition in mind, how can I speak for all young people, for all Japanese Americans? Even before participating in NCI, among my own group of hapa friends, within my own family, I’ve been aware of the multitude of experiences and histories that can fall under the term Japanese American, of the years and differences in perspective that stretch between different “youths.”

I guess the best thing I can do is answer honestly and for myself: I like to hang out with my friends. I like to bowl. I like to drink tea. I like to take pictures of trees and flowers. So maybe we could erect a combination teahouse-bowling alley-flower garden at the Mangrove site? With a yarn shop on the side, as I also like to knit. Because that, my friends, is what would bring 19-year-old hapa girls from La Canada who like tea, flowers, and the occasional game of bowling to JTown.

(On a more serious and realistic note, community service projects, opportunities to meet and visit with seniors, Japanese language classes for the middle school/high school crowd who rejected J school as youngsters and now regret the error of their ways, cultural enrichment classes, and kendo would also do the trick)

What will bring young people to JTown? It’s an important question, yet ultimately I’d like to answer it with a new question: What would bring YOU to Little Tokyo?

One issue that has been brought to my attention by the Nikkei Community Internship Program (Tristan).

Working at the Rafu Shimpo, it’s in the job description that we know about the issues. Staying aware of what happens in the community is the whole reason the paper exists. So, in what little time I’ve been there, I would consider myself relatively well versed in the biggest issues facing Little Tokyo. These issues are the primary things that brought me to the NCI internship. The fading vitality of Little Tokyo, the massive demographic shift, the struggle to preserve cultural character and heritage amidst private outside development and gentrification.

There’s a complex calculus behind being young and a part of Little Tokyo – participating in community organizations, doing work for non-profits and working for preservation – which, as interns, we all are doing now. We talk about staving off 3D, rejecting an influx of businesses that don’t cater to Japanese American tastes, and saving the small businesses over frozen treats topped with Lucky Charms at Yogurtland. As youth, we have the capacity to put in the most work and dedication to raising up the community, but at the same time, our newer tastes and faster paces are what bring Little Tokyo down.

18 – 34 year olds are the prime demographic for virtually all commerce. Television, movies, fashion, food, almost anything that is bought and sold is targeted towards our choice slice of society. Most of us barely on the cusp of this group, we seem easy targets to industry execs who want to bag us while we’re young. If commercial spaces can be saturated with enough consumables that seem fun to buy, we will flock there like flies on manure. And their strategy works. We are the reason that there are two Starbucks in Little Tokyo. We are the reason Weller Court was bought out. We are the reason that Central Avenue now offers visitors a choice between spaghetti, burgers, Cuban food, or sandwiches, but forces them to look elsewhere for a bowl of rice.

Looking through the Rafu’s story archives, there are so many instances of community rallies, demonstrations, petitions, movements from LTSC or the Chamber of Commerce, efforts to ward off the invasive forces. I had known for a long time that Little Tokyo was struggling to retain its Japanese character, but I had envisioned it as a more individual fight, one shop owner repelling a sticky fingered franchise, one restaurant swaying between offers from numerous wealthy Korean entrepreneurs and a couple of struggling JA restaurateurs. I had thought there was an issue of organization or of knowledge. I thought each singular owner was pooling their own scarce resources, and if everything were more fully integrated, if each owner knew the laws and practices to keep their business healthy and all worked together, it would be a simple matter to turn around the direction Little Tokyo has been toeing. It’s rather disheartening, then, to learn that the dilution of Little Tokyo is not being done storefront by storefront, but in great swaths of retail and residential space by commercial behemoths. The community is already standing together. As it stands now, though, its stature is not tall enough.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised to learn that so much of the staff for all of the community oriented organizations is composed of folks in their twenties. Maybe it’s just because nobody else is willing to work for so little pay. But I’d like to believe that the idealism that is responsible for most of the job satisfaction will not temper with age. I’ve also been pleasantly surprised to learn that there has been such an active effort to provide for the older generation. Not just in terms of affordable housing – that much is a given. But learning of the movie nights and social events to mediate differences between older Japanese and Koreans, visiting the Diskovery Center and learning about their classes, not just in the basics of pc and internet use, but in leisure and self expression, really demonstrates how committed our community organizations are to ensure our older generation is not just cared for and respected, but enjoys a high quality of life.

But between these two ideals there is a disconnect. We want to attract more people to Little Tokyo, we want to redefine what the community means, but at the same time we don’t know whether it’s okay for people with different names and colors to settle down, we don’t know whether we should welcome the gold line for bringing visitors in or reject it for separating our own space. We, the young generation, can be the arbiters of change, but if we don’t define what that change is, others will define it for us.

So, to me, the biggest issue I’ve seen over the course of NCI is not any specific struggle against powers that be or debate over a particular plot of land. It is instead an issue of the community’s own visions. Change is inevitable. That we must admit. We cannot afford to tread water, fighting to keep our businesses and spaces the same while trying to figure out what it is that can attract the J-town diaspora back to Little Tokyo. Everyone must be part of the process, and everyone must be on the same page. Money chases trends. If 3D thinks that Starbucks and Subway are what young JAs want, they’re not going to let a few organizations with confusing acronyms stop them from giving it to the kids. Much of SoCal’s JA population has moved past Little Tokyo, seeing its values, its businesses as irrelevant to their own situations. It is not enough to work on bettering Little Tokyo, for and within Little Tokyo. It should be remade, not as a trendy destination in spite of the older generation and quainter establishments, but because of them. The goals of young and old should be one and the same. And if that can happen, developers won’t focus on how to sidestep the community’s desires to make the most profit, but will work with them to ensure they make the most profit. There will be no hesitation in choosing between Mikawaya and Yogurtland. And my utopian ranting will seem less irrational.

Annie – My Relationship

This past year I found my relationship with the Japanese American community at a crossroads. Had we grown apart? Had we never been right for each other in the first place? Was there something else? Maybe another community? Was it a lack of communication? Or was the love just gone? And the big question—could it be worked out, or was it time to go our separate ways?

However, as I struggled with these questions, I will be the first to admit that I was the main instigator of the conflict I was having with the Japanese American community. You see, for the past few years, I have been flirting with another community off and on. After six years of exploration, a few casual events, and two weeks in the motherland, I was ready to make a commitment to the Korean American community and to being Korean American.

I joined a Korean drumming group in college and I began to buy kimchi in bulk. I flirted with using my Korean name, Hyun Sook, instead of my American name, and I spent many a cold Berkeley night huddled around shared pots of kimchi ramen and Korean beef. I called older males “oppa” and older females “unni” and tried to capitalize on the fact that I’m ethnically full Korean, born in Seoul, South Korea. I watched Korean dramas night and day, attempting to copy the girls’ looks and mannerisms.

However, despite my best efforts, my Korean American fling was short-lived, at least for this year. I found that no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t feel part of the Korean American community. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t understand the culture. I didn’t know the history, and I hadn’t even met the people, the organizations, or the programs. At best, I learned to cook a mean kimchi soup and at worst, I began to understand that my Korean American identity is perhaps lacking.

It was then that I realized how much my relationship with the Japanese American community meant to me, and I ran back into its arms. Not to say that a future in the Korean American community isn’t a potential reality, but for the time being, I have admitted temporary defeat.

And in doing so, I have come to truly appreciate my relationship with the Japanese American community. I grew up going to church, playing basketball, learning minyo, and attending JACL board meetings. As a child I watched my uncles pound mochi, and as a teenager I traveled to Manzanar each year. My comfort food is chazuke, and I still tell my Vietnamese roommate that I am going “ne ne” now, to which she always looks at me in confusion. Often I find myself being too polite for my own good, or unquestioningly respecting authority, or saving Ziploc bags and Styrofoam meat trays, and I wonder if this is all due to being Japanese American.

In the end, though, I’ve come to understand that growing up in a community with a strong cultural identity has given me the foundation to attempt to make inroads into another community which is not always especially welcome of outsiders. As a Korean American literally adopted into the Japanese American community, I do claim the Japanese American community as my own and I am grateful for the place it has given me to grow up in, but I am also able to contrast my inclusion in the Japanese American community and my exclusion in the Korean American community and wonder how I will come to rectify that.

And I guess you can say that my relationship with the Japanese American community is that of an open relationship, based on the familiarity and validation I often find within it. The love is definitely still there—nineteen years and still going strong!

Tristn – Hey hey, it’s the JA

I do not have an ethnic identity.

It’s a strange thing to say to start an entry on what the Japanese American community means to me, I know, but I feel I should make it clear. I’ve spent many years struggling over who I am. I’ve finally settled on being someone from Los Angeles, where I’ve lived my entire life, but I know that is a weak personage compared to the people who infuse their identities with centuries of rich history, memories of empire, imagined nostalgia for some grandiose past whose dim, imagined phantom hangs over the far-removed heirs to its legacy. In short, they’ve got some epic stuff backing them up.

I don’t make a claim on a particular past. I don’t speak the language of my ancestors, don’t look like others of my race, don’t have the mannerisms either valued or expected of my supposed ethnic group. As I eased into my adolescence, the period of time when the individual is supposed to sort out who he is, I began to realize that I not only did not share the ethnic identity of my parents, I lacked any sort of ascribed identity, lacked the support structure that goes along with it. While I had cultivated an interest in music and acting throughout my school years, I resolved to abandon these in favor of more practical pursuits when I entered high school, thus eliminating the sole affinity I had for the identity of the artist. So, it was, like, hella ironic when I was literally begged before the day of my high school production of Fiddler on the Roof to play percussion in the orchestra pit.

More than half of the “dorkestra,” as the drama program’s orchestra called itself, came from the same middle school and the same small Japanese-Hawaiian neighborhood in Gardena, despite spanning all different grade levels. These folks became my new best friends, our bonds staying as strong as ever as we graduated one by one. I gradually became a part of not just their peer group, but the community as a whole. It became natural for their parents to be my aunts and uncles. Despite my deep religious skepticism, I was slowly integrated into the music ministry at Faith United Methodist, eventually choosing to attend regular service as well, not because of a religious epiphany, but because the community and support there was unlike anything I’d ever experienced in my piecemeal sampling of Catholic and Protestant mainstream churches. I remember my first obon, my friends embarassed to be the only people over 5 and under 60 wearing yukata, and me stumbling through my first bon odori. I think of gathering with the Watanabe family, less a visitor than a member, to hear my friend’s Nisei grandfather tell his obake stories from Hawaii. I recall my first experience with mochi on New Year’s, completely astounded anything could be so chewy and sticky.

It is these little things that have brought me into the Japanese American community. Individual instances that may be trivial and superficial by themselves, but together form a bigger picture and a greater web of people interacting with each other. I have always had a latent interest in Japan – from my childhood fascination with Godzilla to the days spent as a toddler in the house of my grandfather, who was born in the Japanese American fishing community of Terminal Island, lived in Japan after World War II and, rumour has it, started his first family there. But, the relatively short period of time in which I’ve actually participated in the Nikkei community means I don’t have a lifetime of experience, haven’t participated in community organizations or the ubiquitous sports leagues, and am still very much conscious of being an outsider when I step outside that small, church-centered community.

But, to me, the Japanese American community has a more personal significance. I still lack an ethnic identity. I don’t identify myself as Caucasian-, Mexican-, Jewish-, Japanese-, or any other sort of American. But I feel like I can identify with the Japanese American community. I can relate to the values, and the support structure that my Japanese American community has offered is something that had never before existed in my life. I realize that I still know far less about the culture, have far less perspective on the various goings-on than most, probably including all my fellow interns. But, I hope through this program to learn more, realize a broader picture, and most importantly, do something to give back to the wider community that has done so much for me.

David – My JA Experience

     Unlike some of the other interns in this year's program, I have not
always been involved in the Japanese American community my entire
life.  Previous to my college career, I had only been able to have a
3rd person perspective inside the community even though I yearned for
it.  Growing up, I didn't have any JA friends and did not grow up in
an Asian community.  Furthermore,  my parents were fully assimilated
in the "American" lifestyle and did not associate much with the JA
community.  It is because of my lack of JA experiences that I had a
feeling of emptiness and distance between me and the JA community.
The only sense of JA culture that I could experience was through
Japanese food and the occasional visits to L.A.'s Little Tokyo.  And
although I looked like and essentially was the same ethnicity as the
peers around me in J-town, I felt as if I was an alien.  It is
because of this that I decided to become much more active and visible
in the JA community when I went to UC Berkeley.
     By coming to Berkeley, I have been able to fill my emptiness with the
long lost culture, tradition, and heritage that the JA community
contains.  By being very active in my school's NSU and by taking
Japanese language courses, I have been able to interact with other
JA's like me and become a part of JA events instead of being on the
other side of the glass.  Through my continual involvement in my
school's NSU, I have grown a broader concern and inclination to
become more involved with the JA community outside of Berkeley.  It
is because of this that I plan on becoming a more essential part of
the community through this internship.  I believe that this
internship will help me grow my leadership and involvement in the JA
community and hope that my active involvement will leave a positive
and lasting impression on the JA communities.