To Internet radio In the morning when I was taking my children to school, I used to listen to the Los Angeles Japanese radio station's program "LA Morning" in the car. Later, when my youngest child graduated from high school, I no longer had the opportunity to listen to Japanese …
Becoming a tour guide taking Japanese people to Japan Apart from the Shin-Issei whose parents were born in Japan, I have hardly ever met a Sansei or later Japanese American who is fluent in Japanese. At the Japanese language school in Gardena that my children attended, a girl in my …
Experience the class-based society of America I have interviewed many new immigrants who have left Japan for the United States and are now working here. Immigration lawyer Tomita, with whom I had the opportunity to interview, has a unique reason for coming to the United States. Tomita is the representative …
Wants to continue but problem is lack of manpower The Tanabata decorations of the Los Angeles Tanabata Festival have been delighting visitors to Little Tokyo at the Nisei Week Festival, the largest festival for the Japanese community in Los Angeles, held every August, since 2009. The large decorations, sent from …
My grandparents came to Japan One day, a conversation between a white man and an African-American woman came up in the recommended videos on YouTube. I started watching it as recommended, and before I knew it, I had finished watching the 26-minute video. What was interesting about the video? First …
New Nisei-ness I was born and raised in Japan and moved to America, so I am what they call a "new first generation." And my children are "new second generation." However, even if we say "new second generation," their level of adaptation to Japanese language and culture varies. Whether they …
A suffocating life in Japan Anime Expo is a large-scale anime festival held every year at the downtown convention center. It is the largest in North America, and the expo held in July 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic attracted more than 350,000 anime fans over four days. Anime Expo seems …
Final home in Japan Shinya Miyata, who I interviewed online, was smiling broadly on the other side of the screen. He told me that he had just returned to Japan after four years from Los Angeles, where entry restrictions had been lifted, and that his one month stay in Japan …
Both parents grew up in Colonia Okinawa, Bolivia. I first met Eriko Higa, an immigration lawyer based in Los Angeles, when I interviewed her for a newsletter for a Japanese business association. "When my father moved to the US for his job, the visa procedures did not go smoothly, and …
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