The Adventures of Bean-chan and Wakumi’s World

When dawn broke on 6 June, it revealed an unforgettable sight: thousands of ships, seeming to reach forever across the sea, with their barrage balloons hoisted to keep off low-flying enemy aircraft. It was with a mixture of excitement and fear that I approached the beach on D-Day. I think what keeps every soldier going is that he doesn’t think he’ll be hit—it’s the other unfortunate guy who is going to get it. To top it all off, I was still feeling a bit queasy and wanted to get my …

Christmas is around the corner now and those of you into baking will be looking for recipes to add to your cookie plates.

I have so many but these are my favourite, so here they are.

Trooper Michael Yuki Hayakaze was killed in Afghanistan on 2 March, 2008 when the vehicle he was traveling in hit an Improvised Explosive Device. The incident occurred west of Kandahar city in the Mushan region, located in the District of Panjawayi. The explosion hit a convoy driving supplies to an Afghan army outpost. Trooper Hayakaze, 25, was a member of Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians), based out of Edmonton, Alberta. He was evacuated from the scene by helicopter, but later succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead upon his …

The experience of Yayoi’s Theatre Movement production of Sonezaki Shinju began as soon as I entered the doors into the Performance Works space. Stepping into the blackness and around a corner, we entered an elegantly sparse box: a place outside of place or time, and filled with expectation.

Season’s Greetings everyone!
I would like to begin by paying a tribute to Pearl Williams, who passed away on November 3 at Vancouver General Hospital. Pearl sat on the Board of Directors of the Greater Vancouver Japanese Canadian Citizens’ Association for the past few years as well as the boards of Mokuyokai, Japanese Canadian War Memorial and numerous other societies. Previously Pearl had sat on the Boards of the Canada-Japan Society, Powell Street Festival Society, Tonari Gumi, plus others in the Japanese Canadian community. Pearl received many awards and was perhaps …

According to some researchers of pre-war topics such as the history of the famed Asahi baseball club, copies of many of the Japanese-language newspapers that were in publication before World War II have either been destroyed or remain to be “unearthed.” I happen to be translating at the moment a fascinating Meiji era document, which was found by a dedicated researcher at a Nikkei archive centre in San Francsco’s Japan Town.

The opening event of the 2009 Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival (VCBF) is underway, with budding and established poets from around the world invited to submit one unpublished English-language haiku on the theme of cherry blossoms. The deadline for submissions is December 19, 2008.

Harry Aoki, 87 years old and still going strong, was one of the three honourees from the Vancouver Asian community chosen for the North American Association of Asian Professionals (“NAAAP”) Vancouver Venture 2008 Spotlight on Leadership Celebration, held at the CBC building November 5, 2008.

In the narrative, birds fly above the earth, endlessly circling, with no place to land. When the father of one of the birds dies, the flock is perplexed—there is nowhere to bury him. After some thought, the young bird buries her father in the back of her head. This, says Anderson, is the beginning of memory . . .