Click on [Show picture list] to view gallery, then click on first photo to begin slideshow.
Photos by John Endo Greenaway.

This ambitious first feature by Mariko Tetsuya interweaves manga with the story of a budding boxer to create a double world, half fantasy, half reality. Tetsuya has a talent for creating heart-pounding suspense.

My name is Seichi Bill Tahara, a depression-born Nisei. My birth certificate indicates I was born at 143 Dunlevy Street in the heart of Japantown some 80 years ago. Today, enjoying RETIREMENT in one of THE best places to live, Victoria. I am delighted to have the opportunity to attend this weekend’s conference with you to share a few memories of some of my personal experiences, thoughts and recollections growing up during a very unsettling wartime & internment years during the early 1940s.

Your recipe in the latest Bulletin brought back memories of going to the beach with my mother, She didn’t go just to enjoy the sunshine and the water but was always on the lookout for the perfect “daikon ishi” which I would have to carry home. During the war years she would pickle some strange stuff. Watermelon comes to mind. She would peel the rind, cut off any remaining flesh which left the rind about a quarter of an inch thick. She would slice these to about three inches long and layer them in a plate, salting each layer, cover with a saucer and top it with our “ishi”.

Hi everyone!
By the time the Bulletin gets out this month, I hope that many of you will have had an opportunity to take in the 6th Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival which runs October 28 to Sunday November 8 here in Vancouver. There are more than 80 events at over 25 locations through the Downtown Eastside. The Downtown Eastside is rich with many diverse ethnic communities and is of course one of the historic homes of the Japanese Canadian community. The DTES Heart of the City Festival …

One woman told of being an expatriate to Japan and all the hardship she faced when she lived there just after the war. Others told of moving from place to place like vagabonds. Many discovered connections with others in the group.

The choice between becoming Canadian (or American) and going back to being Japanese has to have been the critical decision faced by some elements of the Japanese immigrant communities in North America from the time they started coming over around the turn of the 20th century.

I personally leave rehearsals deep in thought, recalling my past and things that I forgot about society and other people’s lives. Then I get motivated. It’s similar to when I hear good music or sound and something sparks in my brain.

During the writing of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Japan was shaken by the twin traumas of the Kobe earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack. In the aftermath of these events, he returned to Japan and published his first work of non-fiction, Underground, and the short story collection after the quake.

This month, Pi Theatre and Rumble Productions team up to present after the quake at Studio 16. Running November 19 to December 5, after the quake is an adaptation of two stories from the book of short stories by the same name . . .

In the face of death, life goes on, and it is the living who shoulder the burdens (and the joys) of daily living. Still, watching my three children come into their own as teens and young adults, somehow the burden grows lighter, if that makes any sense.