Yellow canaries.
Yellow canaries floating down.
Down down.
Singing as they twirl. Down down.

Fall is sure upon us with colder crisp air, lovely, colourful, autumn leaves, and days getting shorter.  Bundle up and enjoy the season.
One of my golf friends invited me to the Beth Tikva synagogue for a laughing and yoga practice session. I was interested since we also have a laughing session at our church, and I was curious.  Laughter is the best medicine for healing any illness. Anyway, while I was there, I picked up their monthly bulletin and found this great recipe for chocolate cake.
5 MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE
YUMMY …

Tetsuro Shigematsu has the face of a Japanese woodblock print samurai and the résumé of a modern day renaissance man. A radio broadcaster, comedian, pop culture critic, filmmaker, playwright and actor, he came to national attention as the successor to Bill Richardson as host of CBC Radio One’s popular afternoon show, The Roundup.
Born in London, England in 1971, his family emigrated to Canada in 1974. He grew up in Vancouver,  and received a BFA from Montreal’s Concordia University.
At the age of 19, Shigematsu became the youngest playwright ever to compete …

Serving up a Tasty Pan-Asian smorgasbord
November 6 – 9, 2008

Now in its twelfth year, the Vancouver Asian Film Festival has established itself as a vehicle for promoting and showcasing films by Asian filmmakers from Canada, the US and Asia. Founded in 1997 by Barbara K. Lee, this year the Festival has expanded its vision and scope, bringing aboard new Executive Director Don Montgomery, who is also the Executive Director of the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society—presenter of the Asian Heritage Month Festival in Metro Vancouver called “explorASIAN”, to take on …

Director Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s long-awaited return is an absolute triumph, expertly veering between emotional extremes. All Around Us follows the tumultuous early years of marriage between the tightly wound Shoko (Tae Kimura) and the emotionally adolescent Kanao (Lily Franky). The loss of a baby reveals the underlying frailties of their relationship, and Hashiguchi’s patient portrayal creates characters that the audience comes to truly care for.

In general, there is a tendency among both male and female youth to avoid developing deep relations with others. In the film, [Makoto] doesn’t want a proper “boyfriend-girlfriend” or “husband-wife” relationship and chooses to be with a married man who cannot become her “boyfriend.” It is therefore a relationship of convenience for Makoto.

Hi everyone!
First I would like to apologize to everyone who already purchased a ticket for our planned Halloween Dance that was to happen on November 1 at Nikkei Place. For those few who did commit, a sincere thank you for your support. We will endeavour to provide your reimbursement as quickly as possible. It takes a lot to make a function like this happen but unfortunately, not having enough commitments lead us to cancelling this particular event. It was truly a hard decision to make as we had everything set …

To feel as though all of these different categories of people making up the Nikkei/ijusha community are somehow “all connected” is, I’ve realized, a rather Japanese sentiment. Among the oft-cited differences between the East and West, the one about the former being group-based societies and the latter individual-based societies is hard to refute, even if it’s very generalized.