From despair to hope: “NABI/Comfort Women” making an emotional connection with the victims
by Satoko Norimatsu
How do you go on living, when you have experienced suffering and humiliation beyond description? Should you abandon your past and live in the present? Or perhaps cut yourself off from the present and live in the past? Or confront the past in the present and live from moment to moment? Most women who were made sex slaves of the old Imperial Japanese army chose a way to go on living, and have embarked on new …

The end of the year is usually a time for a series of get-togethers like office parties, dinners and socializing at home. We Nikkei people, ijusha and resident Japanese folk, who probably celebrate the new year (o-shogatsu) as well, also enjoy get-togethers along with all the other minorities in multi-cultural Canada, whose format may vary from formal to casual, from traditional Japanese to “Canadian style” depending on age groups and professions.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
This year will be an exciting one in anticipation of the coming Winter Olympic next year 2010! The Richmond Olympic Oval had a grand Opening Ceremony on December 12, 2008 and it is enormous and huge, beautiful, magnificent, building.
Being a Nisei, I didn’t know much about the various Japanese teas, but green tea has a very good antioxidant qualities. Beverages or things to drink are called nomimono in Japanese, the most popular of which is ocha (tea). The word cha and the brew itself came from China …

Hiroaki Umeda has earned a reputation as one of Japan’s most exciting dance artists, using lighting, projections, self-created music and a powerful dance technique to create striking solo dance pieces.
Born in 1977, he studied photography at Nihon University and began dancing at the age of 20, having trained in classical ballet and hip-hop. In 2000 Umeda founded his own company, S20,  and has showcased his work at cutting-edge dance festivals in Korea, Japan), Italy, France and Canada. while going to a condition, which will be presented at the PuSh Festival …

Playwright Toshiki Okada was born in Yokohama City in 1973. While attending Keio University, where he graduated with a business degree, he discovered an affinity for live theatre and was soon writing and directing his own plays. In 1997, he established his own company, chelfitsch, taking the name from a child’s mispronunciation of the English word “selfish.” He has gone on to win a number of awards and prizes for his work, including the 49th Kishida Drama Award for his work Five Days in March, which will be mounted at …

The year 2008 was many things but it was certainly not boring. While issues like global warming and the war on terror continued to take up their share of headline space and screen time, there were enough new earth-shaking developments to almost make one long nostalgically for a time when the latest celebrity melt-down was the lead-off story on the nightly news.
South of the border, a seemingly endless made-for-TV political campaign kept many of us riveted to the screen as a self-described hockey mom from Alaska (oh yeah, and that …

1) Nikkei Community New Year’s party
Saturday January 17, Nikkei Place
Tickets are available through Nikkei Place and the GVJCCA.
Please phone 604.777.7000 for additional information.
Valentine’s Day Dance
Saturday February 14 at Nikkei Place.
Second GVJCCA dance and first fundraiser for 2009.
There will be prizes, snacks and DJ music. Tickets ($25) and information are available through the GVJCCA at 604.777.5222 or Nikkei Place. The aim is to help raise funds for the GVJCCA so that we can provide information through workshops and sessions on various aspects of human rights, Japanese Canadian immigration laws and social …

Hi Everyone and Happy Year of the Ox!
Wow what a month of December we’ve just had! It is amazing the amount of snow that three major storms brought us in Vancouver and other parts of the country. I haven’t seen or shovelled so much snow since I was in my elementary years growing up in Surrey, BC. Although all the shovelling and absurd driving conditions is hard to take, the beauty of the snow covered trees and mountains certainly makes up for some of the negative aspects of Mother Nature’s …

If there is one thing that separates childhood from adulthood, it is the perception of snow. For those of us who have to drive anywhere (and I’m talking west coast here – all you east of the Rockies folks can go plug in your block heaters, smugly sip your double doubles, and keep your opinions to yourselves), snow any deeper than 2cm causes untold grief. When it first falls it has to be shovelled, using muscles that haven’t been exercised since last winter; once it’s shovelled it freezes and gets …

Tatsuo Kage has the appearance and manner of an absent-minded professor, but this façade belies a fierce determination to follow his principles, whether they are popular or not. Over the past 30 or so years, he has been an integral part of the Vancouver Nikkei community, sitting on numerous boards and committees, and championing a number of human rights causes.
Born in 1935 in Utsunomiya, Kage was the son of a military officer. The family moved frequently until setting in Tokyo in the early forties at the outbreak of World War …