Category Commmunity

Kibatsu Cinema Returns to Vancouver

Kibatsu is a Japanese word denoting a person or thing that is, by ordinary standards, unusual or unconventional—and beginning June 6, the Powell Street Festival Society and The Cinematheque will present a weekly celebration of the unusual and the unconventional…

A quartet comprised of Naomi Sato (sho) and local Japanese musicians Yuriko Nariya (koto), Kozue Matsumoto (koto) and Minoru Yamamoto (shakuhachi) will perform a concert of traditional Japanese music and contemporary Japanese/Canadian compositions.

Eileen Kage might just be one of the busiest taiko players in the business. Vancouverites have seen her on-stage with Uzume Taiko, Sawagi Taiko, and LOUD, but in Brief Encounters 19, they’ll likely see her as they've never seen her before.

Everyone is invited to attend and share stories of life pre-1942 when approximately 25 Japanese Canadian families employed in the fishing industry lived in the area before being forcibly removed and relocated. They lived in row housing, on BC Packers land on Celtic and Deering Island

This ambitious drama takes up where Imamura Shohei’s acclaimed 1983 feature The Ballad of Narayama left off. In a small village, tradition dictates that the elderly are taken up a mountain and left there to die at age 70, but suppose the women of the village defy their fate?

The March 2011 issue of The Bulletin featured three women—Esther Matsubuchi, Patricia Tanaka and Vivian Omori—all breast cancer survivors and members of Abreast in A Boat (AIAB), an international group of dragon boaters that began in Vancouver in 1996. The…

Community Kitchen

I hope you all enjoyed the great summer weather. Now, fall is upon us and we can all feel the crisp Autumn air and hopefully look forward to some Indian Summer. CARROT PUDDING I thought you may want to try…

For various reasons I missed past three Powell Street Festivals so it was great to be back in Oppenheimer Park this year taking in the smells, the sights and the sounds of this amazing community festival - the oldest ethnic festival in Vancouver (and maybe all of Canada!).

I heard from my father that he bought the Nimi Drug Store from Ishikawa in 1918. Asiatics were not allowed to dispense western medications—only Japanese-style herbal medications. So Nimi Shokai sold Kodak cameras, film, 78 records of popular songs, pancake makeup, Shaffer pens, gift items, binoculars. Lots of people bought their omiyagi from us, gifts to take back to Japan with them.

Update on the Hastings Park Project

By Judy Hanazawa The Japanese Canadian Hastings Park Project continues to progress now that the redevelopment of Hastings Park has been approved and implementation has begun. Already new signage throughout the Park is being mounted and the Livestock Building—designated now…