Now in its 11th year, the Southern Arizona Association for Japanese Education (SAAJE) is hosting this language contest & exhibition about Japanese culture. The half day event is at PCC West this year.

Program

Exhibitions: 12:00 – 4:00

Opening Ceremony / Speech Presentations (Category A): 12:30 – 1:00

15 Minute Break

Japanese Traditional Dance by Suzuyuki-Kai: 1:15 – 1:35

Audience Contest / Speech Presentations (Category B): 1:40 – 2:10

15 Minute Break

Aikido Demonstration by Sonoran Aikikai: 2:25 – 2:45

Audience Contest / Speech Presentations (Category C, Group 1): 2:50 – 3:15

10 Minute Break

Audience Contest / Speech Presentations (Category C, Group 2): 3:30 – 3:50

Taiko Performance by Odaiko Sonora: 4:00 – 4:30

Awards Ceremony: 4:35 – 5:00

Our Southern Arizona Japanese Cultural Coalition will have a table there, with information about us and our new website, www.southernazjapan.org. And I will be teaching hanafuda, a popular Japanese card game in Hawaii and South Korea (but not in Japan). There are also usually tables/exhibits on kyudo, origami, temari, go, koi ponds, Japanese food, calligraphy — and other “all things Japanese”. There will also be information about the newly opened Yume Japanese Gardens at 2130 N. Alvernon Way.

For over a year I have been on a “central council” of members from the Southern Arizona Japanese community which has been organizing in the attempt to form an inclusive group to promote Japanese culture. The group is composed of Japanese Americans, Japanese Nationals, their families, and anyone else interested in the language, arts, culture of Japan.

The Southern Arizona Japanese Cultural Coalition (SAJCC) is established to unify the greater Japanese community in Tucson and Southern Arizona. The SAJCC shall be an organization for Japanese American families and individuals, Japanese Nationals and their families, people and organizations promoting the Japanese language, arts, and cultural activities, and anyone interested in Japanese culture. The SAJCC is meant to be inclusive.

As part of the SAJCC, we have launched a website, www.southernazjapan.org, highlighting the January 2013 grand opening of the Yume Japanese Gardens at 2130 N. Alvernon Way, where our group has been meeting. We hope to be able to sponsor events at that beautiful garden created by Executive director/founder Patricia Deridder, who lived in Japan for 15 years.

The website has a directory of Japanese cultural and educational groups as a resource, a calendar of ongoing activities and flyers of upcoming events, information about Japanese culture in Southern Arizona, such as the Gordon Hirabayashi Recreation Site on the road up to Mt. Lemmon.

I’ve posted a few of my previous articles from the www.Tucsoncitizen.com/community on this website, as I’ve been covering Japanese cultural issues for over three years now, such as the annual speech contest in April, dance & taiko performances, the monthly origami club meetings, koi association tour events. I also teach hanafuda (flower card game) at the Tucson Japanese Culture & Origami Meetup group on the 1st Saturday of the month (or when I able to attend).

Upcoming: Shakuhachi (bamboo flute) concert at the Yume Japanese Gardens on March 8, and the 11th Annual Japanese Speech Contest on April 20 at Pima Community College West campus. The latter will have booths/exhibitions from the various aspects of Japanese culture: go board game, origami, koi, temari balls, food, martial arts, kyudo (archery), calligraphy, ikebana, taiko drumming, etc. I look forward to eating arare snack crackers every year at this speech contest, and listening to the talented young people speak Japanese.

Please check out our SAJCC website and please let us know of any events or topics of interest to the Japanese community, such as movies, art shows, cultural events.

I teach a Japanese flower card game called hanafuda at the monthly meetings of the Tucson Japanese Culture & Origami Meet up group here in Tucson. The group meets on the 1st Saturday of the month, mostly to fold origami (see my earlier blog “Got origami?” here). Hana means “flower” so the translation becomes “flower cards”, thus the name of the card game, originally from Japan.

“In 1889, Fusajiro Yamauchi founded Nintendo Koppai for the purposes of producing and selling hand-crafted Hanafuda cards painted on mulberry tree bark. Though it took a while to catch on, soon the Yakuza began using Hanafuda cards in their gambling parlors, and card games became popular in Japan again” though previously outlawed in Japan as far back as 1633. (from wikipedia link).

The game is popular back home in Hawaii (where it is sometimes known as “Sakura”) and South Korea, but not in Japan where only the Yakuza still play it allegedly. All ages and races play it in Hawaii, from children to the elderly.

Basically hanafuda is a matching game of 12 sets of 4 cards, which correspond to the 12 months of the year. Thus January is the month for matsu (pine), February is ume (plum), March is sakura (cherry blossom), etc. Two or more people can play the game, though usually best with 3 or 4. Each player tries to match the flowering plant sets and thus gain points to win. Card values range from zero to twenty points.

As a child, I also learned to play a more difficult version of the game, by acquiring specific sets of 3 cards called “yaku”. If a player is able to get a yaku, then the other players deduct 50 points (ouch) from their points. My 101 year old Japanese American aunty beat two of us younger relatives once by acquiring 3 yakus (150 point deduction from each of us). We were literally wiped out of any points!

hanafuda card set

Next meeting of this Japanese Culture Meetup group is Saturday, September 4 at Dao’s Tai Pan restaurant, 446 N. Wilmot Road (between E. 6th St. and Broadway). Drop by if you want to learn to play this game, and/or fold origami. The fun starts at 10 a.m. Contact organizer M Craig at 520-331-0602, email: morigami2@yahoo.com.