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.

For more info about this annual contest, click here for my previous blog article announcing this event last week.

The 2010 winners were:

Category A (1st semester)
1st Place: Amanda Hansen, University of Arizona
2nd Place: Claire Tatman, University of Arizona
3rd Place: Gabriel Williams, PCC West Campus
Special: Emmanuel Aceves, PCC West Campus

Category B (2nd semester)
1st Place: Zhuyan Li, University of Arizona
2nd Place: Kiyono Bernier, PCC Northwest Campus
3rd Place: Michael Cavalier, PCC Northwest Campus

Category C (3rd and 4th semesters)
1st Place: Patrick Murphy, PCC Northwest Campus
2nd Place: Samantha Sharp, University of Arizona
3rd Place: Clinton Wester, PCC Northewest Campus
Special: Alexis Bruce, PCC Northwest Campus
Special: Jared Pettitt, PCC Northwest Campus

The Special awards were given for particularly creative or difficult pieces. All winners received a trophy and a package of prizes. Many contestants spoke of having visited or lived in Japan, with life goals to do so again.

Congratulations to all these winners (and to all who dared to enter), their instructors, and to Chair Yosei Sugawara, for such a well organized, cultural and language art event.

All I can say is that these students put Sansei (3rd generation Japanese Americans) like me, who have studied a little Japanese, to shame. These students had to stand up in front of a large audience and speak memorized Japanese (and many did it fluently). I doubt I could have done that in Spanish while attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Sayonara– till the 9th annual speech contest.

contest poster

Coming up on Saturday April 24, 12 to 5 p.m. at PCC Northwest Campus (7600 N. Shannon Rd.), the 8th Annual Japanese Speech Contest for students enrolled in a Japanese language class. Besides the speech competition, this free event features Japanese cultural exhibitions, taiko performances, prizes, refreshments. The public is invited to participate, to learn more about Japanese language and culture.

Any student may enter as long as that student is currently enrolled in a Japanese class in Tucson. He or she can be taking Japanese in a public or private school, and the school can be elementary, secondary, high school, college, university.

According to Yosei Sugawara, Lead Instructor at PCC Languages Dept. & Chair of the event: “The speeches are written by the students on whatever topic they’d like. Again, we’ve had a wide range. There are personal reminiscences, political essays, jokes, songs … once, even a small puppet show. We don’t screen for content although the committee sees both the Japanese and English versions before the actual event. We provide the English version of each student’s speech to the audience so that friends, families and members of the general public know what’s being said.”

Sponsored by the Southern Arizona Assn. for Japanese Education (SAAJE), this event started in April, 2003 and has grown over the years, to include demonstrations of kendo, judo, karate, aikido, ninjutsu, and iaido by Tucson’s martial arts schools.

The exhibitions will again include Japanese swords, origami by the Tucson Origami Club, ikebana flower arranging, calligraphy, anime, and Urasenke Chado (Japanese tea ceremony) demonstrations, as well as participation by the Southern Arizona Koi Association, and the Tucson Go Club. My brothers and I used to play go with my maternal grandmother. Go is a Japanese board game of strategy played with black and white circular stones (playing pieces).

Tucson based Odaiko Sonora will be performing taiko drumming again for their 8th year.

Judges for the contest in the past have been provided by IBM Japan, the University of Arizona, PCC, The Rotary Club, and Japan-America Society of Tucson, with prizes from local businesses and other sponsors such as the Japanese Consulate General in Los Angeles. This year’s judges are Tom Johnston (Sahuarita Police Dept./FBI & Homeland Security), Fukumi Zapp (Japanese Association of Tucson), Takahiro Masumura (Canon U.S.A.), Hiroko Coates (MUSO/Hiro International).

“SAAJE, a non profit association, was founded to promote Japanese language and culture education in Southern Arizona. Its membership includes professionals and nonprofessionals involved in the Japanese language, in traditional Japanese arts and crafts, and in historical and contemporary Japanese culture.” (from their website)

Being 3rd generation Japanese American, this event sounds attractive to me to re-connect with my culture, though I don’t speak Japanese. I grew up playing go and hanafuda (Japanese flower cards) in Hawaii, and also doing some ikebana, owning koi fish, and drinking green tea. I haven’t had the opportunity to attend in the past, but am looking forward to it this year.

This cultural event is open to all of you interested in “All Things Japanese”, especially the beautiful sounding language.

4/25 article on update of contest winners: http://tucsoncitizen.com/community/2010/04/25/winners-of-the-8th-annual-japanese-speech-contest/