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JASGA Hosts Tea Ceremony Demonstration |
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JASGA invites you to view a Japanese Tea Ceremory demonstration at Lamar Culinary Center (Whole Foods Market)
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Saturday
May 9, 2009,
4:30pm - 5:30pm
Lamar Culinary Center 525 N.Lamar Blvd.
Austin,TX 78703
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Teen's Japanese Conversation Club |
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Get together and learn about Japanese culture with teenage native speakers! Play games and talk with friends in Japanese!
Ages 12-18
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Sunday
May 17th
1 - 2:30
Triangle Square Apartments Club House
4600 West Guadalupe St.Austin TX 78701
Click here for contact information
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The JASGA Newsletter is compiled and edited by:
Audrey Wozniak
Communications Co-Chair
Japan-America Society of
Greater Austin
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Dear Members,
Thank you very much for your interest in and support of the Japan-America Society of Greater Austin. We are grateful to our members and donors for their continued support, which makes everything this organization does possible. Keep up-to-date with JASGA activities, events and opportunities through our electronic ne wsletter. Our most recent JASGA-hosted workshops have been extremely successful and we hope that you will attend our upcoming Japanese May Festival!
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The Japan-America Society of Greater Austin
Presents the 4th Annual
Satsuki Matsuri ~Japan May Festival
Come, Be Entertained, and Live the Culture!
Saturday, May 16th
12 - 3 PM
O'Henry Middle School Cafeteria
2610 W. 10th Street, Austin TX 78703
http://www.jasga.org
The Japan-America Society of Greater Austin invites you to join us in celebrating Japanese traditions, food, and games.
The beat of Taiko drums, traditional and festival dance, the beauty of the tea ceremony, Koto music, and Kendo swords will bring the artistry of Japanese culture to Central Texas during the fourth annual Satsuki Matsuri (Japan May Festival).  Visitors can also enjoy Japanese food, games and carnival style entertainment (Ennichi style) in addition to raffle prizes and Silent Auction items, such as gift certificates for Japanese restaurants, massage, spa, Nintendo games, Kimono, and more!
The festival's featured exhibitions and performances include:
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Nihon Buyo ~ Japanese traditional dance
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Bon-odori ~ Japanese festival dance
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Taiko ~ Japanese Drumming
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Kendo ~ Japanese fencing
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Sushi workshop
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Chado ~ Tea ceremony
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Koto ~ Japanese harp
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Japanese food, games and much, much more!
 The festival is free for all JASGA members and children under 15. There is a $5 admission fee for non-members.
Organized by:
The Japan-America Society of Greater Austin |
Guest Essay:
Carp Streamers （鯉のぼり）and Rainbows（虹）
Tomio Yamakoshi Petrosky
Center for Complex Quantum Systems, UT
Children's Day is a relatively new official holiday started after World War II in Japan. In the past, there used to be a separate Boy's Day on May 5th and a Girl's Day on March 3rd. On these days, the Japanese have festivals and throw parties to celebrate their children. It was then decided that one of these days should be recognized as an official Japanese holiday, which would allow children to take the day off from school without penalty. Boy's Day was chosen as the official holiday, but in order to make it fair, the name was changed to Children's Day so that both boys and girls were recognized. Children's Day thus takes place on May 5th. Girl's Day continues to be recognized as a festival in Japan, but was never made official. In my experience, however, some girls took the day off from school on Girl's Day. As a boy in elementary school, I was very jealous of these girls because their parents would let them miss school on both Girl's Day and Children's Day. On Girl's Day, the classroom would be full of boys while the girls got to take the day off and play.
Traditionally, Japanese people drink white sake (白酒) on Girl's Day. On Boy's Day, they take special baths in which Japanese iris leaves (菖蒲) are placed to float on the water's surface. There traditions originate from a story according to Ohomiwa Jinjya (大神神社) in Nara, Japan, one of the oldest Shinto shrines that has existed since long before the 1st B.C. One day a noble, graceful man visited a beautiful girl and secretly got her pregnant. She became weak day by day and her father did not know why. By chance, the father heard a whispered conversation while he was standing in front of a cave. Inside the cave, there were two large snakes. One said to the other, "It will be alright. That girl is pregnant with our descendents. They will live on." The other snake said, "Be careful because humans are as crafty as foxes. They mustn't know that if she drinks white sake on March 3rd and takes a bath with Japanese iris leaves floating on the water's surface on May 5th, she will have a miscarriage." The bewildered father had his daughter do as the snake said and indeed, she had a miscarriage. Thus, the Japanese drink white sake on March 3rd and take baths with Japanese iris leaves on May 5th to keep the evil spirits away. 
Boy's Day has another tradition unique from Girl's Day. If you travel to Japan at this time of the year, you will see a lot of carp streamers that are put on tall poles topped by ornamental windmills. Some of these carp streamers are more than 20 feet long. In Japan, carp streamers are symbols of success in life for boys. This symbol originated from the old Japanese belief that carps can turn into dragons. Some kinds of fish, including carp try to go against the stream and jump up waterfalls. The Japanese believed that if a carp succeeds in climbing a waterfall, it transforms into a dragon, the king of the sky, and flies into the sky on a rainbow. In Japan, the dragon was thought to be a kind of snake. The dragon symbol known as "Ryujin" （龍神) in Japanese is a snake in Shintoism.
I heard that this story originated in China and this is the reason why the Chinese character for rainbow 「虹」consists of an ideograph corresponding to a creeping creature, such as a bug, a lizard, or a snake, expressed by「虫」. In Japanese the rainbow is called "Niji." In the past, "Niji" was also pronounced "Neeji", "Nooji", "Nogi", or "Meuji." These pronunciations are close to the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character 「主」（Nooshi）that means "boss." In Japan, a big fish, like the carp, the catfish, or the great eelis often call "Nooshi of the swamp". Hence, there is a connection between the boss of the swamp, carp, dragon, rainbow, and Boy's Day in Japan.
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Home-style Cooking Workshop a Success!
The Japan-America Society of Greater Austin hosted a Japanese home-style cooking class last month with great success. Participants learned how to make authentic-yet-simple Japanese food hands-on with JASGA volunteers. Participants enjoyed making Temarizushi (ball-shaped sushi), Harusame salad (bean thread noodles salad) and Daifuku (red bean paste-filled rice cakes.) We look forward to future workshops!
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Please stay posted for for future events!
Sincerely,
Japan-America Society of Greater Austin |
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