Day 1

For our first day as San Jose NCI interns, we arrived at the Issei Memorial Building (IMB).  We met Roy Hirabayashi, President of the Japantown Community Congress of San Jose (JCCSJ) and San Jose Taiko’s Artistic and Executive Director emeritus, who kindly welcomed us to Japantown.  He gave us a tour of IMB and showed us our office.  The Contemporary Asian Theater Scene (CATS) has been kind enough to let us use their office space during our time in NCI.  Along with the San Jose Taiko intern Lauren Che, Roy gave us a tour up and down Jackson, 6th, and 5th street, educating us about the historical sites in Japantown.

After a tour of Japantown, we walked over to Yu-Ai Kai, the Japanese American Community Senior Service Center for a welcome potluck.  We were introduced to some of the principal members of San Jose’s Japantown, including people from many of the organizations we will be working with in the upcoming weeks, and finally got to meet Ellen, our program’s coordinator, in person for the first time.  What makes the internship at San Jose Japantown so unique is the fact that we get the opportunity to intern with a wide variety of organizations and travel to different places around the city. Each of the eight weeks we’ll be interning has a different theme/focus (this week is mainly retreat and orientation), which will tie together in the end and show how all of the different sectors in the San Jose Japantown community are interconnected.

Welcome potluck lunch at Yu-Ai Kai

    We want to thank everyone for the delicious food and for welcoming us so warmly to Japantown. We are looking forward to working with and getting to know everyone better in the upcoming weeks!