Week 7: History

Walking tour with Mr. Yamaichi

History week started off with Mr. Jimi Yamaichi, the museum director/curator of JAMsj. He has lived in San Jose most of his life and was born in Japantown.  With his knowledge, he gave us a thorough walking tour of Japantown and its history. We discovered that the benches in Japantown even have some of Mr. Yamaichi's quotes about previous landmarks!  After lunch, Mr. Yamaichi gave us a tour of the museum and the archive building next door.  Mr. Yamaichi possesses an excellent memory and is a valuable source to Japantown.

JAMsj tour with Mr. Yamaichi 

Tuesday, we met with Steve Fugita again to discuss grant writing.  Mr. Fugita told us about the choosing process that JAMsj uses to determine which grants to apply for.  He brought previous grants with him for us to see what a grant application looks like. Kelly even volunteered to do some grant writing for the museum.  In the afternoon we met with Mrs. Idemoto where she gave us a perceiver test.  The test is designed to pinpoint people's strengths and was originally designed for teachers.

Wednesday we met with Mrs. Leslie Kim and Mrs. May Matsuzaki.  We helped Mrs. Kim edit the volunteer application and the museum's policies.   Mrs. Matsuzaki showed us her crafts for the museum's winter boutique.  They make handmade cards, kusudama balls, and flowers to fundraise for the museum.  For lunch, we met with Barbara Kawamoto to discuss communications in JAMsj.  She told us about her background in communications at HP and Cisco.  She gave us a lot of helpful advice to help with our future career goals.  After lunch we met with two San Jose State students who presented their "Creatifying Japantown" project to us.  They researched different aspects and needs of the community for their geography class. Their results concluded that Roy's Station is the heart of Japantown and what the community needs is a community center where different people can congregate and share the space.  It was very interesting to get an outsiders view of Japantown and to see actual research done that can help benefit the community. Finally, we attended the Bay Area Asian Pacific American Legislative Staffers 5th Anniversary Intern Mixer.  We got to meet local interns and politicians like Mayor Evan Low and Assemblyman Fong.  It was a great opportunity to network and meet our local government.

One of many awards given to Nancy Pelosi

Thursday was our last San Francisco intern day.  The day started off with a bus ride to Nancy Pelosi's office to meet with Harriet Ishimoto.  We met in a conference room filled with awards given to Congresswoman Pelosi.  After lunch we met with Brandt Fuse, the Graphic Designer and owner of SumoFish.  He told us about his background and how he runs his business.  It was interesting to learn how he became an entrepreneur and where the unusual name "Sumo Fish" originated from.  The next speaker was Jon Osaki's second visit where he asked each of us how we were going to get involved in the Japanese community after we completed the internship.  It was fascinating to hear everyone's different responses and visions of what the future of the Japanese community would be.  Our final speaker was Donald Woodson from UCSF.  He gave a fantastic presentation about graduate school while explaining his background in education.  The information he gave us was valuable, practical, and a great way to end the last intern day.

Donald Woodson from UCSF on Graduate School

Handmade cards

Friday, we met with Mrs. Idemoto.  She gave us our results for the perceiver test we previously took on Tuesday and explained the results.  Each of us was given a private mock interview with Mrs. Idemoto.  She discussed how we did and gave us great feedback.  We debriefed on history and education week and we both loved our time with Mrs. Idemoto!  After lunch, we went to JAMsj to make cards with Mrs. Matsuzaki.  It was so much fun making cards for the boutique!  It fun to be able to be creative and help a good cause.