The Time We Present NJAHS To Mo Magic And The Crowd

Written at 7/6/2011 1:46 PM

Yesterday was by far the best time I had of my life! I can't believe we essentially presented ourselves to the crowd as National Japanese American Historical Society ninterns(our way of calling our selves interns). I can even recall how our group of interns worked so hard to develop a presentation outline in only two days!We may have forgotten to include some important details or share more of our work experiences working in NJAHS, but we still managed to conquer our fears and overcome our stage jitters quickly and smoothly.

Well, the day was July 5, right after Independence Day. Before my fellow ninterns Alvin, Eric and I were sweeping the floors of the Peace Plaza and near the stage at the Peace Pagoda, there was a lot of trash and we were in throws of rewriting our script but we managed to clean up the trash while Ken and Alison rephrased the script. By the time we finished sweeping, it was time to set up the sound systems and equipment. We were completely done and well set up. It was time to begin, so we started with Ken and Alison as the main hosts of our presentation. We introduced ourselves and I was surprised how I got to be favored by the crowd of kids with my loud exciting voice. Then Ken started to talk about the history of Japan Town and ask d the kids what the word nihon-machi means. The kids came up with different answers like hello friend, how are you, little friend, etc. and Ken managed to correct them by replying with the answer, which is Japan Town. Alison even taught the crowd what does issei, nisei, and sansei mean and introduced Dr. Wesley Ueunten, the Sanshin player and Francis Wong the Jazz musician. They played around 4 songs and the 4th song, the kids started dancing with us. Finally ,we presented Dr.Iwabuchi who showed us how to perform the fishermen's dance, Yosakoi. The crowd learned amazingly fast and so did our steps ,which made Yosakoi possible. So we ended with happy and joyful kids showing what they learn today. I can't wait for this to happen again! Thank you for everyone who made this event possible.

- Luis Diego Lin-Xiao (NJAHS Nintern)