This weekend also marked the beginning of Nisei Week, Little Tokyo’s annual summer festival as well as the LA Tofu Festival (self explanatory).
The tofu festival was pretty fun; full of food tasting and tofu related events. We missed some of the main events like the tofu eating contest, but to be honest, I was mostly in it for the food anyway! And food I did achieve. The area was lined with local vendors peddling their tofu delicacies: everything from traditional dishes to tofu margaritas (not the best idea). There were tofu t-shirts, tofu cookbooks, somebody in a tofu suit… And there was a beer garden outdoors, which was an unexpected surprise!
So after an afternoon of tofu gorging and beer drinking, there was an official Nisei Week parade. People were camped out on the sidewalks in traditional parade-watching fashion. And what ensued was a proper Japanese summer festival: drumming, singing, dancing, yukata, veterans and officials, beauty queens and a big spectacular float at the end. It was really enjoyable but boy were we pooped from all that standing around! It was really worthwhile and wonderful, however, to see how happy everybody was when the float went by. I could really feel the positive energy amongst the whole crowd.
I was thinking about something my friend Ko reminded me of: Around here, a lot of the older Japanese people are first generation American; raised here, maybe even born here. At my age i’m used thinking of older people as having emigrated in their younger years, having accents, etc. But many Asians have been on the west coast for much longer than that. Because of that, these kinds of festivals have a bit of a unique flavor. They’re not trying too hard to exactly emulate a traditional Japanese festival, but rather, it’s kind of its own thing and much nicer because of it.
After the parade died down, we had some excellent sushi at a nice sushi bar in the Little Tokyo plaza. How could we resist?
Among the many things happening in LA this weekend was the Sunset Junction: A big outdoor music festival that occupies a stretch of Sunset Blvd. in SilverLake. Me and some friends went on Saturday evening in particular, to see Blonde Redhead. We were hoping to catch Autolux and Seawolf too, but the parking situation was outrageous (we should have guessed…). It was complicated by all the blocked off streets, as well. The interesting thing about Silver Lake’s residential area is that its surprisingly hilly. Much like Polish Hill in Pgh. there is an area full of steep rolling hills and really cute houses/neighborhoods. Some of the streets got extremely narrow. We found parking up in such a neighborhood and thanks to the help of some locals, located a long staircase that went all the way down the side of the hill, cutting through the neighborhoods. It was quite interesting.
The festival was very diverse in the crowd it attracted, which I was happy about. It was really crowded though, and a bit stressful to navigate and find people (as these types of events usually are). Blonde Redhead’s performance was excellent. So charismatic and professional, and they sounded great. It was a bit like drinking Baily’s. Smooooth. They were just as good as the recordings with just enough variation to keep things interesting. After them, Ben Harper played. They’re a good band, but not my favorite kind of music; good outdoor festival music, though.
Earlier in the day, I finally got to see Culver City, which is a nice area of town to walk around in. There’s a lot of galleries around Washington Blvd. but we didn’t make it down that far. The main draw to Culver on Saturday, was to check out The Museum of Jurassic Technology, a local gem. This place is fascinating; a bit like a crazy person’s mansion. Really, after just writing that I’ve been sitting for several blank minutes trying to figure out how to describe it. My conclusion is that you have to see it for yourself. It’s a dimly lit house where each room is choc full of oddball exhibits ranging from failed attempts at manufacturing dice, to dogs of the Soviet Space program, to microscopic mosaics, to various collections of eccentric scientific research. There’s a tea room upstairs where you can have a tea and relax while enjoying the holographic religious icons on the wall. And despite how weird I’m making it sound, it’s actually quite classy. Really.
