mike k in l.a.

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.

More Photos Here 

After the parade died down, we had some excellent sushi at a nice sushi bar in the Little Tokyo plaza. How could we resist?