Chibi to the K

What up nikkei-ers. Here to post some stuffs on Chibi-K. Woohoo. Yeah, anyway...

To give the logistics: Chibi-K is a run for children to celebrate Children's Day. In Japan Children's Day is a holiday the nation likes to call Kodomo no hi. The 1k run was held in Little Tokyo along with the Family Funfest and welcomes all to learn and enjoy a little Japanese American culture. This event was held after our school year ended hence why it's not in Sean's crazy post. That and I heard he had some problems with his flight or something..... Yeah. SEAN U SHULDA BEEN DERE BRAH!

As a disclaimer I'm not a big picture person. So don't expect any pictures. Yeah. I personally don't like them cause they're so still. Like that. Yeah. Some people say a picture is worth a thousands words. Well, I say I don't really like words either.... Yeah.

It was a gray day and after much spacing out and speculation on wii buying we, as in the USC Nikkei kids who were still here for Chibi-K, arrived at the Nishi Hogwanji Temple before dinner Saturday night. Ate some good food, went to Yogurtlands. You know how that goes.

Met up with some INC kiddies and the people new to Chibi-K, myself included, found out we were sleeping on a basketball court. But no basketball playing allowed! I know, outrageous right? That enraged me. And we missed out on the San Tai San Basketball Tournament that day! How ridiculous was that?! Well, I digress on all the ballin' that could have potentially happened that weekend.

What we did do was intermingle with some of our INC brethren and sisteren and did some ice breakers. Some people made some friends. Someone fell down off of someone else's back. Some people were done with school which was kinda awesome. Kazuma our group owned. Power extension cord shout out. Good times, good times.

Oh and we celebrated a certain birthday girl's date of birthage. She has a baking blog btw. http://cakeshot.blogspot.com/ idk if there's shots in the cake or cake in the shots or what...

To the dismay of all in the temple several people managed to wake up before 5 am to wake everyone else up. I hated those people.

But thanks to them we managed to seperate into our teams and set up the 1K run for all the little chibis. We also sat around, ate doughnuts and drank coffee. Lots and lots of coffee and sitting around.

The run went well and we got to see how much more in shape kids from 12 and under were than us big college students. I think we managed to prove that when they had the volunteer run. Although, it may have been the goodie bags filled with cute cartoon coloring books a couple of children cartoon show VHS's in Japanese and an even a healthy apple that motivated them. Kids love their apples nowadays. I'm sorry that you didn't get a goodie bag when you won the Chibi-K Evan. I'll give you an apple later.

After the run it was time to disperse into festival mode. Or mode that involves ugly purple vests. The JACCC plaza was turned into an assortment of food, games and merchandise booths and a stage. On stage we watched/heard performances from some pretty mean taiko to a graceful hula dance. There was also some dancing that originated from Denmark?...

Families enjoyed traditional JA foods(rice w/ furikake, spam musubi, shave ice...), there were shirts for sale with a really fat rabbit on it and parents proudly watched their children perform on stage(the little league taiko group was one of the better taiko performances I've seen).

It's traditional to serve mochi, a kind of really really good and soft kind rice cake originated from Japan, on Children's Day and workers from the acclaimed sweet shop Fugetsu-Do were more than happy to provide. They prepared their mochi slightly toasted, wrapped in nori(seaweed) with a sauce similar to shoyu(soy sauce) and it was awesome. I had at least two. And, no, I didn't steal any from any little kids. The Fugetsu-Do workers had more than enough mochi to munch on as a last memento for the parents there, the children they brought to share with them a part of the JA culture and, us, as part of the volunteers who helped provide the opportunity.


aighthungryimoutties