Darumarama!

SO! Last week Tuesday was our 2nd General Meeting, which was called....Darumarama!
If you didn't already know, the daruma is the little guy we use on all of our fliers and things. The daruma was designed after a Zen Buddhist monk named Bodhidharma who meditated for so long that his arms and legs and eyelids fell off. Hence the almost egg-like daruma was born! Typically, they include the colors red, yellow, green, and white.
The daruma is a Japanese wish doll; when you make a wish, you fill in the daruma's right eye with black ink, and when that wish is fulfilled, you fill in the left eye. At the end of the year, the darumas are burned. The daruma is also closely tied with the proverb "nana korobi ya oki" which means "fall down 7 times, get up 8." This proverb also contributes to the daruma's shape and is why it has a low center of gravity. No matter which way it falls over, it can come back to it's original upright position.
This is one of the reasons why we have the daruma as our symbol. No matter what happens to us as an org, we'll always get back up. Also, if you notice, our daruma has no eyes colored in. This is because we do not have just one goal for our organization, we are just trying to reach our best potential. And! It looks really awesome.

After those present learned all of that, we had a little trivia game with Pocky prizes and then we were on to making darumas!
Chantelle made up some nice darumas that you could color in and decorate, cut out and put together for your own personalized 3-D daruma.




We all had a lot of fun making our darumas unique and colorful. Then once they were assembled, since the darumas were hollow, we had candy to fill them with! There were definitely some interesting and awesome ones there..like a Taiko drum daruma, or a daruma globe with wings and glasses...




Here are a few of them for you to see!





Looks like fun, right!?

Hopefully I will see you all at our next general meeting for musubis!

Little Tokyo Exploration!!!

Hey everyone. So last week we had our FIRST Nikkei event of the year (not GM) which was Little Tokyo Exploration. We had around 50 people show up which was awesome!!!

Anyway we started off at JACCC and played a couple of games. The first one was to find someone with the same _____ (the person in charge chooses these categories) where you find someone who has the same something as you. The second game was the three syllable game where you pick a three syllable word/phrase, make an action that goes with it and then try to knock out other teams by doing your action and word and then sending it to another team by calling out their word and doing their action. Of course my group’s was our club logo: Daruma! (for those of you who want to know what a Daruma is, show up to our next GM on Tuesday, September 16) and of course we won =).

After that was lunch. We all split up into a bunch of groups and went to eat lunch at different places. Kind of a bummer that we couldn’t all have lunch together but I don’t think there’s a restaurant that can hold 50 people. My group went to Curry House and had some pretty entertaining conversations. I think we talked a lot about China for some reason. The food was pretty good (I had a curry wrap. It was good but they didn’t wrap it very well) and we were all satisfied with our meals except for one thing: dessert! So we were off to Yogurtland and of course everyone else was also there. In fact we pretty much filled up the whole store. I feel like that might turn into a Nikkei hang out spot in the near future…

After that I headed over to Mitsuwa with a small group to buy some groceries/ play at the arcade. I think the most entertaining moment was the shopping cart ride I got from Kim. Yes it was better than the whole 2packs of curry I bought. All-in-all it was a great event. I wish I got to know everyone who came but since I didn’t you all should come out to more Nikkei events that are coming up!

See you all soon

-Mario

First General Meeting 2008

Welcome Back USC Nikkei!!!

The first meeting of the semester was AMAZING!

We were all shocked at the HUGE turnout as people shuffled into the already packed room.









People were filling out applications and getting their amazing shirt.

The meeting was short and sweet.
President Penny started it , introducing herself and the board, and thanking the other APASA and INC (Go Riverside!) organizations.

Then Josh and I went over a few announcements (Little Toyko on Sat., Cubbing next Thur., and the Ohio State FOOTBALL GAME (9/13!!)).

Then, The SKIT. We Highlighted 5 of our favorite events from last year.
Clubbing at Meltdown

Our biggest event with INC (Intercollegiate Nikkei Council).

Card-making for Keiro


Making Holiday cards for Keiro Retirement Home






Ski Trip

Two days of skiing/snowboarding in Big Bear with your Nikkei family








Week of Remembrance

Remembering the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII







and...
Culture Night!

"I'm a taiko drum. Hit me!"

BANG

BANG BANG

Kazan Taiko, KBD hip hop, Traditional Dance, SKIT

KBD, Nikkei's hip hop group made their first performance of the year.

Everyone is welcome to join, especially if you have never danced before. And KBD will be performing in the 2009 CULTURE NIGHT!!!!



Finally, we did what Nikkei does best: eat food and talk story :)


Hope you all enjoyed it!
Our next meeting is Tuesday, Sept. 16th.
Same place, same time (THH 212 at 7pm)
See you soon!
<3 Jeni