VJCC Festival Memories |
By Elinor Suzuki
When we started running the Talk Story feature it was to encourage articles like this one from Elinor Suzuki, who appears in the February 2006 photograph.
| Somebody called me the other day and said my picture was in the “Talk Story” page of the current VJCC newspaper. I hadn’t seen it yet….surprise, it’s me! I was tickled. I’ve never seen this picture before nor do I remember who took it. But I do know it was during the Center’s Summer Festival because I see Joe Belli and Jun Oyama making the udon dashi and Mrs. Shigeko Fujihiro unwrapping the bags of petite pastries from Angel Maid Bakery to feed the workers. I don’t know who the other two ladies are; probably from Line Dance Class or VYC. |
1998 VJCC Festival |
Did you know that years prior to 1990, the Mother’s Club of the Venice Gakuen prepared and sold the sushi and the udon? It was their fundraiser, and they did very well financially. They cooked and prepared everything for the maki sushi and the udon. For the udon dashi, they boiled the leftover chicken bones and necks donated by the Fishing Club. The Fishing Club sold chicken wings for the Festival.
As the students graduated from the Gakuen, the parents left, too, until there were just a few mothers left to prepare for the two day Festival. So in 1990, they asked the Center to take over. I remember in the beginning, Mrs. Hatsuko Akioka and Mrs. Suzie Haraga came to help make the udon dashi. They worked hard, and we were so grateful to have had their help for a few years. Then, George Asawa, prior to his presidency in 1995 to 1996 came to help with the udon. He brought the recipe for the present dashi, and he taught Joe Belli and Jun Oyama how to make it, and they have been doing it ever since. Joe and Jun’s committee does a fantastic job of making the dashi each year. You should hear the humor and fun they have while working together, measuring precisely each ingredient for the “best dashi” ever, as evidenced by the successful udon sale.
On Friday night, the day before the Festival, we have a terrific group of ladies, who come to help slice more than 100 kamabokos, chop 60 bunches of green onions, clean a case of parsley for the sushi, and have over 35 dozen eggs ready for frying on Saturday and Sunday morning. It’s quite a job but we, too, have fun working together.
VJCC Festival Raffle Tickets 101
By Gail Sharp
In March, I started attending the VJCC Festival Planning meetings as a representative for the group that sells dangos – wink. I thought I knew everything after writing festival articles for the newsletter two years in a row. I nodded my head at item after item as Festival Chairman Ross Yasuda read through the checklist. Then we came to raffle tickets.
As in past years, 20 tickets costing $2 each have been mailed to every member household to sell. If all are purchased, it means that 35,000 tickets advertising the VJCC Festival would be circulating around this and neighboring communities. It also means that the VJCC Festival Raffle could earn $70,000.
In 2005, the Raffle earned approximately $25,000. Two-thirds of the tickets that were mailed out went unsold. The realization of this fact was another ah-ha moment for me.
Your VJCC Festival Raffle tickets represent 20 opportunities to invite friends, neighbors and family from outside of the VJCC to come and share with us. For a $2 donation, Auntie Jane from Montebello buys not only a chance to win a sack of rice but also a reminder to come to visit on the weekend of June 24-25 so she can eat udon and corn on the cob with you while listening to the taiko drums in the gym!
Please sell your raffle tickets. Share the fun!
