Delicious & Nutritious Blueberry Tofu Pancakes

Delicious & Nutritious Blueberry Tofu Pancakes

by | Jun 12, 2023 | Classes & Events

J-Sei’s Healthy Aging presents

Delicious & Nutritious Blueberry Tofu Pancakes

a demo and nutrition talk

Thursday, June 22, 10 – 11:30 am

Learn how to make Blueberry Tofu Pancakes!  The pancakes have calcium, vitamins, and minerals from tofu and antioxidants from blueberries.  They are also fluffy and tasty. Join this workshop and learn tips for healthy eating with this quick and easy to make recipe.

Hiromi Nakajima is a graduate from SFSU, who is working toward becoming a registered dietitian. She has been busy helping the J-Sei community by providing health information and flyers in Japanese.

RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with “Blueberry Tofu Pancake” in the subject line.

Sashiko Tote Workshop

Sashiko Tote Workshop

by | Jun 11, 2023 | Classes & Events

SASHIKO TOTE WORKSHOP – just added!

3 Saturdays – Oct 21, 28 & Nov 11, from 9:30 to 12 noon

Learn to draft and stitch a Sashiko design.  Add a second design on the reverse side. Then, sew together a handcrafted tote bag.

Carolyn Hayashida has been teaching sewing, crafting and quilting for over 20 years at J-Sei. She has taught numerous workshops and generously shares her creative Asian inspired patterns and designs.  Her attention to detail and fine skills inspire crafters of all levels with pleasing results. This year’s design honors the Year of the Rabbit and is a personal favorite.

Workshop Fee: $30 for this 3-class workshop

A material and supply list will be provided upon sign-up.

A Beginner’s Kit is available for $10. Includes pre-cut front/back fabric, graph and tracing paper, sewing machine thread.

RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with “Sashiko Tote” in the subject line.  Limited space is available.

Sashiko Tote - Supply List
Ginger & Honey Milk, film screening

Ginger & Honey Milk, film screening

by | May 22, 2023 | Classes & Events

Film Director: Mika Imai

 

INTERESTED?

QWOCMAP’s Encore Screening starts today!

It’s FREE, online, and available worldwide through next Friday, June 30 at 5pm PT.

You can register to watch dozens of films at your own pace, and cheer along with the audience during the opening remarks and Filmmaker Q&As. It’s all open captioned for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing, and the films are audio described for the Blind and Low Vision.

Sign me up to watch!

Amid the COVID-19 state of emergency in Japan, this human drama traces the lives of four university students, both Deaf and hearing. Their joys and sorrows intersect in a complex four-way relationship.

Ginger & Honey Milk is a sensitive and tender depiction  of different kinds of loneliness. The film beautifully sheds light on the language gap between the deaf and the hearing, being young in pandemic times, and the intersectional challenges that queer and deaf people face while navigating love and relationships.

Bio: Mika Imai is a Deaf and Non-binary filmmaker from Gunma, Japan. Imai has been filmmaking since the sixth grade and by sophomore year in high school was recognized with a best film award at the Yokohama Deaf Art Festival. In 2014 Imai received a best film award at the 2nd annual Irish Deaf Film Festival for the short film Sign Name Game. Imai’s earliest work relies upon visual action and Japanese Sign Language (JSL) as the vessels for expression. Imai’s first film to incorporate a soundtrack, Until Rainbow Dawn, debuted in 2019 at the 27th Rainbow Reel Tokyo International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival and featured at the 29th Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. Imai’s latest feature Ginger and Honey Milk premiered to a sold out audience at the 3rd Tokyo Deaf International Film Festival in 2021.

QWOCMAP presents the International Queer Women of Color Film Festival every June, two weekends before Pride Sunday. QWOCMAP will premiere 30 films in 6 screenings for our FREE 19th annual International Queer Women of Color Film Festival, June 9-11, 2023 at the Presidio Theatre in the Presidio National Park. From the lush sageness of memory, movement, and Indigenous traditions of environmental stewardship, to the transformation of grief, and the mycorrhizal relationships between love, collective care, and disability justice, the Festival Focus “Forever Rooted” liberates spores of sovereignty and survivance. All films are Subtitled for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing and Audio Described for the Blind and Low Vision, and ASL interpretation will be provided along with many other forms of accessibility.

Our Queer Women of Color Film Festival is the public face of QWOCMAP’s work, which combines film, art, activism, and community building to engage communities to think critically about their relationship to our movements for social justice.

Website: mika-imai.com

Stitching Paper: Quilting Japan and America

Stitching Paper: Quilting Japan and America

by | May 21, 2023 | Classes & Events

Stitching Paper: Quilting Japan and America by Lucy Arai

The exhibit will be on view from June 19 to July 9 in the J-Sei Gallery. The gallery will be open M-F, from 1 to 4 pm, and by appointment. For the community programs on June 24th, the gallery will open at 1 pm and July 9th, the gallery will open at 12 noon.

Lucy Arai creates art with a confluence of traditions and innovations. She uses temari (Japanese embroidered balls) and sashiko to fabricate structures, to articulate details in forms, and to respond to the deposits of ink and indigo pigments on handmade papers. These are traditions that were transmitted to her through her Tokyo uncle and Issei mother, while her formal art training was in ceramic sculpture at the University of South Carolina and University of Michigan.

Sashiko is the Japanese tradition of unshin, sewing running-stitches, to strengthen, layer, and connect fabric to protect and warm the body, and for utilitarian items; and temari are intricately embroidered hand balls for games that were introduced to Japan from China around the 7th century A.D.

Arai will present work that retain the integrity of the traditions she practices with innovative applications and non-traditional materials. Her use of sumi ink, the medium of the literati and aristocracy of Japan and Asia, is deliberately untrained to emphasize the eloquence of her humble stitches responding to the deposits and strokes of visceral action, not intellectual expression.

The exhibit, artist talk and workshops are presented by Friends of Topaz Museum and J-Sei.

Artist Talk: Threads of Camp: Sewn from Japan to the United States of America

Sat, June 24th, 2 pm

Lucy Arai will present photographs of surviving objects and artwork that illustrate life behind barbed wire fences, as she illuminates how threads were used in camp with stories of how sewing, knitting and crocheting were more than the means to provide warm and durable clothing, bedding and items to make barracks into homes where Japanese Americans were forced to live during WWII.

Beginning in Japan, Arai will contextualize her presentation through her own life and art that are of both Japan and America; she is the eldest of three daughters of a Japanese mother and Euro-American father who married during the American Occupation of post-war Japan.

The camaraderie of shared hardships and making items essential for living during the years of incarceration forged relationships that continued after the war years, while sewing became a means for employment that supported families upon release from the incarceration camps. The emergence of creative pursuits with threads continue to the present in many forms that will be highlighted as the means to explore and celebrate Japanese heritage and to tell stories of legacy, survival, and what it means to be Japanese American.

RSVP on Eventbrite.

 

 Sashiko & Senninbari-Knot Doodles Workshop 

Th, June 29, Fri, June 30, Sat, July 1

Sashiko, running-stitch patterns, is popular among quilters and stitchers for the graphic and geometric patterns inspired by nature and Japanese design; senninbari, is not widely known.  Senninbari is a sash sewn with 1000 knots of red thread that Japanese women made for their husbands, sons, and brothers to wear when they went into battle. Women in WWII camps followed this custom when their young Japanese American men enlisted into the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Participants will learn about sashiko and senninbari, as stitching traditions of Japan, and how to sew them. Each participant will sew small sashiko and knot doodles using traditional materials to make a 4” x 6” composition that will be mounted in a frame and 5 mini-doodles that will be mounted onto blank notecards with envelopes.

No experience is necessary. All ages are welcome.

Workshop Dates:

Th, June 29, 1 to 3 pm – Closed *

Fri, June 30, 10 am to 12 pm – Closed*

Sat, July 1, 10 am to 12 pm – Closed*

Th, July 6, 1 to 3 pm – Closed*

Sat, July 8, 10 am to 12 pm -Closed*

*Workshop is full.

Workshop fee: $30, includes materials.

Participants may want to bring their own scissors and a notepad.

RSVP to jill@j-sei.org with “Threads Workshop” in the subject line. Please indicate your first and second choice of date.

 

Tour Alameda’s Historic Japantown

Tour Alameda’s Historic Japantown

by | May 20, 2023 | Classes & Events

J-Sei Visit Alameda’s Historic Japantown

Friday, May 26th
10 am to 2 pm


Join us for a walking tour of Alameda’s Historic Japantown.  See the newly installed Tonarigumi historic markers, hear the stories of the past, and discover what transpired during the 100-year + history. Then, visit “Overflowing with Hope: the Hidden History of the Japanese in Alameda”, a photo exhibit at the Alameda Public Library.

Tonarigumi – Alameda’s Historic Japantown Neighborhood is a project to raise awareness and reclaim the memories of the past, to remember the Issei elders and all they endured, and to be uplifted by the strength and resilience of a community.  Four markers share a forgotten history of Alameda’s Japantown and impart a lesson from the past to embrace diversity and advocate civil liberties for all people.  The marker project is  a collaboration between Rhythmic Cultural Works, the Buddhist Temple of Alameda, Buena Vista UMC, and the City of Alameda Free Library.

RSVP to jill@j-sei.org   Carpools will be coordinated. A bento lunch can be pre-ordered.

Photo: Kaz Naganuma, Jo Takata and Judy Furuichi