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Nisei week is upon us — I’ll be hanging out at the JACCC plaza this weekend, for the Next Generation REMIX concert and the Taiko Gathering. Last year was a blast, I can’t wait to see what they’ve got in store this year.

Sadly it seems NSU Modern won’t be returning this year, but the REMIX concert will still feature some other great artists — Camile Velasco, Bambu, EyeASage, TAIKOPROJECT, Sibrian, Kacie Yoshida, and DJ ET. Last year the more mature performances were reserved for later in the evening; assuming they do the same thing this year, it should be pretty kid safe.

The REMIX concert starts at 6pm on Saturday the 22nd, and the Taiko Gathering starts at 11:30am on Sunday the 23rd. Grab some karepan and mochi, and enjoy

Kyodo Taiko is having their Spring concert “Seishun” in a few weeks. “Seishun” means a time of youth, so I wonder it will feature some new sets from their newbie members. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it.

It is on two days, the 29th and 31st. I’ll be there on the 31st!

Fusion X over at UCSD finished up not too long ago, and I didn’t get to go but I was watching some videos of the performances over at That’s Fresh and this one caught my eye. Boys and Girls with Short Hair is a pretty incredible collaboration between several dance teams.

I love the whole video but the second to last segment (about 3:10 in) is something really special. Performed to Adele’s Crazy for You, it’s a rare heartfelt piece that communicates a lot in a minute and a half. I can’t stop watching it!

The YouTube video has a few more details in its description.

I ate dinner at Sushi Zo tonight. It is thought by many to have the best sushi in LA, so I was determined to try it out. Sushi Zo only serves omakase (where the chef chooses what to give you), and they have it very streamlined with three itamaes all working in unison to pump out single pieces of sushi and sashimi very quickly. For such a small area (it looks like it could only seat about 30-40 people, including 8 at the bar) it is by far the busiest sushi place I’ve ever been to. The itamaes and waitresses are always announcing orders back and forth in Japanese, and the place goes through about 1 plate per person every minute.

Unlike most places, Sushi Zo makes their own ponzu sauce and readily instructs you when to not use soy sauce because it will overpower the flavor. That might seem weird but with such fresh fish you really don’t need much to enhance the flavor. I had just about everything they had to offer, my favorites being hamachi, ankimo, and an oyster. It was all fantastic with each bite having it’s own subtle flavor, easily living up to the hype. If it wasn’t so damned expensive I would make it my regular place, but En Sushi will have to suffice for now.

I’m not a big anime watcher, usually only falling back on it when I’m in a coding slump and feeling really bored. It was on one such occasion that I picked up Soul Eater. It’s rare to get such a character-driven story out of mainstream anime. The characters, music, art design, style… all of it clicked with me. I fell in love with it from the first episode.

I stopped watching about a month before the story ended so that I could see the final five episodes all in one go. Well, it ended late last month and I only just got around to watching them. Maybe because I was busy, maybe because I didn’t want to admit to myself that it was over. Little of both, probably.

In the end it was a disappointment. Soul Eater could have been so much more, if only they had focused on the characters instead of devolving into a huge action battle. I guess such an ending it is to be expected from something based on a shōnen manga, though from what I’ve heard it deviated quite a bit from the source, which is still ongoing. Maybe I’ll pick that up.

Today I went down to Little Tokyo to grab some ramen for lunch, and happened upon the Cherry Blossom Festival. I only stayed a little while, to see some sumo and kendo performances.

I got there late for the sumo unfortunately, but I did get to see a few matches where Dan Kalbfleisch wiped the floor with some other guys.

The kendo demonstration started with sensei Cary Yoshio Mizobe performing tameshigiri — cutting a tatami omote with a katana. His students went on from there to show off their moves with shinai. Sensei Mizobe was explaining one of the moves: tsuki, a stab to the throat apparently difficult enough that he only lets his black belt students perform it, to lessen the risk of not having enough precision and injuring the opponents. He said he was hired to train Brittany Murphy to perform it for her new movie, The Ramen Girl. The only problem is, they wanted him to train her on this advanced move in eight hours. His only advice was to totally fake it out with camera tricks, or risk injury. Thought that was funny

This year’s NSU Culture Night was incredible!

Opening up was Kyodo Taiko, performing their Swing and Black and White sets.  Black and White is a new, powerful set created this year which I suspect will become a new favorite among fans.  As always, Kyodo loves to have fun – doing funny skits in between sets, and always showing off their skill and good humor throughout their performance.

Next was the drama team.  Drama always sets the theme for the show, typically about the current issues of the Nikkei community.  This year their performance centered on recent buyouts in Little Tokyo, hoping to bring attention to what has been a decidedly stealthy move by corporations that may end up removing a large chunk of the culture from Little Tokyo.  This year’s set had plenty of humor to go along with it, occasionally poking fun at rival Los Angeles college USC.  They brought back a running joke from last year’s performance which really had the croud busting up.  This performance was split into several parts, spread throughout the night.

The Odori (traditional dance) team opened up with their typical slow, exadurated, meticulous dance.  But something was different this year – for the first time I’ve seen, they are using a bit more modern music.  They performed Gion Kouta, and expertly merged it’s more complex and slightly faster music with the traditional Odori style.  This approach was a pleasant surprise, and puts them more in line with Kyodo’s traditional-modern hybrid style.

NSU Modern’s first set was their very energetic Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, which is a real treat to see live.  Modern really shines here, showing a true passion for innovation in dance — these guys must sweat pure concentrated skill.

After a short intermission, Odori started the show performing the aptly named Matsuri, also a more modern upbeat song.  This was evocative of a real matsuri (festival) in Japan and was very fun to watch!

Kyodo came back to perform Yonsei, Nanairo, and of course their signature finale Encore.  Nanairo is a new set created by this year’s newbie class, but not to fear — this has all the energy you’d expect in a Kyodo performance.  Kyodo holds a special place in my heart — the first time I saw them left me spellbound, causing me to fall in love with taiko and seek it out anywhere I could find it.  I’ve been to many taiko performances since then — most of them featuring Kyodo — so I am quite familiar with Encore.  Yet after all this time, it still fills me with the same glee as if I was seeing it for the first time.

Modern closed the night with their Tribal and Jazz sets, both of which I’ve never seen before.  Tribal was typical Modern style — energetic, fun, super sexy, and good beats.  Jazz took a completely different turn with a strong ballet performance, showing Modern’s diversity.

And that’s the night, it was a blast!  I was happy to see Leech Sensei there, my awesome Japanese teacher from high school.  Looks like he brought even more kids than when I originally came to a CN with him, so I’m glad to see Japanese is getting more popular!  I just hope they aren’t giving him as hard of a time as I did, reading Dune in class and arguing with him about the merits of Quake vs. Diablo II .

Edit: added missing Kyodo and Modern videos, and updated the existing links to the CN2009 versions.  Thanks zachirie!

Nabe entered Little Tokyo about a year ago, bringing with it a new choice for shabu shabu.  I often went there instead of Shabu Shabu House simply because I didn’t want to brave the perpetual 45-60min lines.  The food was good, and they had lots of decent appetizers.  Despite having great food, Nabe was void of customers every time I ate there.  Alas, nobody can compete with Shabu Shabu House: they where the first shabu shabu restaurant in the USA and have had a lot of time to grow buzz and perfect their flavor.  It was only a matter of time.  The monster has killed yet another competitor.

I went downtown last night and was woefully disappointed to discover someone in their place: Shabu Shabuyo.  A small menu, split ceramic pots, electric heaters that don’t bring the water to a boil, crappy cheap chopsticks, and really really bad music playing.  This place better find something good to provide quick or they’ll be going out of business in record time.

There are only a few weeks left until the 23rd annual NSU Culture Night at UCLA.  This is a really fun night exploring Japanese-American culture.  There will be taiko (drumming), modern dance, drama, and odori (traditional dance) performances.  These groups are university kids so they know how to have fun — every time I’ve seen them perform it has been a phenomenal experience.

It’s free and open to all so if you’re interested and can get to UCLA’s Royce Hall at 6:00pm on Presidents’ Day (February 16th), you can reserve tickets by sending an email with your name and number of tickets to  nsuculturenight2009@gmail.com.

Just tried this new ramen place inside Weller Court called Chin-Ma-Ya of Tokyo, right below the infamous Orochon Ramen.  Their specialty is tan tan men, a fusion of ramen with Chinese dan dan mian.  They serve it with three levels of spice, and I ordered the spiciest “original”.  The broth was good – very thick and murky, lots of good flavor, and adequately spicy.  It lost a bit in the toppings, coming with ground beef, ground pork, and only a few stray bits of spinach.  I got a side of gyoza, which while not the worst I’ve had, where definitely far from the best.

But where it really failed was the noodles.  The first bite immediately made me think of something I never thought would come to mind in a ramen place: my mom baking cookies.  Curiously taking another bite, I tasted it again.  The flavor was almost like unsweetened cookie dough.  I’m usually down for trying new things, some flavors need to just grow on you.  But after eating half the bowl I couldn’t take any more – the heaviness of the noodles combined with such a strange flavor was too much for me.

Looks like Daikokuya gets to keep their crown, with San Sui Tei coming in second if the Daikokuya line is unbearably long.  Last time I went to San Sui Tei, they cooked up some fresh chocolate-filled mochi balls for me.  Not sure if they will be the norm or if they where testing them on me as a recurring customer, but they where good!