City dedicates park pavilion
Benjamin Lanka
The Journal Gazette
Mayor Tom Henry dedicated a Japanese-style pavilion at Swinney Park on Thursday to help complete more than $1 million in work at the downtown gateway park.
Samuel Hoffman | The Journal Gazette
The new pavilion at Swinney Park
Comedy's bond
By Emily Belz emily.belz@indystar.com
The Carmel High School auditorium filled with guffaws Tuesday night as a kimono-clad comedian performed stand-up comedy in the traditional Japanese fashion -- sitting down.
Comedian Kaishi Katsura sat comfortably on the stage atop a purple pillow, with a microphone and a hand towel and fan. The crowd of 400 quickly warmed up as he made jokes about learning English.
"We learn to say in high school, 'This is a pen. This is a pen.' When do you ever say that?" he quipped as some Asians in the audience nodded their heads and laughed sympathetically.
Kaishi Katsura during a rakugo performance.
Toyoharu ‘T' Tamura, 65, Fort Wayne
By Rosa Salter Rodriguez | The Journal Gazette
Those who visited the Cherry Blossom Festival at Fort Wayne’s Freimann Square this month were confronted by a gray sky, cold wind and intermittent stinging rain that threatened to turn icy at any moment.
Overseeing the festivity was a diminutive, gray-haired man in a dark brown kimono covered by a formal blue-black haori, or cloak. Toyoharu Tamura of Fort Wayne is a transplanted Japanese businessman who has taken on the task of helping organize cultural events for the region’s Japanese-American community through the Japanese-American Association of Indiana.
Toyoharu with his wife Mariko.
Photos by Clint Keller | The Journal Gazette
Blooming Interest
By Abby Slutsky | The Journal Gazette
Despite the gray day outside, Arts United Center and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art shone with bright colors Sunday during the second annual Cherry Blossom Festival.
The festival offered the hundreds of attendees the chance to experience traditional Japanese cultural elements, such as bonzai, origami, calligraphy and kimonos, and the more modern cultural element – anime.
Miki Morgan and the Minyo Dancers perform Sunday afternoon at the Arts United Center
during the Cherry Blossom Festival. The festival celebrates Japanese art and culture.
Clint Keller | The Journal Gazette
The one stop source for all local Japanese news! Featuring interesting, exciting, and important news articles and stories related to all things Japanese
in the Greater Fort Wayne area.
