The Monterey Park Cherry Blossom Festival was the first cultural festival I had ever done. This was probably around 2001. This is also where I met Kathern Inouye who has done much in her 80+ years to promote Japanese and Japanese-American culture. She was my contact source for the Festival, and subsequently, every other festival I have done. A very remarkable, endearing, and generous woman. Yami and Joe have joined me these last couple of years. I think we had one of our best festivals ever. It included 2 on-stage performances. Subsequently, this is one of my favorite videos, ever. It's long, but I have always loved this song. A friend of mine, Kenichi, used to street perform in Little Tokyo's Japanese Village Plaza; and I first heard the Okinawan song, "Hana" from him. He'd always perform it for me whenever I saw him out there.
I had this idea to have volunteers from the audience have a quickfold contest: Whoever could fold a banger and make it >bang<>
