Summer Festival in Concord

Clockwise from top left: Master Hideko Metaxas (in blue) and two assistants arranging an example of Rikka Shofutai; a free-style arrangement in honor of the victims and the philanthropists in the Tohoku Tsunami 2011; an Ikenobo sensei arranging a free-style display; Shoka (left) versus Rikka (right)
Learn something new everyday. At the Japanese American Summer Festival in Concord this year, I absorbed an hour of Ikenobo ikebana art, which is really, really, really rudimentary, but at least now I know that the Rikka style involves nine elements, and the Shoka style three elements (heaven, earth and man).
That day was also the first I’ve heard of the “Three Friends of Winter”ย sho chiku bai (pine, bamboo and plum), and this astonished me because 1. I’d never encountered any old Chinese things that my mom hasn’t told me about, and 2. it involves plum blossom, which is my name. There’s no way I wouldn’t know that my name is part of a trio that appears in Asian arts and folklores at lunar new year time. My memories must have been failing. ๐ Anyhow, Nancy made a beautiful onigiri box that follows the sho chiku bai theme:

Homemade sho chiku bai onigiri by Nancy Togami: white onigiri with aonori and sesame (sho), yellow onigiri with fukujinzuke (chiku), and pink umeboshi onigiri (bai)
The rice balls, particularly the fukujinzuke ones (soy sauce pickles), go oh so well with the teriyaki chicken sold at the festival. For $5 you get a quarter of a chicken, either white or dark meat. I chose dark meat of course, a big juicy leg and thigh, but the white meat that Nancy picked also looked gleaming. Kenji-san went with 8 skewers of beef teriyaki for $8. We noshed while listening to the taiko drum performance. In the 110-degree heat, I tried not to stare at the kids swooshing their shaved ice, diverted my thoughts instead to the juniper and Japanese maple bonsai.

Mom is an avid believer against potted plants and caged birds, and I don’t even support cutting grass. But these miniature trees are undeniably works of art.
That said, if Mom and I were given one of these, first thing we do is removing the tree from the pot and digging it a nice warm hole in our front yard. ๐




Thankyou for helping out, great info .
1Hi, i think that i saw you visited my web site so i came to โreturn the favorโ.I am attempting to find things to improve my site!I suppose its ok to use some of your ideas!!
2The following time I learn a weblog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as a lot as this one. I imply, I do know it was my choice to learn, but I actually thought youd have something fascinating to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about one thing that you could possibly fix for those who werent too busy looking for attention.
3Everything is very open and very clear explanation of issues. was truly information. Your website is very useful. Thanks for sharing.
4I am not very wonderful with English but I line up this really leisurely to interpret.
5๋๋๋ท์ปด์ ๊ฒ์ํ๋ฉฐ ๊ถ๊ธํ๋ ์นํฐ ์ ๋ณด์ ์ํ ์ฐพ๋ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ์ ์ ๋ฆฌํ์ต๋๋ค. ์ฐ์ฌยท์๊ฒฐ ๊ตฌ๋ถ, ๋ฌด๋ฃ ํ์ฐจ์ ๋ฏธ๋ฆฌ๋ณด๊ธฐ ์ฐจ์ด, ์ฃผ์ ์ ๋ณด ํ์ธ ๊ธฐ์ค, ๋ชจ๋ฐ์ผ ์ด์ฉ ํ๊ณผ ์์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋ ์ง๋ฌธ์ ํ์ธํ์ธ์.
6๊ตฌ๋ฏธ์คํผ๋ฅผ ๊ฒ์ํ๋ฉฐ ๊ตฌ๋ฏธ ์ง์ญ ์ผ๋ฐ ๋ง์ฌ์งยท์คํ๋ฅผ ์์๋ณด๋ ๋ถ๋ค์ ์ํ ์๋ด์ ๋๋ค. ํ๋ก๊ทธ๋จ ์ ํ, ๊ด๋ฆฌ ์๊ฐ๊ณผ ๋น์ฉ, ์์คยท์์, ์ฃผ์ฐจ, ์์ฝ ์ ํ์ธ์ฌํญ๊ณผ ์์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋ ์ง๋ฌธ์ ์ ๋ฆฌํ์ต๋๋ค.
7๋ฐคํ ๋ผ๊ฐ ์ด๋ค ์ฌ์ดํธ์๋์ง, ๊ณผ๊ฑฐ ์ด๋ ฅ๊ณผ ํ์ฌ ๊ฒ์ ์ ๋ณด๋ฅผ ๊ตฌ๋ถํ๋ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ์ ์ ๋ฆฌํ์ต๋๋ค. ์์ ์ ๋ณด๋ ์นํฐ ์ฐพ๊ธฐ, ๊ณต์ ์ฐ์ฌ์ฒ ํ์ธ, ๋ฌด๋ฃ ํ์ฐจ์ ๋์ฌยท์์ฅ ์ฐจ์ด, ์์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋ ์ง๋ฌธ๊น์ง ํ ๋ฒ์ ํ์ธํ์ธ์.
8ํฌํญ์คํผ ๊ฒ์์ด์ ๋งฅ๋ฝ๊ณผ ์จ๋ผ์ธ ์ ๋ณด ํ์ธ ๊ธฐ์ค์ ์ ๋ฆฌํ์ต๋๋ค. ๊ด๊ณ ์ฑ ํํ๊ณผ ํ๊ธฐ์ ์ถ์ฒ, ๊ฒ์๋ฌผ์ ์ต์ ์ฑ, ๊ฐ์ธ์ ๋ณด ๋ณดํธ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ, ํฌํญ ๊ณต๊ณต์ ๋ณด์ ์์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋ ์ง๋ฌธ์ ํ์ธํ์ธ์.
9Hiya! I know this is kinda off topic nevertheless I’d figured I’d ask. Would you be interested in trading links or maybe guest authoring a blog post or vice-versa? My site discusses a lot of the same topics as yours and I feel we could greatly benefit from each other. If you happen to be interested feel free to shoot me an email. I look forward to hearing from you! Superb blog by the way!
10I like what you guys are up too. Such clever work and reporting! Carry on the superb works guys I have incorporated you guys to my blogroll. I think it will improve the value of my web site ๐
11Hello! I just would like to give a huge thumbs up for the great info you have here on this post. I will be coming back to your blog for more soon.
12You have observed very interesting points! ps nice website .
13I’ve been absent for a while, but now I remember why I used to love this blog. Thank you, I’ll try and check back more often. How frequently you update your site?
14์์ก๊ฒฐ์ ํ๊ธํ์ ์๋ฏธ์ ์์๋ฃ ๊ณ์ฐ, ์ค์ ๋ถ๋ด์ก์ ํ์ธํ์ธ์. ํด๋ํฐ ๊ฒฐ์ ํ๋์ ํต์ ์๊ธ ์ฒญ๊ตฌ, ๊ด๋ จ ๋ฒ๋ น, ์ทจ์ยทํ๋ถ ๋ฐ ํผํด ๋์๊น์ง ๊ณต์ ์๋ฃ๋ฅผ ๋ฐํ์ผ๋ก ์ ๋ฆฌํ์ต๋๋ค.
15๋ถ์ฐ์ฌ์ฑ์ ์ฉ๋ง์ฌ์ง ๋ถ์ฐํ ๋ฅ์ด ๋๋์ด ๋ถ์ฐ ์๋ฅ NO.1 ๋ถ์ฐ ์ต๋ ๊ท๋ชจ ๊ด๋ฆฌ์ฌ๋ค ํญ์ ๋๊ธฐ์ค 24์ ์ฐ์ค๋ฌดํด
16I enjoy assembling utile info, this post has got me even more info! .
17๋ถ์ฐ์ฌ์ฑ์ ์ฉ๋ง์ฌ์ง ๋ถ์ฐํ ๋ฅ์ด ๋๋์ด ๋ถ์ฐ ์๋ฅ NO.1 ๋ถ์ฐ ์ต๋ ๊ท๋ชจ ๊ด๋ฆฌ์ฌ๋ค ํญ์ ๋๊ธฐ์ค 24์ ์ฐ์ค๋ฌดํด
18Hi there, just became alert to your blog thru Google, and found that it’s really informative. I am going to be careful for brussels. I will appreciate when you continue this in future. Lots of other people will likely be benefited out of your writing. Cheers!
19Way cool, some valid points! I appreciate you making this article available, the rest of the site is also high quality. Have a fun.
20I see something really special in this site.
21Great line up. We will be linking to this great article on our site. Keep up the good writing.
22Perfect work you have done, this site is really cool with superb info .
23I think this is one of the most important info for me. And i’m glad reading your article. But should remark on few general things, The website style is wonderful, the articles is really nice :D. Good job, cheers
24Howdy! I simply would like to give an enormous thumbs up for the good data you have got right here on this post. I will be coming back to your blog for extra soon.
25Hey! Would you mind if I share your blog with my facebook group? There’s a lot of folks that I think would really appreciate your content. Please let me know. Cheers
26Thank you for every other informative site. The place else could I get that type of information written in such an ideal means? I have a challenge that I am just now working on, and I have been at the glance out for such info.
27It’s really a great and helpful piece of information. I am happy that you just shared this helpful information with us. Please stay us informed like this. Thanks for sharing.
28์ฌ๊ธฐ์ฌ ์ฃผ์๋ชจ์ | ๋งํฌ๋ชจ์ยท์ต์ ์ฃผ์ ํ์ธ ๊ฐ์ด๋ ์ฌ๊ธฐ์ฌ ์ฃผ์๋ชจ์๊ณผ ๋งํฌ๋ชจ์์ ์๋ฏธ๋ถํฐ ๋ถ์ผ๋ณ ์ฌ์ดํธ ๋ฐ๋ก๊ฐ๊ธฐ, ์ต์ ์ฃผ์ ํ์ธ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ๊น์ง ์๋ดํฉ๋๋ค. ์ ์ ์ค๋ฅ ์ ๊ฒ, ๋ชจ๋ฐ์ผ ์ด์ฉ๋ฒ, ์์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋ ์ง๋ฌธ์ ํ์ธํ๊ณ ํ์ํ ์๋น์ค๋ฅผ ์ฐพ์๋ณด์ธ์.
29I enjoy your writing style genuinely enjoying this web site.
30The following time I read a blog, I hope that it doesnt disappoint me as a lot as this one. I mean, I know it was my choice to learn, however I actually thought youd have something attention-grabbing to say. All I hear is a bunch of whining about one thing that you might repair if you happen to werent too busy in search of attention.
31Hey There. I found your blog the usage of msn. This is an extremely well written article. I will make sure to bookmark it and return to read more of your helpful info. Thank you for the post. I’ll definitely return.
32Hey, you used to write fantastic, but the last few posts have been kinda boring?K I miss your great writings. Past few posts are just a little out of track! come on!
33Appreciate it for helping out, good info .
34Today, while I was at work, my cousin stole my apple ipad and tested to see if it can survive a forty foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sensation. My apple ipad is now destroyed and she has 83 views. I know this is completely off topic but I had to share it with someone!
35Thanks for every other informative web site. Where else could I am getting that type of info written in such a perfect way? I’ve a mission that I am just now operating on, and I’ve been at the glance out for such information.
36Hi there! Someone in my Myspace group shared this site with us so I came to look it over. I’m definitely enjoying the information. I’m book-marking and will be tweeting this to my followers! Wonderful blog and excellent design.
37Wohh just what I was searching for, regards for putting up.
38What i don’t realize is actually how you’re not actually much more well-liked than you may be right now. You are so intelligent. You realize therefore considerably relating to this subject, produced me personally consider it from numerous varied angles. Its like men and women aren’t fascinated unless it is one thing to do with Lady gaga! Your own stuffs outstanding. Always maintain it up!
39Unquestionably believe that which you stated. Your favourite justification seemed to be at the net the simplest factor to be aware of. I say to you, I definitely get irked even as other folks think about concerns that they plainly do not recognize about. You controlled to hit the nail upon the top and also outlined out the whole thing with no need side effect , people could take a signal. Will probably be back to get more. Thanks
40ํฌํญ์คํผ๋ฅผ ๊ฒ์ํ๋ฉฐ ํฌํญ ์ง์ญ ์ผ๋ฐ ๋ง์ฌ์งยท์คํ๋ฅผ ์์๋ณด๋ ๋ถ๋ค์ ์ํ ์๋ด์ ๋๋ค. ํ๋ก๊ทธ๋จ ์ ํ, ๊ด๋ฆฌ ์๊ฐ๊ณผ ๋น์ฉ, ์์คยท์์, ์ฃผ์ฐจ, ์์ฝ ์ ํ์ธ์ฌํญ๊ณผ ์์ฃผ ๋ฌป๋ ์ง๋ฌธ์ ์ ๋ฆฌํ์ต๋๋ค.
41It’s appropriate time to make some plans for the future and it’s time to be happy. I’ve read this post and if I could I want to suggest you few interesting things or suggestions. Maybe you can write next articles referring to this article. I wish to read more things about it!
42Great post. I am facing a couple of these problems.
43๊ฐ๋จ์ถ์ฅ๋ง์ฌ์ง ์ ๋ฝ์ ์ฝ์ค์ ๊ฐ๊ฒฉ, ์์ฝ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ์ ํ์ธํ์ธ์. ์์ธ ๊ฐ๋จ๊ตฌ ์ญ์ผ๋ยท์ผ์ฑ๋ยท๋ ผํ๋ยท์ ์ฌ๋ยท์๊ตฌ์ ๋ยท์ฒญ๋ด๋ยท๋์น๋ยท๋๊ณก๋ยท๊ฐํฌ๋ยท์์๋ ๋ฑ ์ฃผ์๋ณ
44๊ฒฝ๊ธฐ๋ ๊นํฌ์ถ์ฅ๋ง์ฌ์ง ์ ๋ฝ์ ์ฝ์ค์ ๊ฐ๊ฒฉ, ์ํยทํธํ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ์๋ด, ์ ์ ๊ธ ์๋ ์์ฝ ๋ฐ ํ์ฅ ๊ฒฐ์ ๊ธฐ์ค์ ํ์ธํ์ธ์. ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ๊ฐ๋ฅ ์ฌ๋ถ์ ์์ ๋์ฐฉ ์๊ฐ์ ์ฃผ์์
45You are my inspiration , I own few blogs and rarely run out from to brand.
46๊ฒฝ๊ธฐ๋ ๊ตฌ๋ฆฌ์ถ์ฅ๋ง์ฌ์ง ์ ๋ฝ์ ์ฝ์ค์ ๊ฐ๊ฒฉ, ์ํยทํธํ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ์๋ด, ์ ์ ๊ธ ์๋ ์์ฝ ๋ฐ ํ์ฅ ๊ฒฐ์ ๊ธฐ์ค์ ํ์ธํ์ธ์. ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ๊ฐ๋ฅ ์ฌ๋ถ์ ์์ ๋์ฐฉ ์๊ฐ์ ์ฃผ์์
47๋ถ์ฐ์ถ์ฅ๋ง์ฌ์ง ์ ๋ฝ์ ์ฝ์ค๋ณ ๊ฐ๊ฒฉ๊ณผ ์์ฝ ๋ฐฉ๋ฒ์ ํ์ธํ์ธ์. ํด์ด๋ยท์๋ฉดยท๊ด์๋ฆฌยท๋๋ ๋ฑ ์ง์ญ๋ณ ๋ฐฉ๋ฌธ ๊ฐ๋ฅ ์ฌ๋ถ, ์์ ๋์ฐฉ ์๊ฐ, ์ ์ ๊ธ ์๋ ํ์ฅ ๊ฒฐ์ ์ ์ํ
48Some genuinely wonderful articles on this website , regards for contribution.
49Some really wondrous work on behalf of the owner of this site, perfectly outstanding subject material.
50