(At a belated birthday dinner tonight at a Thai restaurant with the parents)

Dad: Maybe I'll have a Thai ice coffee.

Mom: No, you don't want that.  That's too sweet.

Dad: Maybe a bubble tea.

Me: I don't know Dad.

Mom: That's too sweet.

Me: It's actually more like desert, like a smoothie.

Dad: Isn't it tea?

Me: No, more like a smoothie - with tapioca balls added.

Mom: Al, you should know more about things.

Dad: Oh.

(Waiter arrives)

Waiter: Anyone like anything to drink?

Mom: I'll have a Thai ice coffee.

(Dwight executes his child-of-Asian-parents eye roll)

Star Trek: The Not Naughty Generation

This past May marked the twentieth anniversary of the final episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. On May 23, 1994, "All Good Things . . . ", a special two-parter penned by series writers Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore brought the television adventures of Picard, Riker, Troi, Data, Geordi, Worf and Crusher (with honorable nods to Wesley, Guinan, O'Brien and Ro) to a close after seven seasons (more than double that of the original Star Trek), 278 episodes, one Peabody Award*, 18 Emmy Awards and two Hugo Awards,

I still watch the show occasionally in its endless reruns on the daftly-branded SyFy Channel and BBC America (where its presence on the schedule is presumably justified by Sir Patrick Stewart if nothing else). Overall, it holds up pretty well. The special effects still largely deliver the goods after all these years, and even achieve feature film-quality in the later seasons, which is especially impressive given they were mostly done with a pre-CGI combination of models, matte paintings and video trickery. My favorite episodes still showcase great ideas and terrific execution, and I definitely still hold that my all-time favorite, "The Inner Light," is one of the best single pieces of science fiction ever created for series television.

But there is one little nagging detail that really sticks out to me today, a detail that runs throughout the entire run of the show. It's the attitude the main characters have towards technology.  The way they use it. Actually, to put it more accurately, the way they absolutely do not abuse their technology.

The crew of the starship Enterprise D by and large use the highly advanced gadgets at their disposal expertly and exactly as they were intended, which communicates to the audience that they are a highly trained group of professionals (what some call "competence porn"), but also is a depiction that bears little resemblance to humanity as we know it. Unless you are one of those rare individuals who has somehow and inexplicably managed to escape dealing with our increasingly wired and technologically immersive society at large, you know that the conveniences and efficiency provided by cell phones, digital cameras, the vast and ever-growing sea of information known as the internet and the like are superseded on an order of magnitude by self-inflicted distractions and elaborate perversions no longer bound by analog limitations.

I'm not necessarily suggesting that outright criminal acts like cyberbullying or identity theft between crewmembers should have been taking place on a regular basis in the Star Trek universe. I'm talking about the banal everyday way we take tools originally intended for practical communication or information gathering and engage in silly or wasteful activities. No one on the Enterprise ever uses their communicators to just shoot the breeze, stave off boredom by sharing office gossip ("FYI, just caught Riker and Troi giving each other vaguely meaningful glances again. What's up with that?") or arrange for a date in Ten Forward. Even if Starfleet personnel are supposed to be a disciplined quasi-military force, if I was enlisted among their ranks I know I'd be snapping selfies of myself on planet Omicron Alpha with its two moons in the background or whatever for my Facebook page or to share with the folks back home (Presumably in the moments before this week's time-space anomaly or energy being showed up to cause havoc). There's also an odd absence of anyone enjoying the last four hundred or so years of movies or TV shows. Everyone seems to actually read books on printed matter and listen only to classical European and occasionally jazz music - no rock. And despite the ubiquitous presence of computer terminals everywhere no one ever plays video games. And given the interplanetary, multi-species nature of the United Federation of Planets, God only knows what varieties of pornography would be available for download to lonely young ensigns on five-year missions away from home (Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations indeed!). And don't even get me started on the potential abuses of the holodeck, which can produce lifelike simulacrums of environments and even people (!) you can touch, feel and presumably delete guilt-free, yet there are apparently no Federation support groups dealing with a glut of addicts like the plugged-in but socially isolated hikikomori of Japan.

The holodeck offers a good illustration of how The Next Generation viewed its characters' everyday lives in its high-tech world. In the season 3 tale "Hollow Pursuits" we are introduced to Reg Barclay, a dweeby engineer who secretly retreats into a fantasy world he has created in the holodeck where the Enterprise command crew are bumbling Three Stooges-style renditions of the Musketeers (including a helium-voiced and height-reduced Riker) and Troi is a sexy love goddess (Though I might add that keeping with Star Trek's family-friendly, middlebrow approach, Barclay doesn't seem to actually do anything with or to his Troi doppelganger. Apparently just having her talk to him in a soothing voice while dressed like an actress in a Greek tragedy is enough to get his rocks off). I bring up this episode because apparently in seven years of travel and among 1,014 crew members, he is the only one I can think of who engages in an innocuous misuse of onboard equipment for selfish fun. Certainly his addiction to his holodeck fantasy comes across as unhealthy, and the moment he abandons it is a positive message in the story, but based on the reactions of the main characters you get the impression that Barclay's behavior is an unexpected aberration, something that inspires a Downtown Abbey-like, "We don't do that sort of thing," sense of impropriety being committed.

I know, I know, all of the above is just fanboy over-think. And besides, the overly well-adjusted nature of our protagonists was what Star Trek was all about.  Show creator Gene Roddenberry wanted a show set in a world where the better angels of our nature had won to create a peaceful and tolerant human civilization, shared with dozens of friendly extraterrestrial races and supported and nurtured by the benevolent application of enlightened science and technology. Plus the show ended prior to the explosion of our increasingly jacked-in society with folks running about armed with their laptop, hands-free phone, Google Glass, iPod and tablet, so there's no way The Next Generation could be expected to comment upon it. However, that doesn't stop me from being amused by the fact that Wesley Crusher is one of the least mischievous boy geniuses in science fiction or fact, whose scientific talents only wreaked havoc during earnest accidents (Imagine an alternate universe where Wesley possessed the snarky real-life personality of the actor playing him, bona fide nerd and geek culture advocate Will Wheaton). Or Data being playfully tricked into swearing or repeating dirty jokes by his crew mates (a thought inspired by a childhood friend who claimed he inserted a cassette tape with 'Shout At the Devil' into a Teddy Ruxpin doll). Or a scenario in which an Away Team comes under attack by hostile alien forces they failed to notice while taking pictures of each other, and can't reach the Enterprise because someone is using up all the bandwidth downloading music to his tricorder or slowed down its functions by enabling all its apps and special features.

On Leis and Memories (UPDATED)

My wife Czerina made a lei this week as a birthday present for my nephew Kietsai, who is turning one-years-old on June 30 (which also happens to be my birthday). Of all the presents she could have come up with, I really think this one is the best. And I'm quite happy that she was able to get it done in time.

I could be wrong, but I feel like the lei is largely misunderstood by most people here on "The Mainland." Everyone thinks they are pretty, but I also get the impression they are regarded as quaint or even kitschy, along with flower print shirts and summer cocktails with paper umbrellas (which are modeled on Japanese or Chinese-style parasols, I might add). Among the people of the Pacific, leis are serious business. Historically they have been used to conclude peace agreements, commemorate significant life events (births, weddings, birthdays, etc.) and are strongly connected to the gods watching over the islands and waters.

Leis have their own special place in my family. My father's side is Japanese, but they've been in Hawaii since my great-grandfather's time. My grandmother made leis all the time, some of which she sold, while others were given away gifts on special occasions. Whenever my family visited the island of Kauai, where my grandparents lived, my grandfather and grandmother would be there at the airport to pick us up with a fresh hand-made lei for each of us. Often they were ones made from llima: tiny orange flowers strung tightly together face-to-face so they seemed to form a brightly-colored tube with a striking fragrances (And, I would like to add, traditionally reserved for Hawaiian royalty).

It's too bad that leis are made from something as delicate and short-lived as flowers. You can't keep them bright and alive forever. Sometimes they are dried out and preserved as mementos, but I don't really care for that.  It's just not the same, and I'd prefer to keep my memories of what they looked and felt like when new than hold onto a wilted remnant of their former self.

My grandfather maintained a pretty big garden to supply all of the flowers for my grandmother's lei-making activities. When I was very little, they still lived in plantation housing that was part of the McBryde Sugar Company, which employed my grandfather during his working years. The house was modest, but from my tiny perspective the flower garden was enormous. So many brightly colored tropical flowers perfuming the air around the house with their various scents. Even when they moved into their own house, built not that far away and still in the town of Eleele, the flower garden seemed to have traveled with them.

Sadly, the making of leis in my family eventually faded away just like the flowers themselves.  My grandmother never passed on the art to either her daughter, my mother or anyone else in the family. And after my grandfather succumbed to cancer in the late 1990s, there was no one to tend the garden.  Gradually, the great bunches of carnations and birds of paradise died off or dropped in number. After my grandmother also passed away, visits to Kauai, now as an adult, involved being either picked up by my father (who often flew out in advance) or renting a car for myself. The only leis bestowed on me being the same ones I'd get if I stepped into a touristy gift shop or the grounds of a local hotel.

So, it's really quite an amazing coincidence that the woman I met and eventually married should be a devotee of the indigenous Hawaiian arts.  Especially amazing given that her own family has no roots on the islands (her family is straight from the Philippines). Currently as a student of the Halau i Ka Pono hula school in Oak Park, she studies Hawaiian dance and music, which includes the preparation of the required traditional dress and the making of leis.

It was her idea to make a lei for my nephew, and I couldn't be happier. We are expecting our own first child soon, and one of the thoughts on my mind has been all the people and things he (and his first cousin) will never know first-hand about his family.  My mother's mother, my halmoni in South Korea is alive and well, God bless her; in her 90s, churchgoing and seemingly unstoppable. But my son will never meet his paternal great-grandfather Yoshitomo "Jack" Sora (whose American name he will inherit) or his great-grandmother Tsuyoko Sora (nee Kono), hear their pidgin-accented English or their odd mixture of Meiji Era Japanese and local Hawaiian slang. He'll never ride in the back of his great-grandfather's yellow pickup truck with the homemade seat in the back as he takes in the sunshine and salt air, bumping along roads streaked with Kauai's distinctive red volcanic dirt. He'll never get to giggle at his great-grandmother's tendency to talk to herself (something my father and I share), or her goofy stories about old grudges against neighbors and in-laws.

But maybe, just maybe, thanks to his mother, my wife, he'll get to marvel at what wonderful and beautiful things leis can be. And though they might not be my grandmother's, I'm sure they'll smell no less sweet.

UPDATE - As of June 28, 2014, I've had word that the birthday boy has received the lei, and per the photographs, looks just as cute as could be.

A Flag's 70 Year Journey from Japan to Chicago and Back

I was recently asked by my friend and local aikido instructor Wendy Whited of Inaka Dojo in Beecher, Illinois to translate a short video from Japanese into English. It's a news clip from the RKK television network in Kumamoto Prefecture in Western Japan. A friend of Wendy's had been in possession of a  yosegaki hi no maru (寄せ書き日の丸), one of the many Rising Sun flags given to Japanese soldiers during WWII for good luck. The soldiers would sign each other's flags, much like the way US high school graduates sign each other's yearbooks, in remembrance of their comradeship.Wendy's friend decided that he wanted the flag returned to its rightful owners, and thanks to Wendy's contacts in Japan through aikido, she was able to accomplish just that.

This Thursday I'm Living My Culture

This week I get to be a bit of a spokesman and representative of my community. I'm on the lineup of presenters for Living Our Culture: Bringing Legacy to Life, this year's fundraiser for the Japanese American Service Committee (JASC) of Chicago.


The JASC is a pretty important organization for the Japanese American community here in the Windy City. After World War II, it was one of the key organizations providing social services and a safe place for gathering and recreational activities for former internees coming out of the wartime era relocation camps. Very critical when you take into account the fact that wartime hostility and racism against Japanese Americans was still riding at a pretty high level back then, and continued sometime into the 1950s. The JASC provided services for things such as child care, elder care and employment and housing advice, and along with the Midwest Buddhist Temple, Buddhist Temple of Chicago and Ravenswood Fellowship United Methodist Church sponsored dances for teenagers, little league baseball teams, boy scout troops and the like. I remember hearing Judge Lance Ito speak at a banquet, recalling the assistance the JASC provided his relatives in Chicago after the war.

This year, the fundraiser organizers decided on doing something different. So, instead of a simple sit-down dinner they are having people in the community who represent the idea of the "living culture" of Japanese Americans present what they do and how they do it.  I have been asked along with Doug Tono of Tohkon Judo Academy to represent  Kokoro to karada no tsunagari (connection of body and mind) in my capacity as a member of Chicago Aikido Club.

JASC - Japanese American Service Committee‎Living Our Culture 2014: Bringing Legacy to Life

It should be a fun event. Though, the JASC have asked me and Tono Sensei to show up dressed in our uniforms, which is going to get a bit hot after a while as we stand around answering questions. And unfortunately, despite this being a bit of a wine and cheese type event, tradition dictates that I do not consume alcohol while in uniform. So, I guess others will have to enjoy the sake without me.

My post Memorial Day weekend/Elliot Roger thought:In the 70s/80s, pop culture made us think gun-toting psychos would be crazed Vietnam vets. Taxi Driver, Rambo, etc. Poor, working-class guys so alienated from normal society by the trauma of war they just snapped. Besides that stereotype being extremely disrespectful of veterans (not to mention real issues of class and mental illness), who'd think decades later we'd be reading about actual horrific violence committed by an overprivileged suburban kid whose internet trolling bespoke of jealously and rage stemming from thwarted male desires?

Tribute to a Teacher

Joe Takehara, one of my instructors in the martial art of aikido was recently profiled by the online magazine Nikkei Chicago. Besides being a great teacher, he's had a really interesting life, having been born and raised on the West Coast, experienced the World War internment, and then moving to Chicago with his family. At 83, he's still one of the toughest guys I know, and quite frankly is probably tougher than I've ever been throughout his entire life. However, he's also quite a humble person.  As the article's author, Erik Matsunaga, commented on the blog page of the Chicago Aikido Club (mine and Takehara Sensei's home dojo):

In my initial conversations with Joe, I found him to be a straightforward and humble man with a unique way of telling a story. Never having striven to be a public figure in the aikido community, he has nonetheless been there from the beginning, survived organizational splits and political strife, trained with the legends, and today remains the most senior student of the art form in Chicago, having unwittingly become something of a legend himself. 

The article has only been out for a few days, and it's fascinating seeing the response it has been generating, as friends old and new have appeared online to reminisce and comment on this esteemed but in some ways little-known teacher.  I have to say, I'm honored to have been one of his students and to have him as a member of the Chicago Japanese American community.

Dr. Joe Takehara and Chicago Aikido

Dr. Joe Takehara, D.D.S., a second generation Japanese American, has trained with the legends of aikido during his fifty-three years of studying the Japanese martial art. Meanwhile, he was a married father of three and built a successful dental practice from which he retired at the age of eighty. Despite being the most senior aikido practitioner in the Midwestern United States, his fifty-three year journey has gone relatively unrecorded.

By Erik Matsunaga

Joe Takehara at his home on Chicago’s North Side. Photo courtesy of the author.

Aikido, a modern Japanese martial art developed by Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969) in the early twentieth century, boasts over a million practitioners worldwide. At eighty-three years of age and having practiced since 1961, Joe Takehara is the most senior devotee of this tradition in the Midwestern United States.

Born the youngest of eight children in San Diego, California, to immigrant parents from Wakayama Prefecture, Japan, Joe Takehara grew up in a barrack on the grounds of a fish cannery adjacent to Lindbergh Field (today’s San Diego International Airport). Never having known his father, who was hit by a car and killed when Joe was three years old, he and his siblings largely fended for themselves as their mother worked long days at the cannery.

“I grew up tough,” he said. “In those days, you had no one to guide you, to tell you what to do. You did it on your own. I was independent as a kid. I learned how to tie my shoes and dress myself at an early age.”

In 1942, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Executive Order 9066 uprooted the Takehara family to Poston War Relocation Center in southwestern Arizona, one of ten World War II concentration camps built by the War Relocation Authority to incarcerate some 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast.

When internment ended in 1945, the Takehara family migrated east, following a wave of some 20,000 Japanese American resettlers from various camps to Chicago. Joe was fourteen years old.

“I was small. I only weighed eighty pounds when I went into high school. And we lived on the West Side, 901 South Marshfield—there were no Japanese in our neighborhood. Most Japanese coming out of camp settled on the North or South Sides.

“So my first day of high school I’m getting picked on in gym class and the coach, I still remember his name, Coach Ellis, says to me and the other guy, ‘Put the gloves on.’ Well, in camp there was a guy named Terry Tsuchiyama who taught me how to box, and if you know just enough to be able to handle yourself a little bit, it’s no contest in a fight against someone who doesn’t know how to box at all. And this kid didn’t know how to fight, so I got the better of him.

“After class this other kid Peter comes up to me and says, ‘Where’d you learn how to box?’ And I tell him, ‘Terry Tsuchiyama. I learned in camp.’ Turns out this Peter also learned from Terry Tsuchiyama, who I found out was released from Poston, came to Chicago and was boxing at the CYO! Small world, huh? So I started boxing with Peter and the guys at the Catholic Youth Organization over by Randolph and Wabash, and word got around, ‘Leave this guy alone!’ And that’s how I survived that school.”

Through a variety of circumstances, Takehara later transferred to Lakeview High School on Chicago’s North Side, where he graduated in 1949. He continued on to University of Illinois at Navy Pier and then University of Illinois Dental School, where he earned his D.D.S.

In 1961, shortly after beginning a dental practice at 3355 North Clark Street in a North Side Chicago neighborhood populated by Japanese Americans, he was approached by John Omori, an optometrist whose office was down the street, to join a newly formed aikido group. It was located in the basement of Chicago Police detective Tony Muranaka’s three-flat, across the street from Joe’s office.

Detective Anthony “Tony” Muranaka, whose Clark Street home provided the first practice space for the Illinois Aikido Club, was the first Nisei to serve on the Chicago police force. 1959 press photo by Ralph Arvidson, courtesy of the author.

“Two guys started this club, John Omori and Norman Miyagi. Omori was an optometrist and Miyagi was an osteopath. Miyagi was from Hawaii.”

A grappling system derived from classical schools of jujutsu, in the early 1900s aikido founder Morihei Ueshiba synthesized his various studies of ancient Japanese martial arts and religion to form a modern method of physical and spiritual culture.

Koichi Tohei, a senior student of Ueshiba and later Chief Instructor of Aikido World Headquarters in Tokyo, first introduced the art to the United States via Hawaii in 1953. On the mainland, it was introduced to the Japanese American community of Los Angeles in 1956, making its way to the Midwest five years later.

“I went and trained with them about the second week after they started, so I’m a charter member but not an original first member. I came with this guy Red Sakamoto, a guy that stayed with us a long time, he was from Hawaii. A lot of these guys were Hawaiian because Miyagi and Muranaka were from Hawaii.

“We were practicing on a marble floor down there, rolling around. We didn’t have any mats or even wood on top of it when we started—we learned how to fall on the hard floor.”

Most of the early members were Nisei (second generation Japanese American) professionals interested in a cultural pastime with mental, as well as physical, benefits.

“There were the Kita brothers, Carl and George, one sold real estate and the other was a lawyer. John Omori’s brother was there, he was a dentist. Lester Katsura was an insurance agent. Sab Tanaka lived in Tony Muranaka’s building, so he was one of the first guys. June and Mary Tanaka were early female members. And then there was Mike Mamura, who used to come all the way down from Milwaukee.” (The late Norio “Mike” Mamura would later found the Milwaukee Aikido Club, which is today led by his daughter, Debra Mamura Belter.)

They called their dojo the Illinois Aikido Club and would eventually host such notable instructors as Chester Sasaki, Francis Takahashi, Motokage Kawamukai, Isao Takahashi, Yoshihiko Hirata, Akira Tohei, and Shigeru Suzuki.

Initially, the group learned from a book written by the aforementioned Koichi Tohei. Shortly thereafter, a young man from Hawaii by the name of Chester Sasaki, an undergraduate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, began making the three hour commute to Chicago on weekends to instruct.

L-R: Saburo “Sab” Tanaka, Joe Takehara, and Koichi Tohei (visiting from Japan) at the Illinois Aikido Club’s storefront location on Clark Street. Photo courtesy of Joe Takehara.

“Chester would come down on weekends and teach us. He was a nidan (second degree black belt) from Hawaii. We heard of him through the grapevine, because so many of our people were from Hawaii. He was young and didn’t know any better . . . he used to hurt us (laughs)!

A short time later, they rented a street-level storefront on the next block at 3223 North Clark Street.

“We didn’t have a sign, and it was a controlled membership, mainly word-of-mouth. I was the guy in charge of weeding out newcomers, I used to make them watch three or four times before letting them join.”

At this location they had a student who worked for a foam company and, through him, were able to procure material from which to jury-rig their first mats.

Meanwhile, Takehara was busy building his family and dental practice.

“They were practicing almost every night. I was never a great student. Let’s put it this way, I had a dental practice and I worked nights. So I only worked out on maybe Sunday mornings. I used to go Tuesdays sometimes, and on Fridays. Later on I started teaching beginners on Tuesday evenings, to help Red Sakamoto. And then I used to train Fridays in the later part of my life.

“I didn’t train that much, like these other guys who were there all the time. I wasn’t a ‘gym rat,’ because I had a dental practice, worked nights, and I had kids who had their activities. And my wife sang in a choir but she didn’t drive, so I used to have to drive her. But I think I was athletic enough that I could keep up with most of them. I don’t know, it’s just in me. I’ve been an athlete since I was a kid.”

Despite the “hard knocks” he experienced as a youth, Takehara never mentioned self-defense as a motivating factor in his aikido training.

“I grew up streetwise. I used to carry a roll of pennies in my fist and a switchblade, walk in the middle of the street at night on the way home from school, never on the sidewalk, and if someone came out from the gangways, I ran!

“The emphasis for me was on the mental part of it, the ki, the spirit, meditation, the feeling, more than the physical. We thought it was good stuff, the mind thing. So we used to do a lot of deep breathing exercises from the very beginning. We used to have classes in the morning and sit there and breathe, meditate, at six o-clock on Sunday mornings. So the emphasis was more on seiza and doing meditation, breathing exercises.”

L-R: Norman Miyagi, Robert “Red” Sakamoto, Joe Takehara. Photo courtesy of Joe Takehara.

In spite of self-proclaimed declarations that he was never the committed student his classmates were, Takehara is currently ranked rokudan (6th degree black belt) by the Aikikai Foundation (Aikido World Headquarters, Tokyo) and although not the highest ranked, remains—largely unrecognized—the most senior aikido practitioner in the Midwest.

Nevertheless, he humbly reflects on his beginnings and remains thankful for the direction his life has taken with respect to many of his early peers who ended up less fortunate.

“I kind of feel that I’ve been lucky in my life, because I was brought up with certain morals and ethics that kept me from doing a lot of the things my friends from the West Side were doing. They used to roll drunks, they used to steal stuff and sell it on Maxwell Street. My friend Peter, the guy who also boxed with Terry Tsuchiyama, ended up in the can for ten years on a robbery charge—I was invited out that night, but didn’t go. Something told me not to. I was very fortunate in my life to have been in the wrong place at the right time, let’s put it that way.”

Joe Takehara (on one knee, center) watches as Kisshomaru Ueshiba, second headmaster of aikido, instructs during a visit to the Illinois Aikido Club’s Bryn Mawr Avenue location in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Joe Takehara.

Joe Takehara continues to teach at the Chicago Aikido Club (an offshoot of the original Illinois Aikido Club), located at Tohkon Judo Academy within the Japanese American Service Committee building on Clark Street, ten blocks north of Tony Muranaka’s marble-floored basement. Fifty-three years later, new students are greeted with spring-loaded mats.

—

This article was initially published as original content on Discover Nikkei, a global online resource for Japanese emigrants and their descendants, a project of the Japanese American National Museum.