Japantown Community Congress of San Jose
The JCCsj is a non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization
formed to represent the community and help
preserve and develop one of the three remaining
Japantowns in the United States.
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How did you spend your summer? Megan Sawamura and Sami Michishita spent their summer here in San Jose learning how our historic Japantown works through the Nikkei Community Internship Program.
Yu-Ai Kai was their homebase as they spent 8 weeks learning about different aspects of our community. The NCI Program is part of a statewide program in all three of Calfiornia’s historic Japantowns – the other two being Little Tokyo in Los Angeles and Japantown San Francisco. 4 days a week the interns are immersed in nonprofit agencies, and 1 day a week they gather for leadership training. During the 8 weeks, they also visit each of the Japantowns to discover how each is unique and to spend time with one another.
This summer, our two San Jose interns spent their weeks learning about:
The Statewide NCI group came to celebrate Obon in San Jose for their mid-summer Retreat, and also had the opportunity to party with the SJ Taiko group and many collegiate taiko groups who came to Obon. Sami and Megan helped work on a Japantown online calendar of events as well as conducted an available rental space survey of Japantown.
They kept an online blog each week which you can follow at www.nci2010.blogspot.com and www.sami-nci.blogspot.com
The format of the internship was a new one for San Jose and was spearheaeded by a committee of the Japantown Community Congress. Committee members include: Wes Mukoyama, Kathy Sakamoto, Reiko Iwanaga, Tamon Norimoto, Tom Izu and Sophie Horiuchi-Forrester.
Now that the summer is over, Sami ( a junior at UC San Diego) will be spending a semester abroad in Italy and Megan (a junior at UC Santa Barbara) will be working on her business/economics degree. For more information about the Nikkei Community Internship visit
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