For over 50 years, the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival Queen Program has been dedicated to developing young women of Japanese descent to become future community leaders. One of the highlights of our Festival is Queen Program Night, where candidates showcase their speech, interview, and creative expression, and it takes a tremendous amount of time…
The Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California (JCCCNC/the Center), in San Francisco Japantown is a unique indoor Festival venue that provides visitors a “one-stop-shop” experience of cultural presentations and performances. This quiet, focused venue allows for various traditional and folk music, dance, and cultural art groups to share their culture and talents. Festival…
Our community is very fortunate to have numerous, seasoned photographers like Mark Shigenaga who beautifully capture memories from every corner of our festival grounds, including the following photos.” Enjoy Mark’s photos of our performers and read more about his experience and future hopes for this Festival! I photographed my first Cherry Blossom Festival in 2009. I arrived…
The holiday season has arrived and what better way to celebrate than to support your local retailers! San Francisco’s Japantown is the perfect place to find that perfect holiday gift for your friends and family (and of course, don’t forget to treat yourself too). Each of the shopping locations rigorously follows San Francisco City’s health…
With the virtual nature of the Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival in 2020 and continued socially distanced plans for the festival in 2021, these recent festivals will certainly be events to remember. Incidentally, our volunteers are no strangers to quickly shifting plans and accommodating needs on the fly. PR/Marketing Committee Co-Chair, Jane Yu, reflects on…
While our Festival has the most prominence in the month of April, a core group of committee members continues to volunteer year-round in preparation for the next. This year was no exception and included the challenge of converting the format into a virtual festival within weeks of the event (before Zoom had become a daily…
What a year 2020 turned out to be. While we could not come together physically in April, the connections we continue to make online have been a tremendous blessing and source of support. As November arrived, we want to take this opportunity to thank all of our contributors who help us maintain a sense of…
Tune in to our Halloween Cosplay Showcase video, we’re positively thrilled to share it with you! Special thanks to all of our participants for submitting your cosplay photos – we asked you to deliver crafty, comical, rib tickling, and spooky, and oh boy, did you deliver! Thank you everyone for your participation in the 2020…
Thank you for participating in our 2020 Halloween Cosplay Contest! Our team reviewed the cosplay photo entries, and we admire and appreciate the cosplayers’ great attention to detail and creativity in their costumes and props. Narrowing down the entries to the finalists was no easy task, as all of our cosplayers submitted great costume photos.…
We missed our cosplay parade this year, so we want to showcase our cosplayer community! Let’s celebrate Halloween virtually this year by showing off your crafty, comical, rib-tickling, or spooky spirit in our Halloween Cosplay Contest! This contest is open to all ages. We can’t wait to see your Halloween costume photo submission. The deadline…
