News Today – A blend of cultures: Celebrations, customs forge multicultural connections for Japanese, local community | Local News

by Guwahati_City

News Today | Today Breaking News – By Guwahatyassam.info

Lauren McElwain was surprised to learn all the international cultures represented in Tupelo. As the founder and director of Cooking as a First Language, she’s gotten a taste of several cultures: Japanese, Indian, Korean, Cuban, Nigerian, Thai, Syrian, Ukrainian, and more.

A big part of the nonprofit is the idea that people may have preconceived notions about a particular culture, but through a common ground like food and sharing meals, they realize they don’t know as much as they thought they did.

“It’s so inspiring,” McElwain said. “We’re just always looking to find that common ground between people and break down those barriers — those cultural barriers — and that all started with the Japanese community here in Tupelo.”

A growing multicultural community

Kumi Richardson has watched multicultural connections develop in Northeast Mississippi. The interest in different Asian cultures, however, is more recent than it is in some other cultures.

“If you talk to children, sometimes they … don’t ask me if I’m Japanese,” Richardson said. “They ask, are you from Mexico? That’s the first question they come to.”

SEE OUR COMPLETE NORTHEAST MISSISSIPPI JAPANESE CULTURES SERIES:

Richardson ties this to the prevalence of Hispanic/Latino cultures in the South. Through her roles as BancorpSouth’s Japanese liaison and premier banking specialist/personal banker, as well as a committee member for the Japanese culture-inspired Cherry Blossom Festival, she wants to help increase the understanding of not just her own culture, but appreciating all the diversity Northeast Mississippi offers.

“We want to educate them, in a sense,” she said. “We just want them to realize cultural diversity because that’s what America is in the first place. People are from all over.”

With the 2020 United States Census revealing a more multiracial and diverse nation than previously measured, what has followed is the marrying of Japanese and local culture with a growing multicultural community in Northeast Mississippi.

Creating a supportive community

Before Cooking as a First Language became a full-fledged nonprofit, it was simply an effort for McElwain to connect with her Japanese friends. An influx of Japanese families sprung from the location of Toyota Mississippi’s plant in Blue Springs, and McElwain said several Japanese women asked her if she could teach a cooking class showing them how to make some recipes that are popular in this part of the world.

“I was just really very proud that Tupelo has this big Japanese culture,” McElwain said. “I wanted to get involved somehow or just build community with the Japanese families that are here in town.”

During that first class in 2017, McElwain quickly learned that, though the women didn’t speak English, they could still have a good time through the act of cooking together.

“It just broke down barriers between us, and we formed a relationship over food,” McElwain said. “That’s the whole thing that started Cooking as a First Language, the fact that cooking becomes our first language, if we don’t speak the same language, and we can understand each other and connect over a shared meal.”

Since then, Cooking as a First Language has completed several classes, including a course in preparing sushi. People from other cultures saw the classes and began offering to host cooking classes at their homes. Soon, the program expanded to other cultures.

Toyota Mississippi recognized they were bringing introducing new cultures into Northeast Mississippi, and introducing Northeast Mississippi to new cultures. To Emily Lauder, vice president of administration, it’s important for the company to ensure their Japanese partners, friends and their families feel welcomed by the community.

“Mississippi is seen as the hospitality state, and here in Northeast Mississippi, we’re very hospitable to all,” she said. “This is just another way that we’re spreading, kind of, that diversity and inclusion throughout the community just to have a better understanding of how similar we all are and then to understand our differences.”

Prior to the pandemic, some Japanese families liked to get involved with the community by participating in volunteer activities, such as working with Sanctuary Hospice or making bowls for the Empty Bowls luncheon. They might take part in an English learning class, or attend local events like Tupelo’s Celebration of Cultures.

“Without those people, the Japanese community or Japanese families probably do not get that kind of opportunity, so we are very thankful,” said HR business analyst Ryoko Watanabe for Toyota Mississippi.

Celebration of Cultures, an international festival held in Tupelo by Tupelo Parks and Rec, provides cultural experiences that help both Toyota Mississippi’s Japanese staff, and the Japanese-Americans who call Northeast Mississippi home, connect with their native culture. It also helps expose some of the temporary workers — people like Shoji Asai, group manager, paint, for Toyota Mississippi — to other cultures.






djr-2021-09-27-news-celebration-culturesp3 (copy)

In this file photo from September 2021, Mayuko Asai plays a Japanese game called Daruma Otoshi at the Japan booth during the Celebration of Cultures in Tupelo.




“My family was there,” Asai said of the event. “They enjoyed the kind of the congregation among the various countries like Mexico, Ghana, or India, too.”

A blend of cultures

Events like the North Mississippi Cherry Blossom Festival have played an immeasurable role in blending Japanese and American cultures. The first annual North Mississippi Cherry Blossom Festival was held March 2016 as a collaboration with Toyota Motor Manufacturing Mississippi, the Japan-America Society of Mississippi and the Consulate-General of Japan in Nashville to celebrate building a bridge between Japan and Mississippi.






03261720 Cherry Blossom Festival

03261720 Cherry Blossom Festival




As a Cherry Blossom Festival committee member, Richardson has tried to make each celebration contain another part of Japan. The first year started small. Within a few years, it became an event big enough to be hosted at Ballard Park in Tupelo. The Consulate of Japan in Nashville is always invited.

There are numerous upcoming events around Northeast Mississippi that will feature Japanese culture. Here’s a brief list of some of those events:

Richardson sees events like the local Cherry Blossom Festival as representative of an earnest, mutual attempt for Japanese and native Northeast Mississippians to gain a better understanding of each other. In that way, she said she particularly admires children, who learn and adapt, and can make friends quickly and easily. Differences in cultures don’t matter to them; all a child sees is a fellow child.

“(With) adults, it’s so hard to do that. That’s because there are different (cultural) backgrounds,” Richardson said. “That’s how I was raised; that’s not how I was raised. Something interfering for them to open up.”

Even something as simple as a greeting can prove a challenge in communicating.

“Everybody might say hello, but Japanese people are not used to looking into somebody’s eyes (when) they are talking,” Richardson said. “They feel staring at somebody might be rude.”






03261720 Cherry Blossom Festival

In this file photo from 2017, Kureha Watanabe, 8, speaks to the crowd gathered about cherry blossoms a the second annual Northeast Mississippi Cherry Blossom Festival, at Ballard Park in Tupelo. At the time, Kureha was a second grader in the North Mississippi Japanese School.




Learning to make eye contact and become comfortable is an adjustment, Richardson said. The same courtesy will come from the American side as well. Sometimes, they may have heard or read that eye contact makes them uncomfortable and try to adjust, Richardson said.

“It just makes me smile,” Richardson said. “The bottom line is both of them want to make friends, and they want to be friendly, so the rest will come, eventually. All the pieces will fall into the right place.”

Becoming multicultural

Mieko Kikuchi welcomes the open friendliness and curiosity from both Japanese families and the local community. She serves as Renasant Bank’s Assistant Vice President and Japanese liaison and Japan-America Society of Mississippi (JASMIS) board of directors member.

Continuing efforts include upcoming Gumtree Museum of Art exhibits and a Spring 2022 show that will welcome pianist Miki Sawada. JASMIS also hosts an annual New Year’s Celebration, cultural events, business seminars, community service and serves civic organizations, government entities and schools, among other initiatives.

Tupelo also has the Tupelo Suzuki Association, which allows students to perform locally. The Tupelo Suzuki Association follows the Suzuki Method, the guiding principle of which aims to create an environment for learning music that parallels the linguistic environment of acquiring a native language, Kikuchi said. The Tupelo Suzuki Association concentrates on violin and cello, and through the efforts of local Suzuki qualified teachers, the ranks of students have been growing, Kikuchi said.

“They try to connect the dots to get bridge between the Japanese culture and coordinate with the American culture that already exists in this community, I guess, kind of incorporate, work together, build a partnership,” Kikuchi said.

At one point, Tupelo High School offered Japanese language courses in response to an interest from students. The presence of Japanese families in the area was credited as sparking the opportunity. It served as a great way to not only help Japanese students learn English from Japan but also the children here learning the Japanese language to know each other, Kikuchi said.

“These are the small impacts here and there, trying to learn each other, respect each other, appreciate each other for the cultures. I think our presence makes the difference,” Kikuchi said.

One striking example of Japanese culture’s influence on Tupelo is in the abundant cherry blossom trees in Ballard Park, planted as part of the local Cherry Blossom Festival. More trees are planted with each iteration of the festival.

According to Shin Watanabe, manager for Toyota Tsusho and a committee member for the festival, cherry blossoms are symbolically important in Japanese culture. They represent the spring after long winters and are a symbol of the end of one year in March and the beginning of the next in April.

Cherry blossoms unite the Japanese people, Watanabe said, no matter where they are in the world.

“When we see a cherry blossom blooming, we feel like home even though we are so far away from the home,” he said. “(Seeing) friends in the community enjoy the festival, culture and the blossoms makes our hearts so full. In March, we go to park, we see a cherry blossom, we remember home, and the start of new life or starting a new season.”



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