A food centric cultural exploration of the hidden corners of Little Tokyo. This walk provides opportunities to sample local Asian food from lotus root to pounded rice while learning about the history of the neighborhood.

$15 Members, $20 non-members, includes admission. Wear comfortable walking shoes.

Location: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 6522 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, 90028.

Admission: General admission $10.00 / students $5.00 / FREE for LACE or JANM members. Tickets available at the door.

Together with a group of guest musicians and activists from the 1960s/‘70s and the present, Miyamoto brings alive the dynamic moment when her 1973 album “A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle of Asians in America,” created a heartbeat for the Asian American Movement and shared rhythms with Black, Latino, and Native American cultural and political activists.

Organized by: Japanese American National Museum and LACE.

Not a lot of people know that during World War II, Santa Anita Park housed approximately 20,000 Japanese Americans. Find out more about it from a short video produced by ESPN and some Japanese Americans that were there.

An insider's view of the major Buddhist temples of Little Tokyo. This walk will include visits to Koyasan, Higashi Hongwanji, and Zenshuji and will explain the roles they played in the neighborhood. An opportunity for lunch.

$15 Members, $20 non-members, includes admission. Wear comfortable walking shoes. RSVP early, 15 students max.

FREE!
The second program in a three part series will discuss Little Tokyo and Japanese American activism in the community during the 1960s.

This program will feature a conversation with Alan Nishio, Evelyn Yoshimura, and students from UCLA's Nikkei Student Union.

This program is generously sponsored by The Aratani CARE grant, Asian American Studies Center, UCLA.

FREE!
The third program will discuss Asian American studies movement and the future of ethnic studies.

This program will feature a conversation with Prof. Lloyd Inui, Prof. Tetsuden Kashima, and student from UCLA's Asian Pacific Islander Undergraduate Association.

This program is generously sponsored by The Aratani CARE grant, Asian American Studies Center, UCLA.

This program is FREE!

The last decade of this past century has been witness to a revolution in the development and application of mathematical techniques to origami, the centuries-old Japanese art of paper-folding. The techniques used in mathematical origami design range from the abstruse to the highly approachable. In this talk, I will describe how geometric concepts led to the solution of a broad class of origami folding problems – specifically, the problem of efficiently folding a shape with an arbitrary number and arrangement of flaps, and along the way, enabled origami designs of mind-blowing complexity and realism, some of which you’ll see, too. As often happens in mathematics, theory originally developed for its own sake has led to some surprising practical applications. The algorithms and theorems of origami design have shed light on long-standing mathematical questions and have solved practical engineering problems. I will discuss examples of how origami has enabled safer airbags, Brobdingnagian space telescopes, and more.

Co-sponsor: Consulate General of Japan in Los Angeles

Special: Robert Lang will lead an informal gallery talk after his lecture.

Robert J. Lang is recognized as one of the foremost origami artists in the world as well as a pioneer in computational origami and the development of formal design algorithms for folding. With a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Caltech, he has, during the course of work at NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Spectra Diode Laboratories, and JDS Uniphase, authored or co-authored over 80 papers and 45 patents in lasers and optoelectronics as well as authoring, co-authoring, or editing 12 books and a CD-ROM on origami. He is a full-time artist and consultant on origami and its applications to engineering problems but keeps his toes in the world of lasers, most recently as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics from 2007–2010. He received Caltech’s highest honor, the Distiguished Alumni Award, in 2009.

The cultural heritages of Japan and the U.S. are in many ways very different. Japanese society has traditionally emphasized collectivism while American society has long promoted individualism. Being socially situated in the middle of two contrasting societal traditions, Japanese Americans often encounter a great deal of cultural conflict in their personal lives. This lecture will explore these issues using illustrations from notable incidents in Japanese American history as well as aspects of contemporary Japanese American communities.