We were THRILLED to be back at the Cherry Blossom Festival at Sakura Square in downtown Denver this month! It was fantastic to see our local Japanese community come together in person for a weekend of festivities and simply being together. The JASC booth was definitely the cutest one there with kids lining up to play Yoyo-tsuri. Thank you to our incredible volunteers for hours of water balloon preparation and lending your smiles all weekend! JASC staff connected with our community to help them understand our mission and engage with our organization. Our Kaiwa Club group hung out and listened to taiko, strolled the festival and caught up with each other. We completely enjoyed ourselves and can’t wait to be there again next year. Thank you, Sakura Foundation, for bringing it back this year!

PHOTO: Yamagata Shimbun November 23, 2021 Photo courtesy of 13 pages / Yamagata Shimbun

JASC has facilitated several online exchanges this past year and we continue to get requests from both sides of the pond! Nothing makes us happier than connecting students between our two favorite places. The above newsletter article was in the Yamagata Newspaper. Boulder High and Yamagata High enjoyed an exchange this past year where nearly 100 students total connected online. They discussed gaming, anime, and cultural differences and similarities. They shared language resources and connected on social media. The students hope to have an in person exchange in the near future.

Colorado and Yamagata Prefecture are sister-states and celebrated the 35th anniversary of this valuable relationship in 2021. If you are a teacher of Japanese language and interested in this type of opportunity for your students, let us know!

Japan America Society of Colorado (JASC) is offering an unpaid summer internship position for a candidate with a passion for Colorado- Japan relations and a desire to gain professional experience in the non-profit sector. Japanese language ability is strongly preferred, but not an absolute requirement.

MARKETING, PR, & EVENT SUPPORT
This summer intern will assist with events (some which occur on weekends/ evenings), social media creation and analytics, website improvements and marketing. Time permitting, some archiving/ digitizing of historical JASC documents will be requested.

For more details, click HERE.

Application materials deadline: May 1, 2022