Concord Nanae Network Official Website
By Ben Mirin, CIR
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To submit suggestions for future content, please email concordnanae@gmail.com. Thank you for visiting ConcordNanae.org.
By Ben Mirin, CIR
September 25th, 2011: An interview shot during last year’s historic community concert between the Nanae and Concord-Carlisle High School bands. Featuring Susan Erickson and Robin Cicchetti
Stay tuned for the next episode, in which I’ll sit down with beloved Nanae Band Director, Katsuyuki Onodera-sensei. We’ll be talking about the concert, and enjoying a special backstage interview with CCHS Band Director, Al Dentino!
By Ben Mirin, CIR
In place of this week’s episode of “Sister Cities,” I bring you an exciting update (the import of which should explain why there will also be no Sister Cities episode on Friday, April 13th, but look for more delegation updates around that time!):
This week, Nanae’s International Relations section has finalized the schedule for its next official delegation visit from Concord. Arriving on April 10th, 30 Concord delegates will tour Nanae (and the nearby city of Hakodate), home-stay with local Nanae families, and attend various cultural events organized specifically for their four-day stay.
This upcoming delegation has a central focus, since 25 of its 30 members will represent the Concord-Carlisle High School Science-Fiction Club. Led by CCHS English teacher and Sister School Coordinator Dr. David Nurenburg, this will be the Club’s second time making an official visit to the Japanese sister city, after a groundbreaking trip in 2009. (click for photos)
Concord’s delegation will also consist of Concord-Carlisle Librarian Robin Chichetti, Concord translator Junko Kargula, Concord-Carlisle Nurse Cary Bestor Williams, and the delegation leader, Concord-Carlisle Vice-Principal Dr. Alan Weinstein. Collectively, their visit will sustain a 15-year tradition of April delegations from Concord to Nanae. It will also mark 2 years of a healthy sister school relationship between Concord-Carlisle and Nanae High Schools, poignantly, at a time when the Japanese school year is just beginning. Continue reading “Science-Fiction and Agriculture: Concord Delegation Finalized for April 2012”
By Ben Mirin
As seen in The Concord Journal.
On September 23rd, Concord received its largest ever delegation from Nanae, the town’s Japanese sister city. A group of seventy-two delegates filled the cafeteria of Concord Carlisle High School around 9pm to meet their host families and settle in for a week of exchange programs, official sister-city events, and sightseeing.
“We’ve been planning the events for this delegation visit for nearly a year now,” said Dr. Tom Curtin, Concord-Carlisle High School’s former guidance counselor and Concord’s primary coordinator and linchpin for the towns’ increasingly rich sister city history.
“We’ve just finished arranging all the homestays, and the group we’ve got on board to help host and entertain this year’s delegates is incredibly strong. We’re also excited to welcome some new faces from Boston into the sister city program, who have helped organized some exciting trips for us downtown.”
This year Nanae’s delegates will make several time-honored visits to Concord sites, including the Old North Bridge and the Orchard House. Curtin has also arranged tours of Harvard Square, the Japanese wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, and Berklee College of Music, with a special live performance by Japanese faculty member and trumpet virtuoso Tiger Okoshi.
Nanae has been sending its citizens to Concord almost every year since 1993, first informally and then officially after Concord’s Board of Selectmen voted to formalize the sister-city relationship in 1997. Historically, these groups have been on the smaller side, rarely amounting to more than twenty people. Students and teachers from Nanae’s elementary, middle, and high schools have comprised the majority of each delegation, alongside representatives of the local government. Members of the town’s taiko drum ensemble, interpreters, and many other citizens have also been in the mix.
But this year’s group is so large because of a promise that was made early on in the Concord-Nanae relationship, which will celebrate its fifteenth anniversary in October 2012. The Concord-Carlisle High School band director, Alfred Dentino, has been waiting to see it fulfilled.
“We first sent our Concert and Jazz bands to Nanae in 1998” Dentino said. “The trip was a great success, and our students loved having the chance to visit Japan. I’ve been waiting for the chance to host Nanae’s high school band in Concord ever since.” Continue reading “Concord Receives Largest Nanae Delegation in Town History”
By Ben Mirin, CIR
As seen in The Concord Journal column, “The Japan Connection.” Stay tuned for pictures on Concordnanae’s Flickr Photostream and Photo Gallery!
July 4, 2011
Hold the bachi at your navel. Is it touching the surface of the taiko? If not, go lower.
With this mantra in mind, I assumed an increasingly strenuous stance alongside the rest of my family as we merged mid-song into the ranks of Nanae Danshaku Daiko Sosakukai, the Nanae taiko drumming ensemble. Before an audience of nearly one hundred Japanese town office workers, English students, and high-school students, the latest delegation from Concord, MA, struggled to keep the beat.
Like every other day in Nanae, tonight was another chance for my family to be a part of something extraordinary. Eight days had passed since their bleary-eyed arrival at Hakodate Airport. Now, at the farewell potluck party in Nanae’s Bunka Center, Japanese friends from every part of my multifaceted life in the sister city had converged in one place, to treat us one final time as special guests in their community.
The days leading up to the farewell potluck were filled with a rich variety of events and excursions. At the center of the schedule were the routine responsibilities of the CIR. My family visited four of my six English conversation (eikaiwa) classes, toured the town office, ate dinner with Mayor Nakamiya, and made origami with the children of Donguri Kindergarten. With incredible help from Koji Teraya and Emi Kimura (International Relations), we also managed to go sightseeing in Onuma Park and Hakodate. We played park golf, went fly-fishing in Nanae’s Ookawa River, and went bird watching in Onuma and southern Kameda. We even attended a big-band jazz concert in Hakodate’s Public Meeting Hall, and enjoyed a fabulous cooking class with my eikaiwa student, Yoko Sato.
Our final day in Nanae began with a visit to Nanae High School, where we arranged to have a special meeting with Principal Kogoshi before attending the Tea Ceremony and English clubs and the brass band rehearsal. Enthralled by the brass band’s final piece, a stellar rendition of the Super Mario medley, we barely made it to the Bunka Center before Nanae’s Vice Mayor, Shuichi Baba, began his official address to open the Mirin family potluck party. Continue reading “The Mirin Family Visits Nanae”
By Ben Mirin, CIR
I was sad to leave my guitars behind when I left the States, but I did not think that my work for Nanae would require the use of an instrument.
I attended my first meeting of the Nanae High School English Club on Tuesday. At the last minute the Club’s faculty adviser had to take off to attend to one of her children, who had developed a fever at school that day. With 30 minutes before the Club meeting, I needed to make a new lesson plan. Somehow, I was able to borrow an acoustic guitar from my boss’s brother. The instrument hadn’t been tuned in a while, and the high E string was missing, but that was enough; I know a few songs that only use the bottom 5 strings. Scrambling, I printed out 5 copies of the lyrics to “Time of Your Life” by Green Day, cut them into strips of individual lines, and stuffed them into 5 envelopes. I figured I could play the song while teams of students listened and raced to piece together the lyrics. With help from several staff, I turned my section of the Town Office from International Relations into Arts and Crafts, and managed to make it to the high school with a few minutes to spare.
In the car I wondered, should I have picked a simpler song? Are Green Day’s metaphors about life’s mysteries and the inevitable passage of time comprehensible in translation when they’re coming from a guy who hasn’t even sung their tune in 5 years?
Apparently, yes. The students had little difficulty piecing the lyrics together, and with one and a half run-throughs of the song we had a winning team. The victors got first pick from the Concord-themed gifts I had brought as prizes, but eventually all 17 girls had their choice among an array of Paul Revere and Minuteman key chains, Concord militia ribbons, and Walden Pond magnets.
I’m not sure if I’ll need a guitar again for English Club, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Even if I cannot play one in my apartment for fear of offending my neighbors, I expect it will come in handy for future events at the high school, in my community English classes at the Onuma Seminar House, or in my classes at various nursery and elementary schools that start in January.
…To be continued…
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To submit suggestions for future content, please email concordnanae@gmail.com. Thank you for visiting ConcordNanae.org.