With lively Japanese pop music blasting in the streets, Andover students milled around Japan Festival in the Boston Common last Sunday, buying bubble tea, learning Japanese calligraphy, and watching cosplay performances. A trip to the annual event was organized by Andover Japanese Connection (AJC) as part of CelebrAsian for the first time this year.
“Usually, AJC just participates in CelebrAsian and International Festival, and then occasionally, we hold meetings, but we never officially had an event going, so this is exciting,” said Maho Fujiwara ’18, co-head of AJC.
This outdoor “matsuri,” which is Japanese for “festival,” included over a hundred booths for traditional Japanese arts and crafts, games, and food, as well as various workshops and stage performances.
“The food and the cultural activities in the festival were very authentic, and I was very glad to see that many people are actually interested in Japanese culture. I personally liked the food the most, especially the ramen. At Andover, we don’t really get access to ramen that a Japanese person makes. These were actual shops that came from Japan to make it for us, and it had very reminiscent taste,” said Riku Tanaka ’20.
