Venice Carnival Remembers its History

This isn't really an obon, but it seems like I didn't have my camera out at the Venice Obon, so here is the Venice Summer Festival held in mid-June--it is the kickoff and precursor to Obon season for us. Turns out that my dad is really into obon this year, and came out for West LA, Venice Festival and Nishi Obon. We went with Grandma Machi and Grandpa Walt. Surprise, surprise it's a snow cone. I swear this girl eats healthy all year long so she can go crazy wild with junky food at obon/carnivals. As usual, we ate, and played games. For some reason, we don't ever dance at this one. Well, it was in June, and we were just getting started.

I noticed they are doing a lot of oral history and documentation of Venice Japanese Community Center for its upcoming 90th anniversary. Tony and I had done some photo collection and interviews with people 11-12 years ago when we did the Aloha Mural project, just down the street from the VJCC. A lot of the people from the Center we see year after year at the food booths. Anyways, here's a picture of the Aloha Market Mural on Centinela, completed in 1998.