People to People --- San Jose, CA

The Japanese characters above are pronounced
"yoo-u-ko-so" and literally means "Welcome" This
symbolizes the wonderful feelings towards friends and guests.

Building on 50 years of friendship.
This web site is dedicated to the relationship of the people of San José, California, USA and those of Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture, Japan.

The third oldest "Sister City" relationship, in 2007 and 2008 we celebrated our 50th Anniversary.

You may find helpful information about this program and the relationships that have, are and will exist between citizens of the two areas.

click on the calendar icon for event schedules

General meeting:
The next public meeting is February 8, 2009, 6:30 pm and is the regularly scheduled for the second Monday* for the month. The meeting is held in San José City hall, at the West end of the City Council Wing. Meeting is scheduled to be in room 118 or as posted. Plan for about 90 minutes meeting.

We usually end each meeting with a video. In January it was a Japanese language New Year's program which featured a cooking program clip with the wife of the Prime Minister and a 200,000 piece domino display with a New Year's them. It took several minutes for the dominos to fall.

Not a member yet? Want to be? Click "Join Us!" at the left and join us at this meeting which sets up our new Board members and the direction for next year's activities.

Want receive email notices of activities? Click HERE.
(http://www.sj-okayama.org/phplist/)

Our YouTube, Channels: sjokayama50yr. We are in the process of moving them to a new channel, sanjoseokayama

Did You Know? Comments by Bob Green, member and Secretary.

Oops! The KTSF, channel 26 information below is correct, but due to a change in broadcasting signal from Japan from analog to digital on Dec. 6, the programming is currently off-air. Theywere planing to start for real in February. You can watch the broadcasts now on the Internet. At this time, we don't know if Comcast will carry this station or not.

If you have a digital television receiver or tuner, you may be able to watch the new NHK World (Japanese Broadcasting) English channel that is on San Francisco's KTSF sub channel 2 (Channel 26.2). The new network is named JIBTV (Japan International Broadcasting). There are a number of interesting programs with English audio. For example, there are some of the short videos that are contained in the NHK World's Begin Japanology, newer versions of "Out and About" and some programming in Tokyo Eye, about Tokyo life. Also there is hourly English language news and business news.

I recently saw an awsome program about the influence of Japanese manga portraying music topics recently. And a story about the Japanese hot springs resort (onsen) that was distroyed by a major earthquake in Niigata prefecture a while back and how other resort owners were banding together to restore their industry. I can also recommend some of the other programming such as the Professionals, an interesting series produced originally for the Japanese market as well as Today's Close-up, also orignally a Japanese program discussing many things about Japanese business, science, politics ... issues that are important in Japan now.

If you don't have a TV or if it is not carried on your cable or satellite, you can watch live for free at their web site:

jibtv.com

The new government of Japan is having some discussions to change some agreements regarding the placement of US armed forces on Okinawa. The previous administration had reached some agreements previously but there are those in Japan that don't agree with those. It is interesting to see how this is playing out and we wonder how it may affect the US-Japanese relationship going forward. You may have seen that one base is being transfered to the US held Guam. However there was a recent speach in the United Nations by Guam residents complaining about that effort as well. This item is very contentious between the major political parties in Japan

On the calendar: Plan for the yearly activities

Vancouer Winter Olympics. We see that Japan is fielding some strong figure skaters this year. (Starting February 12)

Trip to Japan for High School aged attendees (register now) (July)

Bay Area is the site of the 2010 America-Japan Grassroots Summit.
Consider hosting attendee(s) in your home for 3 days. There will be activities throughout the 9 Bay Area counties. A welcoming program at the San Francisco Giants and a wonderful parade and activities in San Francisco Japantown at the end of the visit. (August)

Have an appropriate item to go on the calendar? Contact the Secretary to get it put up.

Also note the Japanese and US holidays are flagged on the calendar.