Produced by Nanae International Relations and Domestic Affairs
Directed by the CIR
Here it is! Episode 8, featuring the lovely Michiru Sakurai. Enjoy.
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By Ben Mirin, CIR
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To submit suggestions for future content, please email concordnanae@gmail.com. Thank you for visiting Concordnanae.com.
By Ben Mirin, CIR
It’s Golden Week in Japan, which means our posting schedule is a little irregular. The cherry blossoms are finally emerging all over Nanae, and the weather accurately reflects the time of year.
Happy Spring!
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To submit suggestions for future content, please email concordnanae@gmail.com. Thank you for visiting Concordnanae.com.
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
For now, please enjoy the purely English version of this week’s episode. We’re a little behind in the subtitles, and will upload the final version (with Japanese subs) as soon as possible.
I had a lot of fun making this. Hope you have fun watching.
Interviewees: Sae Tamura, Hitomi Shihoya, and Riho Ahiko
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To submit suggestions for future content, please email concordnanae@gmail.com. Thank you for visiting Concordnanae.com.
By Ben Mirin, CIR
This posting is to announce the upload of the top 100 photographs taken during Nanae’s most recent delegation visit to Concord, Boston, and New York City. The photographs, shot by the CIR (yours truly), document events from the week of September 23rd to 30th in Concord as well as in Boston and, from the following weekend, in New York City.
The 20 latest photographs from this collection are displayed on Concordnanae.com’s Photo Gallery. To view the complete collection in chronological order, visit the Nanae Delegation 2011 photo set in the CIR’s Flickr Photostream.
Happy viewing!
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
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.com.
By Ben Mirin, CIR.
On October 11th, 2010, eight students from Nanae High School and Middle School began a week-long visit to Concord, Massachusetts. All were select members of Nanae‘s annual delegation to Concord, and most had never traveled outside of Japan. Together with the help of the CIR, Ben Mirin, and staff at Concord-Carlisle High School, they produced a 10-minute documentary about their experiences and initial impressions of CCHS and its people.
Nanae Town Website (English)
http://www.concordma.gov/
The Massachusetts Hokkaido Association
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