by Armand Gutierrez
It’s almost the end of the year and here’s what we can look forward to: listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving, paying property taxes by December, watching the weather forecast for rain and snow predictions, and best of all – getting together with family and enjoying a Thanksgiving Dinner. According to AAA, the Thanksgiving weekend is the most traveled weekend of the year. And why is that? Simple. Thanksgiving is the time of the year when family members travel far and wide to be with family and be grateful for who we are and what we have in our life. In the words of John F. Kennedy – “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them”. On behalf of the Board I would like to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy your time with family and friends.

Upcoming Events

There are a number of events for the month of November so take a gander and see which one sounds appealing. To start off, the 13th Annual Snowbomb Festival is back again on 3-4 November at Pier 35 in San Francisco and 10-11 November at the Santa Clara Fairgrounds. These shows are free and you can get your tickets at www.snowbomb.com.

Hoyt is at it again with another Bocce Ball event on 3 November at Lake Almaden. Take a look at the bocce ball article for more details.

For you movie buffs there will be a Warren Miller movie at the Heritage Theater in Campbell on 10 November. Plans are in the works for possibly including dinner that evening. Details will be in next month’s newsletter.

Save this date – 8 December. At our last board meeting I casually mentioned that the club should have a Pre-Season Ski Potluck Dinner party. After all, ski season is coming up and this club is noted for having a variety of great food at potlucks, so why not combine the two? My dilemma at the time was figuring out where we could have such an event. Well, new board member Rick Dumlao stepped up to the plate and volunteered to host it at his house in Union City. For you chefs, here’s the opportunity to amaze everyone with your culinary delights. Also, since it’s a pre-season ski party then let’s have some fun with everyone wearing a favorite, not so favorite, retro, or outlandish ski outfit. An Evite will be sent out to provide the essential details (like date, time, and place). Please RSVP the Evite to provide an accurate head count of attendees and also list what you’re bringing for the potluck dinner to avoid duplicates. Drinks (beer, wine, soda, and water) will be provided by the club.

Big Sky Ski Week 2019

Thanks to everyone that remitted final payments for the Big Sky trip. This trip is getting closer and closer and hopefully everyone is preparing for the upcoming ski season. Big Sky has already received some snowfall as shown in the photo taken on October 12th. Kristin Thornquist is researching a mid-week day trip to Yellowstone National Park. Stay tuned for details and an email will be sent out to see how many people would be interested. Save the date for the Big Sky Orientation Meeting on January 5th.

The Nisei Ski Club celebrated its 60th anniversary on September 8th at the China Stix Restaurant in Santa Clara. There was a large turnout with over 70 attendees who enjoyed a sumptuous Chinese banquet. Thanks to Karen Soo who organized the fabulous event. Another thanks to Karen Soo and Bill Lee who took pictures of the milestone event. Here are the links to the photos:

• Bill Lee’s photos
• Karen Soo’s photos

A booklet chronicling NSC’s history was published as part of the 60th anniversary activities. It contains a brief history of some of the highlights and milestones of the Nisei Ski Club and of some of the people responsible for them; based on past archived NSC records and oral histories. The Nisei Ski Club evolved from an organized weekend ski trip through the San Francisco JACL (Japanese American Citizen’s League) during the 1950’s. During this time, there were very few organizations for Asian Americans of any type and interest in skiing quickly grew. Skiing was new and enthusiasm for the sport quickly grew. The ski trips became so popular that it was soon decided that the club become independent from San Francisco JACL. That’s how the Nisei Ski Club was formed.

Happy 60th Anniversary!

by Sandy Kiyomura

Most of us are aware of Executive Order 9066 where 120,000 people of Japanese descent were interned at “concentration camps” during WWII. Some of us have relatives who were detainees or know of some. It is a very sad part of America history and this musical presents it very well.

“Allegiance” is a musical about the Internment of the Japanese during WWII. If you didn’t get to see this, you missed a powerful and entertaining show. (The SF Chronicle gave it top reviews). The cast was mostly Asian and the musical covered five decades, following 4 generations of the Kimura family before the war, during the war and (a scene)50 years later. There were 25 numbers (songs) and the singing was excellent, the lyrics creative and the dancing entertaining. The lead actress Lindsay Hirata did a phenomenal performance, singing and dancing in most of the numbers. There were some light-hearted moments : “why do Japanese students do well in math? Because they were in Concentration camps”. There were many dramatic scenes that centered around the conflict between men who wanted to volunteer for the Army (under the 442 Go for Broke battalion) and the others who were protesting the war. The latter were called the “no no” boys because they would not pledge allegiance to the US. Most of the “no no boys” were sent to Tule Lake camp. But life was not all bad at the camps. They had baseball, classes and dances. I enjoyed the dance scene where the cast performed an energetic swing dance number. Dances like this must have provided moments of relief during the harsh conditions they were living under. It was sad when a baby died because of lack of medical treatments. One only knows how many deaths (suicides) there were, or how PTSD may have affected the detainees.

Before the show, I went to dinner with my family and friends. One of my friends, Eloy Maoki was born in Peru. But Eloy was also sent to a detention camp (Crystal City) when he was 4 years old. This camp was for the people from the 13 South/Central American countries that the US ordered sent to camps. There were also German and Italian detainees, however the Germans and Italians were given hearings. My daughter found that one of Eloy’s friends, Yuji Ichioka, was her Asian American studies professor at UCLA. Mr. Ichioka was a prominent historian who wrote “Issei” and “Before Internment”. We must not forget history because it is repeating itself these days…and it’s not pretty.

Editor’s note: If you missed the musical, you can see George Takei’s Allegiance the Musical in movie theaters on December 11, 2018. Find a movie theater near you at Fathom Events.

by Hoyt Nelson
Here’s another installment in Hoyt Nelson’s love affair with food.

The first Street Food that I fell in love with were the liquados in Mexico about 1963. My first trips there were in the heat of summer and the thought of a cold drink was irresistible. Various fruit juices (mainly orange) were freshly squeezed and mixed with sugar and ice. These cold drinks were pure heaven.

In Istanbul in 1974, it was a little different. I stopped to watch a street vendor barbecue what looked like intestines on a spit. He handed me a bite and I noticed a couple of oldsters tittering about how I might react. Of course I had to eat it! But, cook had not cut it up because it was easy to wrap the intestines around the spit. He also did not care that this made it very hard to clean out the original contents (which smelled and tasted like you-know-what). On my next trip to Istanbul in 2007, we had a much better experience. Fish sandwiches were being sold on a small boat moored close to the bridge across the Bosporus. We frequently don’t take time to eat lunch while touring, but we took a flyer based on the smell. It turned out to be one of our best street foods ever. We saw lots of people with fishing poles on the Galata bridge and I believe the fish had been caught only minutes before we ate them. As most fishermen will tell you, fish is at its best when it is eaten as soon as it has been caught.

Although there wasn’t a street in sight, I think the following still qualifies as “Street Food”. On our 2nd trip to Thailand in 2005, we witnessed many small floating restaurants (like canoes). All the food was cooked and sold to other working boats – mainly breakfast. We never saw a tourist buy anything since the tour boats had other plans. Further up north, we maneuvered down a fast moving river for about 5 miles on a primitive raft of bamboo logs lashed together. At the end of the trip, we stopped in the middle of a forest; there was a “kitchen” created from a tarp draped over a few saplings sitting next to a fire pit. The cook served us a Thai meal that would be considered very good under the best circumstances. Dishes were “washed” afterward in an old rusty dishpan filled with very brown water from the river we had just come from. We survived with no ill effects.

In a small town close to Yellow Mountain in southwest China, I remember a menu in (translated dishes into, frequently meaningless, sometimes laughable) “English”. One entry for “Nutritious Beef Penis” caught our eye (as opposed to all those other cheap fast food penises we suppose). Nobody in our group sampled it.

I was not tempted to try anything more exotic until a trip to Java in 2011. One night, our tour guide took us to a street market and sat us down at a place specializing in cobra. A young girl brought out a wriggling snake which she killed and skinned in front of us. The cook however was not very skilled and he deep fried the pieces till they were rock hard. The raw blood, when mixed with a little red wine was however surprisingly good.

I stopped at a gelateria in Venice in 2013 for a quick cone where I noticed a tub labeled “pina”. Pineapple sounded good so I pointed to it only to discover the flavor was in fact “pine nut”. It wasn’t too bad, but not my favorite. The next night I bought some chestnuts from a vendor not too far away, but I later discovered they were not roasted. I had no means to roast them while on the trip but was lucky enough to get them home (illegally) through customs. (I find chestnuts in the U.S. frequently to be a bit moldy, but I have always had delicious roasted nuts in several European countries.)

Most Asian countries are known for great street food and Singapore is no exception. We made a special trip to the most famous area known as the Maxwell Street market to check it out. It takes up nearly a city block of 6 or 8 orderly rows of about 25 stalls each, with stationary tables and chairs in common areas between rows. Everything is pretty cheap, delicious and very clean. You can wander around and pick a little of this and some of that.

One of the joys of SouthEast Asia is the exotic (to us) fruit. Our local guide in Java bought samples of various kinds like rambutan, jackfruit, red dragon fruit, durian, mangosteen (but not durian which is known for its rotten smell). – all quite good. These days, you can buy many of these at Asian markets like Lion or 99 Ranch, but it probably wouldn’t be as fresh. We later bought some durian in Bangkok, just to try. Once past the nose, it is mild and fairly sweet. One can however still see signs posted in some hotels, railroad stations, etc. saying “NO DURIANS ALLOWED”.