Yours truly did poetry readings on ancient poets from Japan and China, and taught the assembly the structure of a Haiku, a seventeen syllable Japanese Poem, that contains 3-lines with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern. In an interactive exercise, I had the assembly create a Haiku based on our celebration:
Asian Pacific, (5 syllables)
We are here to celebrate, (7 syllables)
Together we learn! (5 syllables)
Together we learn! (5 syllables)
Our Commanding Officer taught everyone the intricasies of Japanese writing and symbolic meaning. There are over 52,000 Japanese characters, known pristinely at the scholar-level. However, the average person fluent in Japanese only needs to know 800 characters to read a Japanese newspaper. Japanese is read top to bottom, then left to right. Sheeesh. I better stick to English.
Afterwards, we had dancers from the Philippines Embassy demonstrate the "Tinikling Dance". This is a Filipino folk dance that has 2 dancers hop and sway within 2 clapping bamboo poles. The dancers move in and out of the poles effortlessly, as Filipino folk music is played. The celebration was wonderfully concluded with a bounty of API cuisine and festive eclectic music. It was a great way to learn all the different cultures of my Asian peeps, and was a fantastic way to end a fave and fabulous month!
