01/10/26 Kakizome, the First Writing of the Year, at Arts Mid-Hudson Gallery in Poughkeepsie

It was quite successful this year as we had 79 participants, which is a record in our Kakizome history since 2013 when we first started this program as a joint venture with Arts Mid-Hudson. Among the people who attended were some familiar faces from last year. One of the AMH staff brought a big group of her kids and friends, and there were also 37 people including kids and staff from the Children’s Home of Poughkeepsie.

Among the teenagers, the most popular character they chose to write was “LOVE”. When they were about finished writing with own names in Japanese on the Hanshi paper, I found one boy who wrote his girlfriend’s name next to the character and created his love letter, so to speak. There is no doubt it was received as the most romantic gesture you can imagine. We hope it will be framed to keep for a long time and may become one of their beautiful memories.

The Hudson Valley Press of Newburgh donated tons of newspapers for this program again this year, and we can’t thank them enough as they are so useful in many ways. AMH and their staff were very helpful as always, and that is I believe the major reason of this program’s success. Last, without our volunteer members’ dedication we could never accomplish our culture programs. Thank you all.

Midori Shinye

Kakizome team leader