By Kiana Caranto

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Japanese language students volunteered to be part of the Grand Parade during the 19th Annual Honolulu Festival, which took place on March 3 along Kalakaua Avenue and went through the main streets of Waikiki. This community service project allowed them to experience different cultures and see things they wouldn’t have the chance to see in the classroom.

“It’s hands-on education. It’s learning through seeing as opposed to sitting in school with a book trying to figure something out,” explained Volunteer Coordinator Ciara Marks.

The entire festival included educational tours, performances, craft fairs and workshops that ran from March 1 to 3, with its main purpose being to educate people about the different cultures that are around the Pacific area and create a harmony between them. “It started off originally with just Hawaii and Japan, and every year it grows and more and more countries are added,” said Marks, “Now it’s become a very much so cosmopolitan worldwide event.” These countries included Australia, Korea, Taiwan, Canada and various Pacific Islands.

The students danced in the parade with a group called Saitama that helps promote the awareness and benefice of mental and physical disabilities in Japan. This was both a fun and educational opportunity for the students. “My favorite part about being at the festival was definitely doing the dance,” stated Senior Justin Knaus, who helped lead the students in the dance, “It’s really fun to be part of something this big.”

This experience allows the students to participate in a service project that is related to their language study and gives them a chance to experience the traditions in real life. “We have a culture standard and we have a hard time using it in the classroom so at least we can cover that standard outside of class,” said Japanese Language teacher JoAnn Kanda.

The understanding of cultural awareness that is provided to the students by this event also helps to increase their respect for different traditions. “They’re going to need to talk and communicate with different kinds of people,” expressed Japanese Language teacher Corey Zukeran, “Different people do think different ways but (they should) respect each other’s differences.”

Many of the students that participated were interested in Japanese heritage, so it gave them a chance to delve deeper into their culture and keep in touch with their ancestors traditions. “Culture is like a gathering of thousands of thousands of years of our ancestry and if we want to preserve that ancestry we gotta go into our culture,” said Knaus.

The festival ended off with a Nagaoka Fireworks Show over Waikiki Beach. Now that the festival has come to a close, the teachers hope that the students will take what they learned from this experience and apply it to the classroom as well as real life.