Hi guys! my name is Kyle Shigekuni, (you may have seen me around the North Orange Newsong branch). I was curious if anyone would be interested (or perhaps know anyone interested) in having their children (ages 4-12) participate in the Childrens Day Festival Chibi-K fun run in Little Tokyo. This Chibi-K fun run is a project/internship that me and about 18 other UCLA students are hosting. The Chibi-K run was started in 1983 as a celebration of Children's Day by a core group of dedicated volunteers as a way to bring families back to Little Tokyo and to introduce children to Japanese traditions. On the day of the Chibi-K run, we shut down the streets of Little Tokyo and have kids ranging from ages 4 years old to 12 years old have a little race around the perimeter of Little Tokyo to promote health and cultural awareness. Two years ago the Chibi-K run was not able to receive enough funding and was cancelled. that following year UCLA's Nikkei Student Union started this internship to bring back the tradition of the Chibi-K run. This year the Chibi-K fun run will be taking place on May 18th, 2008 again on the streets of Little Tokyo (as tradition). This year is the 25th Anniversary and the second year that the Nikkei Student Union is in charge of running the event. We are trying to make the event this year as big as possible. We currently working with major companies such as Nissan, See's candies, ABC TV, Sanrio, Pentel of America and Disney. During the Children's Day festival we will also be having many workshops, contests and performances. Some things that will be going on throughout the day will be dance workshops, Manju Making, Taiko (Japanese Drumming) workshops, a Basketball tournament (which will be held the day before), a performance by UCLA's very own Kyodo Taiko (Japanese Drumming), Performances by UCLA's NSU Modern (modern dance), UCLA's Odori (Traditional Japanese dancing), many fun carnival style activities, possible Ramen and/or Watermelon eating contests and many more. For more information feel free to visit our website at http://www.jaccc.org/littletokyofunfest.htm# . Please also let me know if the church would like to help out run the event or would like to support us and have Newsong's own booth setup (I think it would be a great way to maybe recruit people to the Newsong LA location). Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Sign up information is on the website but if you have any problem feel free to contact me at kshigekuni@ucla.edu. thanks for listening!

-kshigekuni@ucla.edu