This past weekend on April 11-12, 2015, we held our 16th annual Nikkei Classic Basketball Tournament (among one of our biggest events in Spring quarter) at Rimac. Taking over the gym, we had games going all day on Saturday and half the day on Sunday. Being an open tournament, we welcomed a total of 50 teams with 5 mens & 3 womens divisions.

As the host of this tournament, our NSU members helped volunteer all day as scorekeepers and/or welcomers. We also sent in 3 NSU teams (2 guys & 1 girls) to represent. Congratulations to our girls team that took 2nd place. Got the Ts! :D 

We would like to thank everyone who participated and played in our tournament and  hope to see you next year!

Shout out to our athletics chair, Tori, for organizing the tournament. Amazing job! #Tori2Turntament

We had our first GBM of the Spring Quarter yesterday! We were so happy to be reunited with our NSU family! It was also awesome to meet and welcome new faces among the group. The more the merrier! 

We started GBM with an.....interesting....GBM video, titled "The NSU Office," about different NSU board positions since applications to run for next year's board are coming up. It was Kelsey's (our president) debut as a director! Yay! We hope to bring an exciting video to each GBM with our newly created video committee. Our video committee welcomes all humans! By joining, you can choose to be involved with acting, directing, script writing, editing, filming, etc. It is a lot of fun! Contact Kelsey or Erica to join the video committee.

This quarter we are excited to bring back culture corner! Our first one was led by Darren K. He gave us a simple quiz on how Japanese-American we were. I don't want to give too much away and spoil the mind-blowing conclusion, but let's just say there was no answer key but there were a lot of snaps, applause, and heart-felt/warm & fuzzy feelings. Oh the feels! We are looking forward to more culture corners this quarter! 

We also did a cool icebreaker activity to...break the ice and meet new friends! We had to put our left shoe in a big pile and then randomly grab someone else's shoe. Then we had to find whose shoe we had and introduce ourselves and answer questions provided (i.e. What was your favorite TV show growing up?).

Other announcements included...
Sports: 
Our Classic Basketball Tournament is coming up this weekend (Sat-Sun, 4/11-4/12). 
We are also doing IM Volleyball this quarter which are Wed. nights. Contact Tori to join the fun.

2015-2016 Board Applications:
Executive Apps are due, April 23, 2015, Appointed Apps are due April 30, 2015
(check the UCSD NSU Facebook group for the file)

Manzanar Pilgrimage (4/24-4/26):
Every year NSU takes a trip to Manzanar, a historical concentration camp where many Japanese-Americans were relocated during World War II. We participate in many activities and discussions on this topic. We also join with other NSUs from other schools and hang out. It definitely a trip/event you don't want to miss. 

We also had a raffle where you could win past NSU shirts, miso soup packets, and/or Ramune. We ended the GBM with some POPSICLES! Yay! We hope to see you at our other events!!! :D

Started off Spring Quarter right with NSU & JSA's annual Matsuri Festival (祭) ! On Thursday, April 2, NSU and JSA (Japanese Student Association) took over Library Walk at UCSD with many food stalls, game booths, and performances. Our Matsuri is the only authentic Japanese Festival in the San Diego County and is open to the general public. 

At this event, you could taste some authentic Japanese foods such as Taiyaki, Takoyaki, Yakitori, Strawberry Daifuku and more! For some fun and games, you could test your luck with Yoyo Sukui, Ring Toss, Shooting Range, and more, or you could dress up in Japanese Yukatas at the Yukata Photobooth. As for entertainment, there were many cool performances ranging from singing acapella groups (JIVE, Acamazing, etc) to dancing groups (Soul Run, [N]-Motion, etc.) to other UCSD clubs (Kendo Club, Karate Club, Hawaii Club, etc.) and much more! (Check out the Official Matsuri Website for more details.)

Everyone worked very hard to make this big event a huge success, from the committee heads, who planned the whole event, to the volunteers, who helped with preparations before the event day and worked at the booths on the event day. It was a team effort. All in all, it was a very exciting night and we were glad to share a part of our culture with the San Diego community!