Photo Dump

I don't have any better way to put it. These are pictures that should have gone up over the summer on this blog, but didn't so here they are just a few more pictures from Moiliili's Summerfest and Bon Dance and the group picture from this year's Summer Session with Rev. William Masuda.

Taken by Rev. Tomo Hojo.

Dharma Night

Recently you may have noticed some changes to the schedule of events at the BSC. This semester we are trying something new with Dharma Nights and Director's Nite which is only having them once a month. We know that everyone is busy and life gets crazy, but if you can take time out of your schedule at least 2 Fridays a month to come hang with us we'd sure appreciate it! Dharma Nights are usually the first Friday of every month and Director's Nite is usually the last Friday of the month. Coming up soon is Director's Nite and we'll be watching Invictus with Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon. We'll also be celebrating our September Birthdays :)

For this month's Dharma Night Rev. Kevin wanted to talk about Rumi since he had received this wall hanging from a Turkish group on campus. Not only that, but Rumi had some very Buddhist thoughts and was a great poet. 

Rev. Kevin admitted that he wasn't an expert on Rumi or anything about Turkey and luckily we have a student Josh Byrnes from Hilo Hongwanji that is a religion major with an emphasis in Sufi who was able  to talk about Rumi and share a few of his personal favorite poems.

Also that night we were blessed enough to meet Ethan Okazaki the newest and youngest member of the Fellowship Club ;)

We look forward to seeing you at either a Director's Nite or a Dharma Night soon!

Manoaphobia 2012

Hey! 

I'm finally catching up on posts and I'm nearly back to the present so yay! On August 31 we held Manoaphobia this year. Unlike years past this year's event was way more planned and put together. We also timed it perfectly so that we would get to host Professor Kawasoe's students from Ryukoku University were here and able to see students at the center.

First all the students and most of the adults aside from Professor Kawasoe, who almost got to take a nap, went on a Scavenger Hunt through UH-Manoa.Cara designed the whole scavenger hunt and at least she gave them a map?!?

Here are Cara and Beau showing off the Scavenger Hunt clues. It was a photo scavenger hunt.

The winning team got to eat first and then everyone else got to eat. We had a good spread that night and I'm seriously not kidding. It's never pretty food, but it does taste good.

After dinner we were lucky enough to get entertained by the Ryukoku students first. I'm sorry I don't remember your names at all and I can't find the itinerary either. Here goes though:

First we had one of them show us Iadou,a form of Japanese Swordsmanship.He didn't bring the real sword, but he brought a nice dupe though.

Then the next performer showed us the art of Rakugo, Japanese story telling with minimal objects. He told us  two stories both of which were fairly amusing , although the stories probably sound different when translated from the original language.

The last performer was a Japanese magician, which I'll admit is just as amusing as an English magician.

After the last Ryukoku student performed Cara and Lacy performed a Japanese song for everyone. Umm...yeah I forget what the song was.

There was also a moment when Professor Kawasoe was teaching us to dance and we all danced around the room. When it was all over we had a few closing remarks by Rev. Kevin and Professor Kawasoe before the everyone headed home for the night.

A photo of all the performers

National Parks Founders Day

ahh... Sometimes things come together unexpectedly and amazingly!


On Saturday August 25th The Jr. YBA was invited to do a service project at the Arizona Memorial ( I think it's actually called Valley of the Pacific now?!?) The service project was to teach visitors how to fold origami paper cranes. The Center is trying to change its image from focusing on war to focusing on what happened and how we move to forgiveness and peace. We were also told that people often leave paper cranes at the Arizona Memorial in honor of people.


We had the nicest park ranger help out on this project. She was enthusiastic and really friendly. She even had got some paper crane earrings from the Made in Hawaii Festival from the week before. We taught people to fold paper cranes from 1-3p.m. that day and even though it did not seem that a lot of people came through we taught quite a few people to fold paper cranes including some of the employees that worked at the Center.

This project was really fun and the room where we were teaching people to fold paper cranes was really spacious and had a nice view of the harbor. Hopefully we'll have the opportunity to do this again in the future.

Folding paper cranes and catching up with each other :)

Teaching people to fold paper cranes. Everyone who folded paper cranes that day had the option to keep the paper cranes they had as a memory of their visit.

Paper cranes all mingling together

Crazy Weekend

After The Gathering 2012 and Young Adult Retreat concluded the following weekend was one of craziness for the Fellowship Club.On Friday August 17 the Fellowship Club met up to attend Mililani's Bon Dance. I heard that everyone had fun and it was good to attend a bon dance together. Ummm....I can't find any pictures as proof though. I know we were there though....

On Saturday several members of the Fellowship Club attended Moiliili's Beach Picnic at Hickam Airforce  Base. The group was also lucky enough to have a Dharma talk story session with Dr. Kenneth Tanaka who was still in town.

view of the harbor at Hickam Airforce Base for Moiliili Hongwanji's Beach Picnic

Fellowship Club participants at Moiliili Hongwanji's Beach Picnic getting ready for Dharma talk story with Dr. Ken Tanaka

On Sunday August 19 The Fellowship Club gathered together to welcome the incoming freshman to UH-Manoa with a very special Freshman Family BBQ. Our incoming freshman are Kathy, Alison, Brandi, Kevin, and Michelle (who is entering UH grad school).

The event was relaxed and enjoyable. It was good to see the freshman come out to the event and we also took time to celebrate our August birthdays. 

The only picture this blogger took. Participants playing down by the river while waiting for food.

More blog posts to come we have been up to some serious shenanigans and have a very full year planned and we can't wait to tell you all about it!

Young Adult Retreat IV- Gathering Part 2

 So in the last post I talked about The Gathering 2012 and how the Young Adult Retreat participants joined the group on Sunday the final day. After The Gathering 2012 concluded on Sunday the Young Adult Retreat participants hiked to Makapuu Lighthouse with Rev. Kevin, Mrs. Kuniyuki, and Rev. Kubose and then afterwards went to play at the beach.

Rev. Hojo hiking to the lighthouse and posing with some fun sidewalk art along the way.

Makapuu Lighthouse

group picture with Rev. Kubose and Mrs. Kuniyuki

Below are some pictures from activities at the Young Adult Retreat.

participants made their own homemade taiko drums and got a taiko lesson from Rev. Earl Ikeda of Moiliili Hongwanji Mission.

Dharma lecture with Rev. Koyo Kubose. 

We hope to see you at next year's Young Adult Retreat which is looking to be on August 2-5, 2013. More Information to follow.

Gathering 2012

Ahhh....I so suck at blogging for the Fellowship Club. I'll do a catch up from August and then a summer 2012 wrap up post.

Above is a picture of most of the participants of Gathering 2012. This picture was taken on Saturday August 11th. 

Gathering 2012 for those who don't know was suppose to be part of the BSC's 40th Anniversary Celebration and a collaboration with the Shin Buddhist Project of Wahiawa Hongwanji Mission and the Young Adult Retreat IV. The speakers for the conference were Dr. Alfred Bloom, Rev. Koyo Kubose, Dr. Kenneth Tanaka, and Cheryl Lippman Tomita. 

On Friday of The Gathering 2012 Rev. Kevin Kuniyuki conducted a special service to honor the BSC's 40th Anniversary. In attendance, we had 2 former directors Rev.Tatsuo Muneto and Rev. Thomas Okano. Also in attendance that night from Kahuku Hongwanji were Mr. & Mrs. Barbara Tatsuguchi and Mrs. Nancy Kunimitsu and her son. Rev. Kuniyuki announced that night that there would be 2 scholarships for both a PBA student and a student associated with the Hongwanji in honor of Kahuku Hongwanji. Kahuku Hongwanji is closing at the end of the year as previously stated in an earlier entry.

After the service and a tribute to the BSC's 40th Anniversary,The Gathering 2012 commenced with a presentation by former Waikiki School principal Cheryl Lippman Tomita. She presented on Habits of Mind and how she was able to incorporate it into the culture of the school and it has continued on since she has left.

On Saturday the rest of the guest speakers gave their thoughts on Habits of Mind and  then there was a breakout session so that the participants could give their thoughts on Habits of Mind and how they thought it would be able to work in their temple. The guest speakers began with Dr. Alfred Bloom who said that while the 16 Habits of Mind were good and related to  the eight fold path he found 16 principles that would help people get along better in their lives.

Dr. Bloom's talk was followed by Dr. Kenneth Tanaka talked about themes from his book Ocean.  He said that many of the principles still applied to temples and that even if we chose to continue using the Habits of Mind we should continue to have Dharma as the center of the temple.

After Dr. Tanaka gave his talk, Rev. Koyo Kubose related to the audience stories about his father. He used stories about his father's patience with everyone not just some people. How he told Dharma School students  to continually thank their shoes and he said that many students his father taught in those days had come up to him in recent years and told him that they still thank their shoes.

After Rev. Kubose talked all the speakers got together and did a panel discussion. Can I say that as Buddhists we have some really bad jokes?!? No, really we do. But the panel was great nonetheless. 

On Sunday the participants of the Young Adult Retreat joined the Gathering participants for a bit but more on that in part 2

Wailua Beach House Daytrip

*This post is once again a catch up post that previously happened. But we hope to see you at an upcoming event soon. There will be a list of upcoming events at the end of this post. Thanks!

On June 30, the Fellowship Club did a joint project with Mililani Dharma School, some of the members of Honolulu Jr. YBA also attended the event. For our first join project we decided to keep it casual and have a fun daytrip to Ms Gay Tanaka's Beach House in Waialua. Below are a few pictures of the beach. We even had a friend come to greet us there. He wandered away later than morning :(

Dr. Mark Unno was also in town for the Jr. YBA convention hosted by Honolulu district. He also made it a point to do lectures for the Buddhist Study Center on the Big Island and Kauai. Dr. Unno also came along on this daytrip to Wailua and gave a lecture targeted toward all the attendees and it seemed that he had a great time hanging out and having fun :) Below is Dr. Unno getting ready to throw the balloon to his partner in the water balloon toss.

Koshin demonstrates Suikawari- a Japanese summer game of splitting a watermelon in half while blindfolded. The game is similar to the American version of Pinata

Below are other participants of the Suikawari challenge (sorry I didn't catch everyone's name!)

Rev. Kevin even participated in the Suikawari challenge and actually broke the watermelon in half. As pictured below.

After we cracked open during we had some watermelon to eat and a seed spitting contest of sorts. There was probably more laughing than spitting going on though. 

This girl and her brother got creative and made a helmet out of the watermelon core and later added eyes. Arynn Ishikawa as seen in the second picture below joked that this maybe her Halloween costume this year. Fruit Ninja Arynn.

With Sugi's help we had some amazing food on the grill. Hot dogs, hamburgers, and veggie burgers. Doesn't it look just a bit yummy?!?

After lunch we had a lecture by Dr. Unno and right before Wayde and Grant had a fight over the hammock and Grant won. He promptly fell asleep. All in all it was a good trip out to the Tanaka Beach House in Wailua. We hope to have more partnerships with Mililani Dharma School and other groups in the future.

Ms Gay Tanaka also took pictures of the event and you can find those on the Mililani Hongwanji Facebook page. Remember to like them to get more updates on what the temple is doing! We hope to see you at the next event or future events!

Upcoming Events:

Young Adult Retreat August 10-13 forms here or contact Jake directly at youth@honpahi.org

Freshman Family BBQ August 19 10am

Manoaphobia August 31 6pm

Wayne Yokoyama Lecture September 12 7pm

Hoshin Seki Lecture September 14 7pm

Peace Day Celebration at Blaisdell Park September 22