The Japanese Student Association will hold the annual Sakura Festival, which is a traditional Japanese celebration of the cherry blossom tree.
Students might have noticed the spring blooms on the pink, flowery trees while running on the bike path or all around campus.
Ohio University has more than 200 cherry blossom trees or sakura trees given by Chubu University, a Japanese university that partners with OU. Chubu University gives OU blossom trees every year.
In light of spring, the Japanese Student Association will hold a Sakura Festival on Sunday to celebrate the cherry blossoms and Japanese culture through traditional Japanese food and dancing.
“The Sakura blooming is a really huge event in Japan,” Jade Ball, a senior studying communication, said. “It signifies the renewal of the year.”
Sakura Festival will have performances such as taiko drumming, percussion which originates from Japan, a student-run play performed by students from Chubu University, Kendo sword fighting and the Soran Bushi, which is a dance about the life of a fisherman.
“(Sakura Festival) definitely opens the culture,” Zanna Jansen, a freshman studying English, said. “American culture is already so mixed with other cultures, it’s pretty much a big melting pot. This is an actual culture with so much history behind it. You really get to see what’s going on in other places of the world.”
Akai Hana, a Japanese restaurant in Columbus, will cater the event, which will serve vegetarian and non-vegetarian bento boxes. Bento boxes are traditional lunches in Japan. They are usually served cold with foods such as fish, rice and vegetables.
Ball said one of the misconceptions about Japanese culture is the food.
“Even if you go to a Japanese restaurant, it is Americanized Japanese food," Ball said. 'It’s not Japanese food.”
The event sold out last year, and the Japanese Student Association is expecting the tickets to sell out even with Sakura Festival being on Easter. It is selling tickets on the first floor of Baker Center from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and it has 152 tickets left as of press time.
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Kat Safreed, the public relations director of the Japanese Student Association, will emcee at the Sakura Festival. Safreed said many people do not know a lot about Japanese culture.
“They don’t know exactly what goes on in the culture because it’s just difficult when you live in the Midwest, there’s not a lot of diversity. That’s why I think Ohio University is an amazingly interesting campus that we have these kind of different cultural events from International Student Union,” Safreed said.
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