We did a family trip to Little Tokyo today to celebrate Nisei Week. It’s the 75th celebration and even though we’re in the middle of a heatwave, we had a fantastic time.

Admission to the Japanese American National Museum was free today, so we checked out the current exhibitions. First was Sugar/Islands: Finding Okinawa in Hawai’i – The Art of Laura Kina and Emily Hanako Momohara, which featured paintings and photographs documenting the migrant workers in Hawai’i. Next was Before They Were Heroes: Sus Ito’s World War II Images, a fantastic collection of candid photographs of Japanese Americans fighting in WWII. I really liked this exhibition, since it showed the day-to-day lives of the soldiers and it also touched on the dilemma facing most of the soldiers: they were fighting for a country that sent most of their families into concentration camps.

Of course, in between all of the sightseeing and museum-ing, we did some eating. On our way there, we stopped at 85 Degrees for pastries and ice coffees, then noshed on ramen, mochi, poke, and ice cream. Yes, even the heatwave didn’t stop us from scarfing down bowls of hot ramen from Manichi Ramen, as shown above.