Two words that got me thinking…

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Yukari

I’ve written about coincidence(Well, I believe there is no such thing as coincidence) few posts ago, but it happened again.

I came across something wonderful today. I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this, and unfortunately I am not crafty enough to combine both stories and make it into a neat blog post. I could have written two separate posts, but they both came out pretty much at the same time, like a spark of lightening. So I will write about both in this post, separately.

1) In my last post, I wrote about Breathe Now, and how “It’s Okay” for women to want to have a break, ask for help, etc… and that would be our theme for the conference. This morning, I happened to go read Catherine(@Herbadmother)’s latest blog post. And she happened to link to her older post, titled, “I Am Mother, Hear Me Roar.” – which is a brilliant post, you should go read it now.

There I got to see amazing Tony Porter’s TED Talk titled, “A call to men.”

I loved the talk, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it until today. In the talk, Tony talks about how men are often pressured to be tough, strong, dominating…and how important it is for us to teach boys “Its Okay to not be dominating, It’s Okay to have feelings and emotions, it’s Okay to promote equality…”… Get it? The key words. The mantra was there…It was an “AHA!” moment for me.

I know men suffer from the different kind of pressures from women. Women are often pressured to be feminine, skinny, beautiful, and domestic etc, men are pressured to be strong, powerful and to make more money than women, etc.

Our entire society is based on the expectation from stereotypes.

When we watched the documentary MISSRepresentation at Blissdom, some of the feedbacks from the women were, even though the film was focused on girls and women and their images through media, as mothers of boys (including myself), how important it is for the parents, and the community, to teach boys real values. We are responsible of teaching them that girls are not objects, and they don’t need to look beautiful and skinny. And, we also need to teach boys themselves, that they are OK not to be tough and dominating. It’s OK for boys to cry. It’s OK for boys to be sensitive.

And we at Breathe Now are trying to send the message, like Tony, “It’s Okay to not to meet the expectations!” – it was an pretty awesome realization.

2) Second AHA moment came from Alison(@Nummiesbras)’s post about Blissdom Canada (This is a wonderful post too.) She writes about this one mom at her panel who said “I just write about my kids.” – I was in the room when this happened, and saw Alison, who was on the panel, quickly grab a microphone and said “You do not JUST write about kids.” I wanted to get up and clap. So when I read Catherine’s post and saw her touching the same subject there,(“Just a mom”), I knew it was a sign that I had to write about it too.

Women tend to devalue themselves. I have no idea why. Even I do it. “Oh, I just have a small business” “I’m just a blogger” “I’m just a mom”…

We are not “just” anything. You are not “just” a Stay-At-Home Mom. (Man, that’s a hard job. I can’t do it.)

Then I almost laughed out loud when I remembered the song I sang at Karaoke/Costume wrap up party was No Doubt’s “Just a Girl”. That song is my life’s theme song. How funny.

Let’s stop saying “Just”, Okay? We(well, I) need to learn to be proud of what we do!

Hi, My name is Yukari, and I am a business owner, a writer, a mom, and many more other things.

And you?

The man who biked across Canada

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Yukari

Last week, I had a privilage of meeting Ryo Ambe, Japanese man who cycled across Canada.

I didn’t know anything about his trip until I got an email from Mike Abe, president of Victoria Nikkei Cultural Society, and well respected leader in Japanese-Canadian community in Victoria. Soon after that, I found Ryo on Twitter and made contact with him. And I attended the press conference at the city hall the next day.

There were about 20 people gathered, most of them wearing Support Japan T-shirts. Ryo talked about his trip and showed us some slides from his massive photo collection.

Unfortunately, I was unable to accompany the group of cyclists to Mile Zero, Ryo’s official goal of this trip, but you can see the clip from CTV here.

The next day I took Ryo out to lunch at Daidoco (Best Japanse lunch spot in Victoria in my opinion) and got to chat about his experience.

Ryo used to work at the department store Isetan. But after losing his friend to cancer,who told him to follow his dreams, and after the 311 earthquake and Tsunami, he decided to come to Canada, his favourite country, and bike across it from Halifax to Victoria to thank the people in Canada for their support. He started in May, and arrived in Victoria in late September. That’s 7900Km!

We talked about a lot of different things, my living in Canada, his experience in Canada….we both agreed that this is a very fine country.

He is going back to Japan in October, and hopes to do another quick bike trip in Taiwan, which also helped Japan so much after the disaster, to thank the people there.

He also said he wants to write a book about his ride in Canada. Good luck Ryo!

You can read his blog (mostly in Japanese) here. http://transcontinentaldiary.blogspot.com/

On Getting Engaged

Posted on August 22, 2011 by Yukari

We have uploaded the video few weeks ago, but the YouTube show my friend Russel and I are doing has turned 1!
Thank you so much for your support.

I think Russel and I met at Spring 2010 Twestival. I called on his Twitter profile pic being too scary and then we totally hit it off.
I still remember the time I had dinner with him at Bard and Banker about starting a video show. Originally my idea was to have a show called “Today on my Timeline” – how cheesy is that?!

Since then, Russel came up with the name Getting Engaged, and we shot our first episode in my old house’s backyard deck. Unlike Russel, who has background in radio, I had never done a video show before. I was nervous, and the first episode was filmed with a pitcher of Margarita I made….and the rest is history.

We had been engaged on Facebook for few months…until I decided to take it down as so many people believed we were a couple and many friends advised me that it’s not helping on me finding a date.(True story)

I know I’m not just speaking for myself when I say we are so blessed with everybody’s support. The opening of the show was created by our Twitter friend Jon Strocel, whom I just happen to meet in Vancouver once for Chris Guillebeau‘s AONC book signing. Since then we got “engaged” and he created the opening for us. Thank you Jon.

We have had many awesome guests and I look forward to having many more. In fact we have a few guests lined up for next few months.
We also have something new in the works as well….can’t wait to show you all!

Here is our latest episode, official opening of Season 2, and we got back to the basics here.

Thank you for watching and thank you, to my Social Media husband Russel for putting up with me.

2011 TED Prize winner: JR

Posted on March 4, 2011 by Yukari

Couple of days ago, I went to see TED 2011‘s simulcast at Belfry theatre. As you might know, TED 2011, the annual conference for “Ideas Worth Spreading” was happening in Palm Springs, CA. I attended the last session of the day 2 of the 4-day event, named “Radical Collaboration”.

There were 4 presenters, including one “surprise” guest which turned out to be Jamie Oliver. I know all these are old news, all the talks are on TED.com website for you to check out if you like.
But I wanted to talk about one of the speakers, TED Prize winner, JR, street artist.

When they announced the winner of this year’s TED prize, I had no idea who he was. When this skinny French guy came out and started talk about his experience, I still wasn’t convinced what was so special about him. But by the end of his talk, I was absolutely FASCINATED!

He creates huge black and white portraits of people and paste them all over the world.

“In 2007, with business partner Marco, he did “Face 2 Face,” which some consider the biggest illegal photo exhibition ever. JR and a grassroots team of community members posted huge portraits of Israelis and Palestinians face to face in eight Palestinian and Israeli cities, and on both sides of the security fence/separation barrier.

He embarked on a long international trip in 2008 for his exhibition “Women Are Heroes,” a project underlining the dignity of women who are the target of conflict. In 2010, the film Women Are Heroes was presented at the Cannes Film Festival and received a long standing ovation.”(Excerpt from TEDprize.org website)

Check out this video to see how amazing his projects are;

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

I particularly loved this words – “Women are heroes“. This fall, 3 amazing women and I are putting together a conference for women, called Breathe Now. We wanted the opportunity for all women (students, business women, moms) to get together and connect, learn and share their stories. The website is still new and there are LOTS to be worked on, but we are very very excited about this.

——

As TED prize winner, JR was granted one wish. His wish :
“I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we’ll turn the world…INSIDE OUT.”

Learn about his Inside Out project here.

I know it’s a long video, but you can see his complete talk here;

In the video, he talks about how something that seem so unnecessary as art is indeed so needed in areas of conflict and poverty. In those areas, people are hungry for culture. I particularly LOVED the episode from “Face 2 Face” project during Palestine and Israel conflict. (Around 7:00 in the video)
Another episode he shares is a comment by one of the bystanders -to a guy asking “What is the purpose of your art project?” He replied, “You’ve been watching this project for few hours, and while you were, you didn’t think about what you’re going to eat tomorrow. This is art.”

It’s not in the video above, but what happened after his talk was even more amazing. The MC, Chris Anderson asked if anyone in the audience could help out with his wish. Several people raised hands, and they each offered studio space in NY, network of photographers, invited him to come to their country to do the project etc…as you know, to attend the actual TED conference it costs you at least $6,000. So you can imagine the crowd….one lady was from Sundance Film Festival and she offered JR a grant to make his documentary film on the spot. Someone from Google Earth offered to work with him to have his art visible in Google Earth(!!!!) And the most amazing offer of all was this guy, who said ” Um, I own a dessert – I can help if you want a huge space”! Dessert?!?

It was such an inspirational afternoon. I was so glad I attended. Then again, it would have been absolutely amazing to actually being there at Palm Springs.

For those who love getting inspired – there are various TEDx(Independently organized TED event) events coming to Victoria this year.
TEDxUvic is March 12, and my Getting Engaged co-host Russel and I are volunteering for TEDxJuanDeFuca on April 30. Check us out.