Ginger Schulte

Max Yang helps cooks at the Seinen Kai booth put toppings on Okonomiyaki for the customers.

Students part of the National Honor Society volunteered at the annual Japanese Festival held at the Botanical Garden over Labor Day weekend. A few weeks before Labor Day weekend, the NHS sponsor sent an email to members inviting them to volunteer.

Volunteers assisted the cooks in making and delivering the food to customers, at the Seinen Kai booth that sells Okonomiyaki, Yakisoba, and shaved ice. Brendan Raskin was a student volunteer and assisted mainly with the shaved ice.

“I mostly served and made snow cones. I had to memorize the specials and work efficiently to be able to serve the customers,” Raskin said. “I also had to prepare good results with the snow cones. The snow cone group tried really hard to make sure that the specialty snow cones looked super pretty.”

Other student volunteers worked at the other stations as well. The other stations included putting yakisoba, Japanese vegetables and noodle stir fry into a bowl as well as dressing the Okonomiyaki, a vegetable pancake, with the toppings each customer wanted. Anika Speicher worked in these stations. 

“The first part of the day I made the noodles and the second part of the day I made the pancakes and handed out drinks,” Speicher said.

There were two shifts in a day. The first shift was from 9:30 a.m. till 2:30 p.m. The second shift was from 2:30 p.m. till 7:30 p.m. Most volunteers signed up for two shifts, so that they were able to receive free food from the booth and a festival T-shirt. During their shifts, students were able to learn about Japanese culture by trying traditional Japanese foods.

“I loved the yakisoba. It was extremely tasty. You expect the noodles to be savory and taste much like regular noodles, but the sweet and savory mixture between the cabbage and the noodles make a perfect mixture of sweet and savory,” Raskin said.

During the weekend, when volunteers worked two five-hour shifts, they earned 10 hours of community service hours. While students were able to receive hours for their National Honor society requirements, many students volunteered because they thought that they would enjoy it. 

“I signed up to volunteer at the festival because as someone who is really into Japanese culture and Japanese animation I thought it was a cool and fun way to be able to explore more of the culture up close. The NHS hours were just a bonus to the festival,” Raskin said.

During their time at the festival the volunteers not only learned how to make traditional Japanese foods, but also how to make their booth run smoothly. Many of the volunteers embedded themselves in other parts of the Japanese Festival and culture. 

“A really nice older lady came up to me at the stand after ordering the Niji special kakigori,” Raskin said. “She told me that the meaning of Niji meant ‘rainbow,’ and it is also two o’clock depending on how you pronounce it. So the Niji Special means rainbow or two o’clock special.”