Cindy Liu

Vendors set up shop, offering food to the festival attendees. Restaurants such as Drunken Fish, PokeDoke and Top Sushi were featured in this event. “I learned a lot about the food, especially, just because I wasn’t familiar with Japanese food besides sushi, which I’ve tried, and I was able to go to all the different booths and kind of see what they had,” Agarwal said.

The Botanical Garden celebrated the history and culture of Japan with food, performances and activities in their annual Japanese Festival from Sept. 2-Sept. 4. 

Junior Garon Agarwal volunteered at the Japanese Festival’s “Seinen Kai” food booth for National Honor Society (NHS).  He volunteered for ten hours in total. 

“I prepped the noodles and sauce for a dish called yakisoba, which is a noodle-type dish with pickled onion on the side,” Agarwal said. “You had to cut open the noodle packets, separate the noodles and the sauce, cut up all the vegetables and then put it all on the grill, stir fry it together, and then assemble it into a to-go cup container.”

For senior Phoebe Chen, this was her second year volunteering at the festival. Serving thousands of customers was no easy task, and she found that it was comparable to a cooking game.

“There are customers, and you try and make [food] as fast as you can and as well as you can so they don’t get upset,” Chen said.

Both volunteers received more than just volunteer hours; they also learned about Japanese culture. Chen recommends any prospective or current NHS members to volunteer next year at this event. 

“I think it’s a really fun way to get your hours in because then you get to talk to a lot of people while doing an experience that you normally wouldn’t get to do, and you get a free shirt at the end,” Chen said.