Forming Buds

When the smell of pink buds on the trees mixes with the boom of taiko drums, it's time for Cupertino's Cherry Blossom Festival.

This year's festival is the 28th of its kind put on by Cupertino's Sister City Committee, which oversees the city's relationship with Toyokawa, Japan. It's set for this Saturday and Sunday at Memorial Park, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. Admission is free.

Sister City Committee member Uina Kubota says a goal of the festival to get attendees interested in Japanese culture through its arts. To that end, Kubota and fellow committee member Barbara Nishimoto have put together an entertainment lineup that includes five taiko drum groups, traditional and contemporary Japanese dance troupes and groups that will demonstrate at least a half dozen forms of martial arts.

Japanese visual art forms on display will include bonsai, ikebana (flower arranging) and sumi-e (brush painting).

"From ikebana, origami, doll making, Japanese music and so forth, we hope people can get interested in Japanese culture," Kubota says. "There is no need to learn any language to understand arts, itself a universal language; through arts, we can bring people together to learn and to understand each other."

Kubota, who has been involved in putting on the festival for 14 years, says this coming together is as important for the people who organize the event as it is for those who attend.

"The festival is empowering and promotes volunteerism," Kubota adds. "I think a successful festival needs a strong community to support it. A strong community needs every individual working together."

The genesis of the Cherry Blossom Festival came out of the collaborative efforts of Cupertino and Toyokawa. In 1983 Toyokawa gifted its sister city with 200 cherry trees, which were planted in Memorial Park. The festival is a celebration of that gift and of the continued growth of the relationship between the two cities.

Intrinsic to that relationship is a student exchange between seventh- and eighth-graders from each city that usually takes place in the fall. due to safety concerns in the wake of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, but Cupertino's 12 middle school delegates will still be introduced on stage at the festival at noon on Saturday. They'll be joined by members of the Consulate General's Office of Northern California, and by the 2011 Northern California Cherry Blossom Queen and her court.

While Toyokawa was not in the path of the disaster, its Sister City Committee is extending a helping hand to those who have been by selling T-shirts online. The shirts will also be available at the festival.

Closer to home, local nonprofit organizations that support youth sports, student service groups, music and language programs will host booths at the festival, featuring a variety of activities.