A few months after the
Northern California Cherry Blossom Festival, you can go to the
Nihonmachi Street Fair, which is also in
San Francisco's
Japantown but is held in August (in 2001, August 11 and 12). There's a lot of overlap with the Cherry Blossom Festival--food, a kids' area, traditional performances such as
taiko--but one of the Street Fair's special themes is contemporary
Japanese-American and
Asian-American youth culture, especially
music. Although there's a significant amount of Chinese and other non-Japanese Asian participation in the April festival, the Street Fair has even more. The distinctive and artistic fair posters have been designed by Chinese-American
Leland Wong for the last 27 years. Some of the handscreened prints are in the collections of the
Oakland Museum of California.
www.nihonmachistreetfair.org (even has a gallery of the posters--very cool)