Little Tokyo was alive Sunday with taiko drumming and a traditional rice cake pounding ceremony to celebrate the start of the Year of the Snake. The Oshogatsu Festival is celebrated throughout the month of January in Japan. Here in the United States, hundreds gathered at the Japanese American National Museum for the celebration. “We love the crafts and the candy making,” Lynn Pratt of Pasadena told the Daily News. As she has done in the past, she bought her two young children to the festivities. The free event was expected to attract 3,000 people. The museum’s mission is to preserve the traditional culture of Japanese Americans and document the varied rich history of the community through the collection of photos and records, along with oral histories.
Photo by Anissa Thompson
