🌈Join us on Saturday 6/29 from 4-9PM at Terasaki Budokan. Okaeri Matsuri is a community festival that gathers our Nikkei LGBTQ+ community to celebrate queer joy, inspired by Japanese summer festivities! The event is free, open to all LGBTQ+ communities, family and friends, and will include: Odori/Dancing, Performances, Games, Food, Raffles, and more! RSVP is required to attend. RSVP at: bit.ly/OkaeriMatsuri-2024.

Okaeri Ondo was created in collaboration by Okaeri Community and Great Leap to honor our queer and trans ancestors, and celebrate our LGBTQ+ community by welcoming them back home.

About Great Leap: Great Leap’s FandangObon (FO) convenes into one circle to include participatory music and dance traditions of Fandango of Vera Cruz, Mexico rooted in African, Mexican and indigenous music; Japanese Buddhist Obon circle dances in remembrance of ancestors; and West African dance and drums of Nigeria and New Guinea.

About Okaeri Community:
Okaeri Community's mission is to create visibility, compassionate spaces, and transformation for LGBTQ+ Nikkei and their families by sharing our stories and providing culturally-rooted support, education, community-building, and advocacy.

Okaeri Ondo Lyrics
Verse 1
Water and ocean
Ebb and a flow
Through joy and through tears
We guide our way home

In the past and the present
We’ve looked in the mirror
Been made to feel small
Asked “Do we belong here?”

Chorus
Take off your shoes
You are not alone
Tadaima! Okaeri!
You are welcomed home

Whoever you are
Gay, trans, and queer
Tadaima! Okaeri!
You are welcome here

Verse 2
Over rivers and mountains
Across deserts and seas
Voices once silenced
Our ancestors speak

Our steps trace their footprints
Our drums to their beats
Manifesting dreams
They call to me

Chorus
Take off your shoes
You are not alone
Tadaima! Okaeri!
You are welcomed home

Whoever you are
Gay, trans, and queer
Tadaima! Okaeri!
You are welcome here


Verse 3 (suggested)
Now we stand together
After countless days and nights
Gathering to dance
In joy and in light

As we join in the circle
Together we bring
Our histories and futures,
To each other we sing

Chorus
Take off your shoes
You are not alone
Tadaima! Okaeri!
You are welcomed home

Whoever you are
Gay, trans, and queer
Tadaima! Okaeri!
You are welcome here

Video Credits:
Odori Instructors: Gia Gunn & Mariko Rooks
Odori Teaching Team: Deena Umeda & Jamie Yabuno
Song: Okaeri Ondo
Videographer and Editor: Rino Kodama
Made in collaboration by Okaeri Community & Great Leap