Crowds embrace Japanese culture at Sebastopol barbecue

Steven Saito took a bite of the traditional Japanese dessert imagawayaki and judged it worth the wait Sunday at Enmanji Buddhist Temple’s 63rd Teriyaki Chicken Barbecue and Bazaar.

To make the popular treat, volunteers poured batter into special cupped pans and at the proper time sandwiched sweet bean paste between two golden, biscuit-sized cakes. Saito, a San Mateo resident, said the cakes had a savory combination of warm, crispy edges and fluffy insides, while the red bean filling had “just the right amount of sweetness for an adult palate.”

The barbecue Sunday at the temple off Gravenstein Highway South in Sebastopol offered its own combination of culture, history and community. All day long volunteers served up big helpings of teriyaki chicken, rice and potato salad as part of the temple’s primary annual fundraiser.

“The food is the main event,” said Cara Kallen, whose husband Elliot had performed on stage as part of a local taiko group.

The event’s leaders Sunday planned to serve about 3,400 chickens, including about 1,200 sold in box lunches.

“We’re famous for the chicken,” said Mike Uyeda, chairman of the event. The temple even opened a drive-thru at 8 a.m. for motorists to easily pick up the box lunches.

Don Edgar, a member of the Santa Rosa Junior College Board of Trustees, was among the crowd Sunday.

Edgar, whose mother was Japanese, said the barbecue matters to him because of its recognition of Japanese culture and the temple’s connection to the community.

“It’s a great event,” he said. “It’s nice to see some of the older people.”

The day’s entertainment included TenTen Taiko, a Petaluma group that combined taiko drums and the Shinto ritual dance kagura. One dance included two characters - portraying Shinto deities - dressed in kimonos, robes and wooden face masks.

A history exhibit Sunday included a replica camp barrack of the type used to house interned Japanese residents of the western U.S. during World War II. The sparse barrack included stories of some of the local Sonoma County families who were forced to spend the war in internment camps far from home.

One of the barrack’s docents Sunday was Gary Sugiyama, 68, of Santa Rosa, whose parents and older siblings had been sent to a camp in Colorado. When the war ended, the family stayed in Colorado long enough to earn travel money home and then returned to Santa Rosa.

Sugiyama’s wife, Becky, said the barrack serves as a reminder that “we should never let this happen again.”

In retirement, Sugiyama returned to Sonoma County after spending much of his professional life in San Francisco. When he left the county, he said, he had family ties with about half the temple’s members, but while away seemingly all those relatives married into the remaining families.

“Suddenly,” he said, “I was related to everybody.”