"Earth Day Festival!" Connects Our Love and Concern for Mother Earth

“Earth Day Festival” Connects Our Love and Concern for Mother Earth

By the Tokyo News Group (Originally in Japanese)

On April 22 and 23, Golden Year 3 (2006), initiates of the Tokyo Center attended the “Earth Day Festival” for the first time. The theme of this festival was to thank Mother Earth and also to protect our beautiful planet. Since the launching of the first festival in the United States in 1970, it has developed into the grandest environmental day in the world with 184 countries and regions celebrating at the same time. As part of this worldwide event, “Tokyo 2006 Earth Day” was held in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. Apart from the performances on stage, there were also 250 different booths set up by various organizations, such as animal protection associations, environmental groups, Fair Trade stores, organic shops and vegetarian restaurants. Everyone came together with the same concerns for the earthly environment and the same ideal of co-existing peacefully with other fellow inhabitants on the earth. The visitors were mostly young people. In the two days, the number of participants reached 100,000.

The initiates in Tokyo Center were very glad to take this opportunity to share the “Alternative Living” flyers with the public. Immediately before this event and just in time, the printing company delivered 500,000 flyers. In order to introduce vegetarian food to the crowds, initiates from the Tokyo center ordered all kinds of desserts from the shops managed by a fellow initiate. They also prepared products for sale at the booth such as vegetarian instant noodles, soy vegetarian ingredients and organic tea. A few initiates donned cow and penguin costumes and distributed the flyers in the area around the booth. Others went to parks and nearby residential areas as well as train stations.

The weather was warm and nice on the first day. Many guests brought their pets to the event. One initiate brought 9-month-old vegetarian Takuma, a Labrador Retriever. Takuma wore a T-shirt imprinted with “I am a vegetarian dog” to share our message of compassion to all creatures. Takuma was rescued when he was almost taken to the animal shelter to be killed. Therefore, he wanted to tell his other four-legged friends as well as their owners the importance of keeping a vegetarian diet so that other animals would not lose their lives. Takuma did a wonderful job by attracting many visitors to the booth. After seeing Takuma, a young man commented, “ I wanted to be a vegetarian but could not do so. I lost to a dog.” Many people asked questions such as, “I am a vegetarian myself, but can my dog get used to this diet too?” or “Where can we buy vegetarian dog food?” A veterinarian said, “I always feel giving vegetarian food to dogs when they are sick is very good, but have had a hard time convincing the owners to do so. From now on, I will spend more time on studying this subject.”

After reading the Alternative Living flyer, a guest said, “I have always had the thought that vegetarianism is not only good for health, but also good for the environment and many other aspects. It’s really so!” He gladly called his friends on his cell phone to come over to our booth and also bought a large bag of vegetarian ingredients. Some guests exclaimed after seeing the list of vegetarian Nobel Prize winners, famous singers and stars, “It’s so cool to be a vegetarian!” Others said “This information will be very convincing when introducing vegetarianism to friends and relatives!” The guests appeared to be especially interested in the vegetarian foods and gave us warm responses. Young people in particular seemed to more easily accept the concept of vegetarianism. Thanks to Master’s blessings, we truly noticed that the consciousness of people has been elevated.