A Glendale resident shared her Armenian culture by collaborating on a multicultural picture book while studying abroad in Mitaka, Japan, earlier this year.
Mayreni Abajian, 22, helped create and design two pages in “Meo’s Trip to Earth,” a picture book that follows a resident named Meo, who lives on the moon and visits Earth.
Meo visits various countries and tastes food from all over the world. During his journey, he invites his new friends to visit the moon and enjoy a feast featuring food from countries he visited.
In the picture book, the Crescenta Valley High School graduate drew an Armenian church, Mt. Ararat, a girl in traditional clothing and a table featuring foods such as apricots, pomegranates and lavash, which is a flat bread.
The majority of the story is told in Japanese, Abajian said, but some lines are in languages represented in the book such as Armenian and Tagalog.
While studying at the International Christian University in Mitaka, Abajian began volunteering with an organization called Glocal Mitaka, which connects foreign-exchange students with their Japanese counterparts.
With the organization’s help, Abajian and her peers conducted short language lessons and read stories, including their original short story, to students at Japanese picture-book houses.
Abajian organized a visit to the Embassy of Armenia in Tokyo, where she and Glocal Mitaka representatives introduced the book to ambassador Grant Pogosyan. While she said Pogosyan couldn’t donate funds to help publish multiple copies, he did promote it online.
The embassy also displayed excerpts from the book at the Armenian Culture Week exhibition in Tokyo.
“I think he was glad we had a project including Armenia. It’s often overlooked as a small country, and so I think he appreciated we were doing this project,” said Abajian during a phone interview.
About $400 was raised through an event showcasing the picture book, she said, and 20 copies were printed, some of which went to Japanese libraries.
Upon returning home in June, Abajian said the best part of her year abroad was sharing her Armenian culture with the Japanese community.
Now a senior at UC San Diego, Abajian said she hopes to start a Kickstarter campaign to help raise funds to publish more copies of the picture book.
