This site is a tribute to the my elders, my family and the past; while also becoming a hub for a bit of my professional / nonprofit background.
To begin: I am a husband and father, a coach, and a designer/developer (professionally). From youth and high school sports, I have coached at a plethora of levels. I enjoy nurturing and helping to build the next generation of athletes/students into something positive, while creating a nourishing environment of grit building, but engulfed with empathy. I am a part of judo as well (lbjudodojo.org), while holding the title of 1st Vice President for our Long Beach Japanese Cultural Center (lbjcc.org).
My current venture sits under the umbrella of Kuromatsu, LLC. and our flag ship service to help athletes reach their dreams at the Athletic Universe.
You can follow me on instagram or say hi by emailing me: email me.
Amache Water Tower, courtesy of Densho.org on behalf of the Wada and Homma Family Collection. Taken in 1944
My elders endured being illegally prisoned here in 1942, processed through Santa Anita Track and engulfed in inhumane conditions. This is a peice of history that cannot be forgotten, as I have witnessed the generational trauma and economic instability it has inflicted, not only upon my family, but on the Japanese American community as a whole.
I use this small space as a tribute as well as volunteering for the Long Beach Japanese Cultural Center (1st Vice President), and Long Beach Judo dojo. The least I can do to repay what they experienced is to strengthen the community and spread respectful and important values. Being able to continue the traditions and spread the stories of those who came before us is extremely important. All while withholding the morality of ethics that is expected of us.
If you're interested in more information on the history of Japanese Americans, please also visit jamuseum.org
A Designer and Developer that began at Pacific Sunwear, and continued onto other corporate
entities such as Citigroup, O’Neill, the environmental software company, Locus Technologies and so much more.
The professional
journey then lead to eventually being involved in multiple start ups such as Compellon and DocMatter. During
this
part of my career I have also worked with countless large and small companies as an independent designer and
developer.
Successfully won Hackathons with Omega Ortega LLC ( http://www.omegaortega.com). Albeit we have won accolades for
our mobile application creations, having actual emotional impacts on their pinpointed users has been astounding,
and reinforces our will push for well rounded human centric design. Some of the hackathons we have participated
in are Sears, Novartis, HLTH Hack, BNP and Salesforce.
I have worked on everything from loan origination systems, mobile application gaming, interfaces that are
dispalyed on refrigerators to assist in Creating clothing lines.
My work portfolio can be found at anthonytanaka.com.
My LinkedIn Profile
Over 25 years ago I was a very avid Flash designer/enthusiast.
I remember going to many of the Flash conventions that Adobe and the community were running, like Flash Forward
and reading books like 'Masters of Flash'.
However, amongst all of the works that I had encountered, a creative director had built a site to show off a new
experimental light effect he had built in flash, along with his portfolio.
The ray of light.net was pretty inspirational for me, and I commend Yasuto Suga to this day for pioneering that
site.
This site has taken inspiration from that, and growth from my own professional and personal experiences have
been vectorized into here.
Whether we work together, have worked together, have been friends, are family, or I've coached you, or will
coach you (soccer); my expectations for myself
are to always leave a positive mark on your life, and hopefully... maybe.. you'll find some inspiration or hope
with what you see here.
