It used to be hard to distinguish between shoppers and the people attending Aki Matsuri, Bellevue’s Japanese festival.

That’s when it was still held in Factoria mall.

In that first year, 1998, Redmond residents Tom and Katsuko Brooke stepped up to the challenge of creating a new Eastside festival after Bellevue’s Japan Week had just run out of funding.

“We weren’t allowed to have food booths, we only had one small stage – it was just a small thing at first,” said Tom, president of the Eastside Nihon Matsuri Association that puts on Aki Matsuri.

Today, the Japanese festival hardly resembles that modest event in Factoria.

From 1,000 attendees in 1998, to 20,000 last year, Aki Matsuri’s popularity has sky-rocketed. Held this year, Sept. 10-11 at Bellevue College, it’s now the region’s largest Japanese gathering, along with Seattle Cherry Blossom Festival.

With food offerings from teriyaki to somen, people dressed in colorful kimono and happi coats, and the Omikoshi, an ornate Shinto palanquin carried by 20 people throughout the campus, one can take in Japanese culture with all the senses over a two-day period.

There’s a flea market, a kimono fashion show and free demonstrations in taiko drumming, dance, martial arts, tea ceremony, and a folktale puppet show. People can take workshops on bonsai, taiko, Japanese gardening and leather art. Plus, the Washington Koi & Water Garden Society will hold the 20th Annual Koi Show.

For Tom a retired Procter & Gamble employee, and Katsuko, Aki Matsuri has become a full-time, year-round job.

“Katsuko is up working by 6 a.m. and once I’ve had my morning coffee, I’m making phone calls and sending emails, too,” Tom said.

Tom says maintaining cultural understanding between the U.S. and Japan, and educating others on Japanese culture, is a motivating factor. But it’s also a love for the country where he lived and worked for eight years, and where he met his wife.

The Brookes aren’t the only ones who’ve lent their passion for Japan to Aki Matsuri’s cause.

“I guess (my passion) started in 1945, when I arrived in Japan as a young G.I.,” said Hugh Burleson, a volunteer and Bellevue resident.

It was the kindheartedness of the people that struck him – a sharp contrast to the “Japs” portrayed in World War II propaganda.

“It was all ‘ohayo gozaimasu’s’ (good morning) and smiles, instead of the sullenness and cruelty I had expected,” he said.

His late wife, a Japanese woman, also contributed to his love of the country.

The widower describes their 55 years of marriage as a 55-year course in Japanese language, psychology and culture.

In addition to his volunteer work with Aki Matsuri, Burleson heads Bellevue’s Sister Cities Association, which includes a relationship with Japan’s Yao city. He says relations between Japan and the U.S. are important, especially here in Washington State.

Because of their proximity, Washington maintains a close relationship with the archipelago.

The 36 sister-city and one sister-state relationship between Japan and Washington, provide opportunities for exchanges between the people of both places, said Akira Takeda, of the Consulate-General of Japan in Seattle.

While this relationship may be ongoing, it’s hard to know the future of local opportunities for cultural education and exchange, such as Aki Matsuri or the Cherry Blossom Festival; especially when they exist, mainly, because of a few individuals who are like Tom: “crazy enough” to spend their retired years or free time running an event, instead of taking time to travel or relax, he said.

More than 300 people volunteer for Aki Matsuri, including a core team of the Eastside Nihon Matsuri Association, but there’s only one set of Tom and Katsuko.

As Burleson put it, he’s an incredibly competent president and it would take “half a dozen people to replace her.”

Finding a new leader, or, leaders, for the festival will be crucial, Tom says.

“I’m 73 and I can’t do it forever. But it’s so important, not only for the Japanese community, but for everybody, that Aki Matsuri continues.”

More information:

The 14th Annual Japanese Cultural Arts Event (Aki Matsuri)

10 a.m. – 6 p.m., Sept. 10 and 10 a.m. -4:30 p.m., Sept. 11 at  Bellevue College (BC), Main Campus

Buildings: Gym, C, D, E, L, & R-Bldg: 3000 Landerholm Circle SE, Bellevue.

Call 425-861-7865, email info2011@enma.org or go to  www.enma.org for more information and a campus map.

Admission and Parking are free. Fees apply to some workshops.

This year’s features:

Pioneer leather artist, Keiko Murakami from Chiba, Japan will exhibit many of her works and explain craft leather.

Kimono Coordinator, Ugawa Yu and five assistants from Hyogo, Japan will do a presentation at 4:30 p.m., Saturday and hold a Yukata fashion show on the stage at 2p.m., Sunday.

A full-scale Omikoshi from Tsubaki Grand Shrine of America will be on display during the two-day event, and at noon on Saturday, there will be a Shinto ceremony to purify the Omikoshi followed by the Omikoshi procession in the campus courtyards. Matsuri visitors are welcome to join in.

Featured documentary film, “Great Grandfather’s Drum” will be shown to raise funds for Relief and Recovery from Tsunami and Earthquake in Northern Japan at noon, 1:30 p.m., 3 p.m. and 4:30 p.m., on Saturday and noon, 1:30 p.m, and 3 p.m., Sunday in @ L-Bldg L126.