Maybe weekly, I’ll feature an account on Twitter that’s worth a follow. Today I’m featuring @horinyo (ホリーニョ) from Osaka who tweets colorized black and white photos of Okinawa before and after the war. The photos are amazing and with close to 9,000 of them, you can spend days scrolling through their Twitter feed. Interesting (well, at least to me) is that the account has amassed close to 8,000 followers and I think this is important to note as there are photos that show our devastated island after the war that I hope many outside of Okinawa will learn about. The tweet and photo above is one of the more recent ones originally from June 1945 in the Shuri area. How great would it be to learn that this family survived the war.
Category: Photos
2009 Grand Prize winning photo for the 27th Okinawan Festival goes to
Congratulations to Marc Orbito. His photo won HUOA’s Grand Prize for this year’s 27th Okinawan Festival. Marc’s photos from this year’s festival can be viewed on his Flickr 2009 Okinawan Festival set.
Beautiful photos of Okinawa on your iPhone? There’s an app for that.
We’re big fans of Apple Inc. here so of course, we love the iPhone. For USD $0.99, you can buy an app of beautiful photos of Okinawa shot by none other than Mr. O-pop himself, Rinken Teruya (founder of all things Rinken). The app, simply called “Okinawa,” features the song “Takouyama” sung by Tomoko Uehara, vocalist of Rinken Band and can be found here (iTunes link). Information about the app can be found here.
Syakari’s stage setup
Chiaki from the J/O-pop group Syakari shares a pic of their stage setup. Pretty cool.
(Via しゃかりデジカメ日記.)
Off the Wall to feature live Okinawan music!!!
Off the Wall
Originally uploaded by Champuru
Watch, enjoy and listen to live Okinawan music every 1st and 3rd Wednesday night of the month at Off the Wall (Aiea, Hawaii).
(From their email newsletter—nifee deebitan to Sandaa-sensei for the tip!):
Join us this coming Wednesday, September 17, at OFF THE WALL BAR for LIVE OKINAWAN MUSIC by Afuso-Ryu Gensei Kai Hawaii (featuring Grant “Sandaa” Murata-sensei, Kenton Odo-sensei & members of the club).
Music starts at 8:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
For this special event we have drink specials of $7 – Orion Okinawan Beer (21 oz); purchase a bottle of Awamori and we will hold it for you—featuring Shimauta Awamori or Iichiko Kurobin Shochu Bottles for only $40.00 (at a special price only for this day).
Enjoy Okinawan food dishes such as Rafute, Goya (bittermelon) Champuru, Tofu Champuru, Eggplant Pork Miso Champuru and more!
Seating is limited!!!
For More Information conctact us @ Ph: 808.486.WALL (808.486.9255).
Located @ the Pearl Kai Shopping Center, across from Pearlridge Sears
98-199 Kamehameha Hwy, B-10
Aiea, Hawaii 96701
The food and atmosphere there is excellent (okay, to be fair, I’ve only been there once—check out Donna’s pics of their delicious food—but more reason to go back, yeah?). I’m so there! Tobiiri anyone? (And Sandaa-sensei, I’m coming for one of those bottles of Shimauta Awamori. 😉 )
Enjoy pictures from this year’s Okinawan Festival in Hawaii
So I didn’t live-blog this year’s Okinawan Festival but not to fret, there are pictures up on the Web that’ll make you feel as if you were there IRL.
HonoluluAdvertiser.com (link: http://bit.ly/WpuIF) has a total of seven pics up here—several of the pics featuring Derek Ichiro Shiroma’s group Urizun’s performance on Saturday.
starbulletin.com (link: http://bit.ly/4aVJ8G) has three pics up—one of them with Sara and Stacie who are kutu players from Miyashiro Soho Kai.
And as always, lots of pics are already up on Flickr (link).
LINA blogs a picture of MAX
Just to show that yup, they’re still here (what with their last album having been released a zillion years ago, in like 2006), LINA of MAX blogged this picture of them just before a performance. (Btw, she’s quite the blogger.) They still look great — can’t let Amuro take all the thunder — and the only thing they have for 2008 is a song in a recently released compilation album from their management company called “a special day” (the album is called “SPRING HARMONY,” released 2/13/08). Now if we can only get the SPEED gang together again…
Never heard of MAX? Check out their music at the iTunes Store. Although it’s only available as a partial album from the iTunes Store, I highly recommend their “Jewel of Jewels” album which has a couple of songs that fuse Okinawan minyou (folk music) with their famous Euro beat J-pop. Before you dismiss purchasing it since it’s not available in its entirety, you’re only missing three instrumental songs that are each less than a minute long.
(Link: ライブ直前っ！｜MAX LINAオフィシャルブログ.)
Web: Picture Okinawa
Being a fan of annya_okinawa’s Flickr photostream, I was quite happy to see a post introducing her new photography website called Picture Okinawa. Filled with a growing number of beautiful images from Okinawa, you can easily spend an hour or two at the site. Photo blog, HDR Japan, is also worth checking out too.
Lina (MAX) to release photobook ‘LINA SINGS’ on 12/22
Lina (30, of the J-pop group MAX) announced on her blog the upcoming 12/22 release of her solo photobook (shashinshuu) LINA SINGS. Her fellow band mate, Reina, has already released two photobooks the latest R-017 is from 2006. (Above image comes via Lina’s blog.)
Churamana posts a photo album from Hawaii
Churamana has a photo album up on their blog of images from their stay here in Hawaii where they performed at Kapiolani Park (Waikiki, Hawaii) for the 25th Okinawan Festival. The above pic (taken at the festival in the KZOO Radio booth) is one of many you’ll find in their photo album in Hawaii.
