Karakui

So we have this playlist called “Today” where we add new music from artists we follow along with songs we haven’t gotten tired of. Every now and then, we’ll recall a song we loved and add it to the playlist too. This is the story of going down a rabbit hole.

There was a drama that once aired on Hawaii’s local Japanese TV station, Kiku-TV, but we can’t recall its name. We weren’t able to watch all of the episodes but luckily followed enough to get to the final episode and knew that J-pop artist Nakashima Mika did a cameo on the show and also sang the song that we were looking for. After a couple of quick searches we were able to track down the song (“Ai no Uta” from 2015) and the drama (“Ometesandou Kou Kou Gasshoubu”, but sadly we weren’t able to find the English title that Kiku-TV used).

You may be asking yourself now, “Karakui, what does this have to do with Okinawa pop culture?!” Glad you asked (and yes, we hear ya!). As we were going down the rabbit hole we found some very interesting things. Yes, very interesting things. One of the actors on the drama was Kabira Jay (from the famous Kabira family), the drama featured quite a few songs from Okinawan artists (BEGIN, MONGOL800, and Kariyushi58), and that song, THAT song, that song was written by Maekawa Shingo of Kariyushi58! 🤯 (Mind blown!) It’s no wonder that song had that affect with us.

The version on the drama and Nakashima Mika’s version were arranged as a ballad (with lots of feels ✨) which we instantely fell in love with, while Maekawa Shingo’s solo version and Kariyushi58’s give it a bit of a lift. Whichever version you end up falling in love with, know that this amazing song was written by Okinawan artist Maekawa Shingo.