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Rinken Band & Tink Tink on YouTube
Listening to Rinken Band’s music is both nostalgic and emotional for me so the orchestra version of their song Funayare in the YouTube clip above pulls at my heartstrings. Uehara Tomoko’s voice is one-of-a-kind and the music Teruya Rinken composes is truly original. Like many musicians during the pandemic, concert tours have been canceled and…
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DA PUMP’s Oh! My Precious!
The boys are back with a new single and music video for their song Oh! My Precious! released on May 26th. The new song follows their March release Dream on the street so they’ve been on a steady release schedule for 2021.
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Floating Room’s Upcoming EP “Shima”
Floating Room was recently featured in an NPR article for 11 Oregon Artists to Watch in 2021 and this little bit got me really excited: Floating Room is set to release an EP called Shima on Famous Class Records in November. https://www.npr.org/2021/06/02/1002272360/11-oregon-artists-to-watch-in-2021 I’m looking forward to listening to Shima and I have so many questions about it…
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RED SOUL’s Three New Singles
Hip-hop group RED SOUL (from Kadena 🤗) released three new singles on June 2nd. The singles are Noguni Sokan, FAIYĀ, and MY DREAM, and they have the full version of FAIYĀ up on their YouTube channel. I hope they’ll have a video up of Noguni Sokan which is the single I’m most interested in listening…
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Orix Buffaloes Miyagi Hiroya
I wonder if there is any other team in NPB that has as many players from Okinawa that the Orix Buffaloes has. There’s pitcher Higa Motoki (drafted 2nd in 2009), infielder Oshiro Koji (drafted 3rd in 2015), infielder Gibo Sho (drafted 5th in 2018), and then there’s 19-year old pitcher Miyagi Hiroya who was drafted…
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Memorial Day
Today is Memorial Day (戦没将兵追悼記念日) in the US. Memorial Day (previously, but now seldom, called Decoration Day) is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning the military personnel who have died in the performance of their military duties while serving in the United States Armed Forces. The holiday is observed on the last Monday of May. The holiday was…
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5th Elements 10th Anniversary
Vocal duo 5 Elements (A-RA and YU) is celebrating their 10th anniversary with the release of a new album THE BEST which features 15 tracks — including the song below (Minami no Shima e Dekakeyou) with sanshin by Maeda Hideyuki. The new album also features the song Party which was written by Daizou from the…
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Murasaki Mura Ryukyu Kingdom Theme Park
From May 23rd to June 30th 2021, Murasaki Mura is offering free admission to its Ryukyu Kingdom theme park while actually being temporarily closed due to the emergency declaration for Okinawa. Sounds like a great opportunity for picture-taking like @Okinawanderer.
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Ryukyu Historical Drama Shō En Ou (TV)
In the category of “I really want to watch this!” comes the RBC Ryukyu historical drama Shō En Ou (the king of the second Shō dynasty) which aired in February 2020 and is being streamed on Japan’s Paravi service and sold as a DVD (sadly, no English subtitles for both editions). The cast is led…
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OR’s NAOTO & HIROKI Contributes to 7ORDER’s 1st Major Single Release
ORANGE RANGE‘s guitarist NAOTO and vocalist (mid-range) HIROKI provided the music and lyrics to the 1st major single (double A-side) for J-pop group 7ORDER. The song is titled “SUMMER sama-sama” and is coupled with the single “Ame ga hajimari no aizu” and set to be released on July 7th. It’s great to see the OR…
Karakui 