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Hawaii’s KIKU-TV RIP
You may have heard a rumor that KIKU will stop airing Japanese and Filipino programming soon. Unfortunately, the rumor is true. Starting Monday, June 28, 2021, KIKU and other stations owned by RNN National, LLC will air ShopHQ 24/7. via the station’s FB page Definitely sad news to hear that KIKU-TV will no longer show…
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Harami Piano in Okinawa (YouTube)
Popular street pianist and YouTuber (1.65M subs) Harami Piano performed at Okinawa’s AEON Mall Okinawa Rycom at the beginning of April and played a medley of songs from Okinawan artists (Amuro Namie, ORANGE RANGE, Natsukawa Rimi, SPEED, Cocco, Kiroro, and MONGOL800).
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Nenes Announce Upcoming Album “Gajumaru” for June Release
Nenes has a new album that’s planned to be released on June 23rd! The album titled “Gajumaru” will be a self-cover album and we’re still awaiting details for the track list. Given that they have an enormous catalog of songs to choose from (1990 was the first generation Nenes — they’re currently on the 6th…
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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…
Karakui 