MALT SHOP MEMORIES, GRANT MASANDUU MURATA and more

15 Craigside, a senior's community, where I live, must have a dozen activities daily. Mostly exercise classes, but also special events. One recent one, Malt Shop Memories, was organized by Joy and Gary.

Also, 15 Craigside was royally entertained by Grant Murata. You need to read his story to appreciate his life, written by Jodie Chiemi Ching. He is Hawaii's Uta-Sanshin Master, Grant Masanduu Sadami Murata.

Adopted by a Japanese family in Hawaii, he later in life learned he was Okinawan. Learned to play the sanshin, became a master sensei, and is founder of Afuso Ryu Choichi Kai USA in Hawaii and Los Angeles.

Who Am I?

I COME FROM MORE THAN ONE MOTHER,

MORE THAN ONE CULTURE,

MORE THAN ONE ANCESTRAL LAND I CALL MY HOME.

WHAT’S IN YOUR BLOOD MATTERS LESS THAN WHAT’S IN YOUR HEART.

There is a Part 2, where Murata searches for his roots, written last year.

Grant Murata today, is 61 years old. For 30 of those years, he had no knowledge of being Okinawan. Yet, for ALL of those years, his ancestral DNA guided him on the path of a master uta-sanshin performing artist. What might have been perceived as quirky or weird has earned him reverence and respect, even among his uta-sanshin master peers in Okinawa. He is the first and only uta-sanshin master outside of Okinawa to judge the certification exams for the Afuso Ryu Gensei Kai held in Okinawa annually.

UYA NU MAGUKURU

NASHIGWA KUTU UMUTI USUMIJI YA NUDIN

UMURU MAMANARAN SHIKE NU NAREYA

UYA NUMAGUKURU WASHINNAYO WAGA NASHIGWA

FOR THE SAKE OF MY CHILDREN,

I WILL DRINK THE BRINY OCEAN

TO KEEP THEM FROM LIFE’S BITTER SWELLS.

OH BELOVED CHILD, LOVE GIVEN TO YOUR PARENTS’ WILL COME FROM YOUR CHILDREN.

Want more of Murata-san? Click on this You Tube special, a program that provides great Okinawan music by Grant Masanduu Murata.

Cold soba lunch.

Korean chicken and shoju.

My birthday featured a small cake with one candle and some Kurayoshi Malt Whisky, 25-year old. Click on that to see the price.

Annual flu shot. The pharmacy comes to us for this service.

My life, of course is not only at 15 Craigside. I still golf, and here is a photo of egrets and plumerias at the West Loch Golf Course.

You see egrets wandering about as singles or doubles, but do you know where they to sleep? You can find them in large communal roosts in waterside trees to protect themselves from predators. There str more than 25 of them above. Similarly, plumeria is a fragrant flower that roosts in a tree. Known as frangipani, and honors Catholic monk Charles Plumier, from where the horticultural name comes.

By the way, as I indicated yesterday, today:

Canelo Alvarez vs Terence Crawford fight on Netflix: Prelims start at 5:30 EDT, with the main card beginning at 9PM.
If you live in Honolulu and subscribe to Spectrum, you will not find station CW at channel 93. Go to Channel 13 at 10:30 AM Hawaii time to watch the South Florida at Miami football game.

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo. We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo. So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines. We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station. This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site. It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance. This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of ten of those already waiting to enter. However...

COVID WAVES

Before getting into the topic of the day, a few notes about the state of politics in the USA. Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney today joined Kamala Harris in her Wisconsin stop. More specifically, Ripon, where the Republican Party was formed in 1854. This was the first time Cheney has campaigned with Harris. This will be all about the future of Democracy. She is only one of hundreds of prominent Republicans who have endorsed Harris over Donald Trump. And about The Donald, DC Judge Tanya Chutkan released the 165-page filing from the Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, arguing that the former president doesn't deserve immunity from criminal charges because his conduct was for private gain rather than duty of public office . There won't be any trial anytime soon, but these details further diminish Trump's hope to be re-elected. Basically, there are four charges of conspiring to overturn the November 2020 election and the attack on the U.S. ...

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