Okinawa just had its Memorial Day today, marking the 69th anniversary of the end of the Battle of Okinawa. I’ve been to at least three June 23rd events in Okinawa, June being the time I have usually gone to the island. In addition to the formal prefectural ceremonies at Mabuni:

and the march of the Okinawa [...]

It’s finally here! The day that Goyablog was made for: Goya Day! 5/8 (Go/ya) is an unofficial holiday in Okinawa, but is an official holiday at Goyablog. I have the ceremonial goya in the fridge, ready to be champurued for lunch. Even have some ceremonial to be, uh, ceremonially sipped. For gentle Goyareaders who [...]

Besides Life Getting Complicated as my sabbatical leave begins, there is also the little something called research and writing that I must do. Unlike a certain friend who will remain unnamed who is planning on spending sabbatical time taking tennis and Photoshop lessons (okay, just in afternoons after a mornings of work), need to decide [...]

After having moved from my old place to Sara’s last spring I shut down Radio Go Go Go Ya! for fear of sucking too much bandwidth between it and Vonage and two computers. However, it seems as if Comcast has widened the band enough now so that I can rebroadcast without hiccups. It’ll continue to [...]

Today (yesterday Japan time) is “Goya no Hi” (Goya Day) in Okinawa, the most fabulous holiday in all of humankind. As explained before on Goyablog, “5″ can be pronounced “go” and eight can be pronounced “ya” in Japanese, thus 5-8 (May Eight) is Goya Day. To celebrate, I am presently wearing my brightly-colored and goya-bespangled [...]

Kendrick Ledet of Smyrna Georgia, one of the three U.S. servicemen convicted for the notorious rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl in 1995, was found dead last week from self-inflicted knife wounds in the apartment of a 22-year-old college student who had been raped and then murdered by strangulation and a blow to the head, [...]

It seems as if there was a power outage at my house while I’m here in Tokyo so to those faithful few who listen, I’m sorry but you’ll have to get your fix of Okinawa music elsewhere until I get back on July 22 to put it back up.

Right now Japan Time the Irei no Hi (Memorial Day) services for the war dead of the Battle of Okinawa are being held in the Peace Park at the base of Mabuni Cliff, where the battle effectively ended on June 23, 1945 with the suicides of the two commending officers, Lt. Generals Ushijima and Cho. [...]