Part 2: Unforgotten Classmates

In keeping with the unforgotten classmates theme, I have decided to post these two pictures that I scanned in a little while ago. The first is of Mia Iuchi from when I bumped into her, her boyfriend and her dog on the Yosemite Falls trail about 6? years ago. This chance encounter had an improbability index up there with the time a bunch of us were going to the Santa Clara luau and bumped into Branden St. James and Drue Apao at the In and Out burger in Valencia when they were headed in the opposite direction. Anyway, I was up in Yosemite to do some climbing, but it was misting that day, so we decided to do some hiking instead. I was going up the trail, and I saw this woman looking at me with a slightly puzzled look on her face, and I suppose I had a similar expression on mine. We passed each other, and then we both turned around and we realized that we knew each other. Now I hadn't seen Mia since a Loyola Marymount luau way back when BZ was still at Loyola, and Rick Takeshita was up for a Nobel Prize for story telling, so it was quite a surprise to see her. I haven't seen her since so if any of you have kept in touch with her, make sure she knows about this site.

The second picture is of Kim Nakano, Ricky Kessler and BZ from a few year back, and many of you might recognize the background being the casino of the California Hotel in Vegas. A few of us were out in Vegas for a get together and Jimmy Wong and I were sitting at a blackjack table. Jimmy turns to me and says, "hey, look at that guy playing craps. Isn't that Kim Nakano?" My first thought was, there is no way in the world that it could be Kim Nakano, but when I looked up from my 9th King-Three in a row, I realized that it was indeed Kim. I turned to BZ, and he went up to him, and confirmed that it was Kim. We ended up playing golf the next day, and while we were on the course, Kim mentioned that Ricky was living in Vegas. What were the chances? Kim was between jobs, had driven across the country, stopped off briefly in Vegas before heading back to Hawaii, we bump into him, and find out that Ricky was working at Caesar's Palace. We ended up finding Ricky, and he met us at the Casino after his shift was over. It was nice to get caught up since I had not seen Ricky or Kim since Iolani. Again, as with Mia, I have not been able to keep in touch with Kim and Ricky, so hopefully, this blog will find its way to them as well.

I hope that everyone is enjoying the blog, and I hope that stories and pictures are forthcoming. Please tell our other classmates about this blog, come visit, leave a comment, or send me a note for a story that you would like to post. And like the Kikaida post...つづく(to be continued).

Unforgotten Classmates

This past Monday I started a jury trial. On the jury panel was a female 35 years old who's lived in Hawaii for 35 years who's HPU's music director. This person's name is Margaret S. Duprey. You must be thinking that's not our classmate. But had one additional clue at the bottom of the jury card. Correction to reference to her name: M. Susan Duprey (do not go by Margaret). I was thinking I know someone who could fit this and sure enough on the panel of jurors was Susie McCreary. We cannot talk to the prospective jurors, but I know she recognized me because she gave a half-hi waive. I let the judge know that she was my classmate. Ho I don't think I've seen her since high school. She eventually got deferred. Had she been able to serve she would have been treated to a pretty interesting trial. My client, Vernon Gomes, was accused of trying to cash 2 forged checks at Am Sav Bank. Our defense was he never know was forged checks, because he no can read. This guy was the stereotypical lolo. First of all cannot get one more Podagee name than Vernon Gomes (I had this other client named Denton Souza, you choose). He is Portuguese, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian looking, short afro, a Rap Reiplinger/Junior Boy hybrid. Twice I asked jurors if they could look at him and presume his innocence and turned to him to see him full on crash out on the table. The guy slept through or struggled to stay awake through out the entire 3 day trial. In the end, the jury acquitted him. I'm assuming they believed he couldn't read. Just thought I mention that we often take for granted our high quality education. I called his girlfriend's mother to opine that he cannot read. She said she based her opinion on living with him for 9 years and that she reads every letter to him plus when they go restaurant he nevers looks at the menu and always orders hamburger steak. Now I've noticed that everytime we go Rainbow's Remy doesn't look at the menu board and just orders hamburger steak(plus extra salad, chili on the rice, gravy all over), but unlike Vernon I don't think that is an accurate indicia of illiteracy.

Another classmate I haven't seen since we drank beer in class at UH is Clayton Yee. You know his name in Hawaiian class was Kaleikane (literally the male lei). Now the kaona (or hidden meaning) was that our teacher asked him at the start of class what his name was and he said Clay and she thought he said Kalei. [I'm at work right now and there's this Chinese guy from Ohio that works with us. His name is Henry P. Ting. I thought it would be great if his middle name was Pua]. Back to Clay. I saw him last summer at Kaiser Hospital. He had leukemia. Haven't seen him in a year. Anybody know how he's doing?

Hope all is well with everyone. Happy that "Da Hui" is back together.

Umo, I watched the UH game last night at the Lee's. According to Sha, in the morning, Logan kept repeating that she was going to see Uncle Umo today. However, when she got to your office and figured out what you do she told Sha she wanted to go home. When I asked Logan, how was Uncle Umo it was evident she didn't want to talk about it. I'm wondering if the other parents who take their kids to Uncle Umo have similar experiences.

Out. Beez.

つづく

Remember all those old shows that we used to love? Watching Checkers and Pogo on saturday? Watching Kikaida, Rainbow Man, Zaboga, Kamen Rider and Ikyu San (that funny cartoon about a young Buddhist monk having adventures, somebody has to sell that idea to Fox) on KIKU: Nihongo Terebi Desu. I thought about posting this on my other blog, but I think the significance would be lost on folks not from our generation and from Hawaii. And I thought it would be a good post to comment on. The first video clip is the opening credits to Kikaida, and the second one is the beginning of Kamen Rider V3, but from a PSX game only released in Japan. It has the origninal theme song though. And I think you can figure out who the picture is of. I know that at least a few of you were actually on Checkers and Pogo at some point, and I think we'd all like to hear who was actually on the show, in the audience, got to grab the pennies, eat the pie, whatever. Speak up! The rest of 88 wants to know!

Maile in 2006

I'm sure everyone reading this knows that our very own Maile Shimabukuro is running for re-election in Hawaii's 45th District (Makaha, Waianae, Nanakuli). She will be running against R-Bud Ebel, but being a supporter of Maile, I don't think she'll have any problem winning re-election, particularly with the backing of my uncle Keijiro Umebayashi, who lives in her district, and is an ardant supporter of Maile. If you forgot, my uncle is the tiny Japanese man who lives near the dump on Plantation Road and whose pidgin, even for local folks in Waianae, is nearly unintelligible. You can read Maile's bio (since leaving Iolani) on the Capital Webpage, and you can also see that through her voting record and environmental work, she has secured the endorsement of the Hawaii Chapter of the Sierra Club.

Maile was recently featured in a Honolulu Weekly column, called Eat with Me Q&A with Maile Shimabukuro. Having to be very pro-Waianae, pretty much all of the food/eating places have a West Oahu slant to it (that's okay Maile we understand... Rainbows, Ono Ono's, Waiola Shave Ice, Char Hun Sut Manapua are in somebody else's district). You can read her answers in the article in the Honolulu Weekly.

Good luck in the general Maile! You have a very proud class of 1988 behind you!