he’s such a great guy, and what a player!

he comes from the Hawaiian tradition of solo ukulele playing style, and his teacher, Mr. Mori Takuji is very famous in Japan
Mr. Mori’s teacher was Mr. Haida Haruhiko 1911- 1986 – a Japanese Hawaiian who is THE father of Hawaiian music and ukulele in Japan

Shigeto now teaches as well, and so represents the 3rd generation of this tradition of playing style

we’ll be posting the video soon

Ayano Tsuji did the theme song for the film Neko no Ongaeshi (released by Disney as The Cat Returns). I believe there’s an extra on the DVD about her.

Ajimu Kaigan Monogatari (Ajimu Beach Story) was a 4-episode animated show about a young couple who fall in love. The girl is a street musician who plays uke.

The closing theme from Geobreeders used ukulele.

Ranma 1/2 had a character (the insane high school principal) who played ukulele. He also wore Hawaiian shirts, used exploding pineapples, and had a small palm tree growing from his head.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

I used to be in the region of marginally proficient in Japanese (my instructor believed I’d be able to pass the Level 4 proficiency examination – Level 1 is translator-level fluency).

Grammatically, the language isn’t hard, but culturally it’s a different matter. There’s a book called “Minimal Essential Politeness” that basically fills the niche, “Ok, you’re at least somewhat competent in the language … now, how do you avoid offending anyone.” One example takes a single sentence and provides it 24 different ways, varying in politeness level from what you’d use addressing the Emperor down to “I’ll burn your home to the ground and salt the earth” level.

Writing is a bear, too, given that they use four different alphabets, one with about 2000 characters. The large alphabet (kanji) contains characters drawn with up to 26 strokes each, with each stroke that makes up the character having a defined direction and position within the drawing sequence.

It’s fun, though, and I still try to study from time to time. Gotta put it aside this year for Spanish, though … I’ll need that for a trip around Christmas.

Oh, and Japanese is very hard. Well, speaking it isn’t the problem, it’s the writing. But it’s a fun hobby. I’m taking up Ukrainian with my brother, after we both tried (and failed) at learning Japanese (for me) and Mandarin (for him).

I’ll send you a separate email w/my address.

Thanks! Rick