{"id":25613,"date":"2012-06-10T21:34:49","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T01:34:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=25613"},"modified":"2012-06-10T21:58:18","modified_gmt":"2012-06-11T01:58:18","slug":"wit-life-204-enka-sensation-jero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2012\/06\/10\/wit-life-204-enka-sensation-jero\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #204: Enka Sensation Jero"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life<\/a> <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>is <\/strong><\/em>a periodic series written<\/strong><\/em> by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-03). She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she sha<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>es s<\/strong><\/em>ome of the interesting<\/strong><\/em> tidb<\/strong><\/em>its and t<\/strong><\/em>rends together with her own observations.<\/strong><\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I never thought I would say this, but last night I was captivated by the strains of enka.\u00a0 However this was not your typical enka, it was this style of Japanese music performed by none other than Pittsburgh-born singer Jero.\u00a0 This 30-year old celebrity in Japan learned enka thanks to his maternal Japanese grandmother.\u00a0 As early as five he began singing ballads to entertain her, and from this young age he had a dream of becoming an enka singer.\u00a0 He has achieved this success in spades, debuting with his hit single \u300c\u6d77\u96ea\u300d (Umiyuki, or Ocean Snow)<\/a> four years ago.\u00a0 He went on to create numerous other hits, including an original one dedicated to his mother who raised him on her own.<\/p>\n

The event I attended took place at Japan Society and was entitled “Let’s Enka! with Jero<\/a>.”\u00a0 It began with an interview where Jero shared how his childhood dream had became a reality, including how at one point he contemplated packing it in and heading home.\u00a0 Wearing a powder blue suit and matching baseball cap, he enthralled the audience with nine of his enka hits as well as entertaining banter in between.\u00a0 At the end he came back for an encore of\u00a0 \u300c\u4e0a\u3092\u5411\u3044\u3066\u6b69\u3053\u3046\uff63 (Ue wo Muite Ikou or The Sukiyaki Song)<\/a>, to which everyone sang along.<\/p>\n

Earlier in the week, I also had the chance to interview Jero for a feature article in the upcoming August issue of Chopsticks.\u00a0 It was cool to have the opportunity to talk one-on-one with this down-to-earth talent.\u00a0 Make sure to take a look when the magazine comes out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03). She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends together with her own observations. I never thought I would say this, but last night I was captivated by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,21,18,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-music","category-translatinginterpreting","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-6F7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25613"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25649,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25613\/revisions\/25649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}