{"id":34988,"date":"2014-05-14T16:15:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-14T20:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/?p=34988"},"modified":"2014-05-14T16:23:50","modified_gmt":"2014-05-14T20:23:50","slug":"wit-life-269-japan-day-at-central-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/2014\/05\/14\/wit-life-269-japan-day-at-central-park\/","title":{"rendered":"WIT Life #269: Japan Day @ Central Park"},"content":{"rendered":"

WIT Life <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/a>is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>Stacy Smith<\/strong><\/a> <\/em>(Kumamo<\/a><\/strong><\/em>to-ken<\/a> CIR, 2000-<\/strong><\/em>03).\u00a0 <\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>She starts<\/strong><\/em> her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she sha<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>es some of the interesting tidbits and <\/strong><\/em>t<\/strong><\/em>r<\/strong><\/em>ends along with h<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>er own observations.<\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/em>\"20140511_150956\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Japan Day @ Central Park celebrated its 8th year this past Sunday, and 50,000 attendees came out on this warm, beautiful day.\u00a0 As it coincided with Mother’s Day, many families enjoyed the events together.\u00a0 In addition to the free food and culture booths, an assortment of performances were featured on the main stage.\u00a0 There was some stellar taiko drumming and an interesting Matrix-like duo, but many in the crowd were waiting excitedly for the crooner Jero, who I wrote about<\/a> and got to interview when he came to Japan Society two years ago.<\/p>\n

This Pittsburgh native began his career singing enka (Japanese traditional ballads) as a youngster with his Japanese grandmother, and his official career started in Japan six years ago.\u00a0 Jero treated the audience to his debut single \u6d77\u96ea (Umiyuki<\/em> or Ocean Snow) as well as his newest release, his 9th single entitled \u6ce3\u304d\u866b\u30af\u30e9\u30d6 (N<\/em>akimushi Kurabu<\/em> or Crybaby Club).\u00a0 Like most enka, their lyrics spoke of lost love and commiserating with alcohol and they were both crowd-pleasers.\u00a0 Instead of his usual hip-hop style, Jero looked quite dapper in a top hat and navy blue suit.<\/p>\n

In other rec\"20140506_193612\"<\/a>ent Japanese musical news, earlier in the week I had the chance to check out\u00a0Ryukyu Chimdon Band<\/a> play at Tokyo Tapas Cafe.\u00a0 They did a soulful rendition of True Colors, as well as a version of New York State of Mind that incorporated some Okinawan into it.\u00a0 Of course the sanshin (an Okinawan musical instrument and precursor of the Japanese shamisen) <\/span>was a big part of many of the numbers, and the band encouraged audience participation.\u00a0 A fun night was had by all!<\/p>\n

<\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WIT Life is a periodic series written by professional Writer\/Interpreter\/Translator Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken CIR, 2000-03).\u00a0 She starts her day by watching Fujisankei\u2019s newscast in Japanese, and here she shares some of the interesting tidbits and trends along with her own observations. Japan Day @ Central Park celebrated its 8th year this past Sunday, and 50,000 […]<\/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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[53,21,18,1,36,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-music","category-translatinginterpreting","category-uncategorized","category-wit-life","category-writers"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkZ7m-96k","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34988","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=34988"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34988\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35012,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34988\/revisions\/35012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jetwit.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}