Wood Dragon and Watermelon Sushi

Aloha, Hip Hapa Homeez!

Are you ready to leave 2023 behind while embracing the incoming Wood Dragon?

While we’re still over a month away from Lunar New Year, we can already feel the excitement of what the Wood Dragon year will bring.

Watermelon Sushi

For us, it’s all about Watermelon Sushi. In fact, our Executive Producer, Lowell Douglas Ing, is a Dragon!

We’re almost ready for editing all the footage that Doug is currently having digitized. Besides adding new hip hop tunes to our decades-old project, we will also be incorporating animation to complete the story.

Follow us and stay updated. We’re everywhere!

You can heck out our website here:

https://www.watermelonsushi.com/

And, you can also meet us here on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/watermelonsushi

There are so many folks to thank for their dedication to this project over the years. Some are no longer with us on this planet. But here’s a partial list:

b.r. Winfrey

Rob Lee

the late Derrick Holmes

the late Jaz Dorsey

Darlene Romero

Joe Calhoun

Mike Reed and friends

Mia Gonzalez

Johl Smilowski

Pearl, Jr.

Quie Bwoy

Miwa Lyric

Larry Gamell, Jr.

the late Eric Eugene Doboy Williams

Our late Facebook Friends Jeffrey Daniels and Correnna L. White

All of our Hapa*Teez t-shirt supporters, although this is an incomplete list:

Cassie Hayes

Eva Abram

Julia Baker

Teri LaFlesh

Ejiro

Z Enterprises

Lisa M. Corey

Leslie Morishita

Lola Mann Smith

Corinne D. Spector

Carol Harris

C.A. Harris

Aja Robinson

Tracy Hatico

Rob Lee

Eva Abram

Ejiro

Julia Baker

Carol Harris

Cassie Hayes

Our gratitude also goes out to all the high school, colleges, universities, newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations, and internet websites and community organizations that have invited us to speak and/or featured us in their publications and other media.

See you at the end of March when The Dragon will be in full force.

Akemashite Omedettou Gozaimasu, Hau'oli Makahik Hou, Happy New Year!

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

HAPA New Year!

Aloha, Hip Hapa Homeez!

a hip hapa homee

Akemashite Omedettou Gozaimasu! Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!

Hey, hip hapa homee, what are your New Year’s resolutions? Are any of them centered around issues of importance to BIPOC and, especially, us mixies?

Since Your Hip Hapa began this blog in 2006 (and really moved forward with it in 2008), so much has changed in our Watermelon Sushi World.

In the old days, we rarely saw any outed multiracial images onscreen, in books, or anywhere public. There may have been actors who were mixed in real life, but they were often forced to play mono-racial characters. Except for a few pioneering films that addressed the issue of being mixed, the topic was mostly ignored.

Watermelon Sushi the Movie by B.R. Winfrey

But 2008 brought a biracial president of the U.S. into the public arena. Although he was “one-dropped” by most media, he also quietly stood apart from issues of ethnic identity. Despite having a white mother, Obama was considered to be a black man by the majority, and he went with it.

Still, there has been so much progress on the planet in the 15 years that we’ve been publishing this blog. We can hardly wait to see what’s coming next. Maybe soon, we might even stop writing this blog because, hopefully, the world will reach a point where there will be no reason to bring light to BIPOC and mixie-related topics.

featured family in Watermelon Sushi the Movie

Meanwhile, our goal for 2022 is to produce two films. One is in homage to a Japanese war bride married to an African American soldier. Her fantastic life includes her work as an artist, dancer, chef, and so much more.

Our second film is also a documentary. With major “arrigatous” and “mahalos” to VeganFlix for their generous grant, we are producing a short about Indigenous who were likely vegan before being colonized.

Here’s our VeganFlix interview:

https://veganflix.com/interview-with-2021-veganflix-video-seed-grant-recipient-yayoi-l-winfrey/

Additionally, we’re finally releasing some of our fiction. One will be a collection of short stories all featuring BIPOC, multicultural, mixed-race and interracially involved characters. Another is a novel about a multi-generational mixed-race family living in the Caribbean in the midst of race-based political turmoil.

2022 promises excitement, so please stay tuned!

Watermelon Sushi Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/c/WatermelonSushi/featured

www.watermelonsushi.com

War Brides of Japan Youtube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPemluw0stoTsx8yvz2tCrg

www.warbridesofjapan.com

making War Brides of Japan

dir. Yayoi with war bride daughter, Diana Portugal

dir. Yayoi with war bride daughter, Roleta

dir. Yayoi with war bride daughter, Yoshi

Starwheels Productions website:

https://yourhiphapa.wixsite.com/starwheels

A HAPA New Year to you!

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Ringing Out the Old Year with War Brides of Japan

Aloha, Hip Hapa Homeez.

At long last, all 5 of the short films that comprise ‘War Brides on Japan, a docu*memory’ are available for rent at Vimeo OnDemand:

Herstory

The Brides

The Kids

The Culture

BFF’s; Buddhist Friends Forever

This has been a long and arduous project and, because of its grassroots flavor and ultra-low budget, the films will not be theatrically distributed.

Here’s a big shout-out to all our donors listed on our website:

(Scroll down to ‘our Donors’).

www.warbridesofjapan.com/about

And, here’s the link to our trailer titled, ‘The Chase’, which has won several film festival awards.

War Brides of Japan, a docu*memory: The Chase

And, we have more awards to add to the laurels above. 

Please follow our Facebook pages to stay updated:

War Brides of Japan

Throwing Rice Productions, LLC

Meanwhile, we have plans to resurrect our Watermelon Sushi project—either as a feature-length animation or narrative—next year.

We’ll also be working on another docu*memory—about the artist, or as we call her the heARTist, Yuriko:

www.heartworkbyyuri.blogspot.com

www.lenastarwheels.wixsite.com/iamartistyuriko

When we meet again on March 31, 2020, we should finally have another mixed-race, multi-cultural, transracial adoptee or culture-crossing interview for you.

Hau’oli Makahiki Hou, Akemashite Omedettou Gozaimasu, Happy New Year!

Your Hip Hapa, 

Yayoi