Novel Novelist: Outsider Or In?

Word up, Hip Hapa Homeez! We at Watermelon Sushi World are so HAPA to call you our homeez. Because of your dedication, we’re moving towards getting our Watermelon Sushi film completed. One of the ways we’ve been doing that is by offering Hapa*Teez t-shirts to the mixed roots community. With every t-shirt purchase, you get us closer to our goal. And, you earn a rear crawl credit--your name will roll at the end of the movie.

Cassie as hip HAPA homee

When you do buy a t-shirt, please email us at hapateez@me.com with your correctly-spelled name. And, if you send us a digi photo of you wearing your t-shirt, we’ll showcase you on our Watermelon Sushi and Hapa*Teez fan pages on Facebook (like Cassie, here).

Hey, here’s a shout-out to Arana, The Topaz Club founder, for her recent purchase. Join The Topaz Club group page on Facebook where mixed-race women of African descent share their stories.

Speaking of stories, this week’s featured hip hapa homee is Dmitri Ragano who just completed his novel, Employee of the Year. Your Hip Hapa first met Dmitri after stumbling upon his interview with Japan enka star Jero. After corresponding for a while, we met in person--along with Dmitri’s beautiful wife and daughter. Below, Dmitri discusses his life and how he came to write a book about a multiracial character.

Q: Tell us about your parents.

A: I am a typical garden-variety white guy so I might be something of an anomaly in the Watermelon Sushi World. My mother came from an Irish German family and my father from an Italian family. They grew up blue-collar Catholic in Pittsburgh, then broke away from the church during the Vietnam War era. They gave me an exotic name that they liked from Russian literature.

Dmitri at AFI Fest

Q: How did the way you grow up affect your life?

A:  I grew up in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, a town on the edge of Pittsburgh that was predominantly African American. I had exposure to different cultures at a young age. I was often the only white guy in my elementary school class so there was exposure to art and popular culture that was different than my own. I remember very vividly when the early rap songs like "The Message" came out. That style of using rhythm and poetry to deal with real-world situations was a big influence on my fiction writing. Another influence was August Wilson, who broke onto the national scene when I was a teenager with plays about the African American experience in Pittsburgh.

During college in San Francisco, I went to Japan to study the language. For a while, I lived in a remote part of the country where I was the only foreigner in the town. The process of learning to communicate in a new language in a foreign country is slow, painful and humiliating. But once you get to the other side, the rewards are amazing. It unlocks certain parts of your brain and heart you didn't know existed. Charlemagne said, "To possess a second language is to possess a second soul."

So, the combination of these experiences created an openness and curiosity about other people's cultures. On the flip side, for better or for worse, it instilled this sense that I was an outsider and that it was sort of my destiny to go out and search to find my place in the world. Again, this is a theme with many characters in my book: they don't have a map for how to live their lives so they take scraps of maps they find along the way and try to piece them together.

Q: Were you accepted in every country where you’ve lived?

A: I have traveled to around 25 countries, but Japan is the only country outside the U.S. where I've lived. I lived in Japan several times for a total stay of about five years. It was a great experience, but you need to qualify the word "acceptance" when you talk about living in Japan as a foreigner. Japan is a very homogeneous and insular culture, and it's been that way for thousands of years. There's been no significant immigration in the whole recorded history. When you live in Japan, you live as a guest and you are treated with incredible kindness and hospitality. But like a guest in a hotel, you never really feel completely at home, you never expect to be completely accepted. You always feel like at some point you will overstay your welcome and have to leave. This is not everyone's experience, but I think it is a typical experience of most foreigners who live and work in Japan. The kanji characters for the word "gaijin" literally mean "outside person".

Q: Tell us about your interracial marriage and biracial child.

A: My wife and I met in San Francisco at a party held by these Japanese monks who lived by Haight and Fillmore. They would cook all this Buddhist vegetarian food and play reggae concerts in the basement. She was trying to learn English and I was trying to learn Japanese. We were friends for many years before we became romantically involved and decided to marry. 

Being from different cultures is challenging. You come at things from a different frame of reference. My wife's experiences being raised in Osaka are so dramatically different than what I knew growing up. The stories you tell yourself about who you are and how you should live are completely different. The good news is we love each other very deeply and share the same core values. But we've spent the early part of our lives learning to express the love and values in different ways. So it takes a long time to work this out.

For our daughter, I think this has pros and cons. She's exposed to a wide range of ideas and experiences and she knows we care about her more than anything. But I am sure sometimes it's got to be confusing for her compared to, say, having two parents who grew up in the same country with the same language, same culture and same socioeconomic background. 

Q: What motivated you to write Employee of the Year, about a mixed roots character in a multicultural workplace?

A: I think there are more young people growing up like my daughter, who are mixed roots and exposed to many different customs, values, languages and ways of life. Yet, I believe there is still a lack of stories in our popular culture that reflect this. So I felt there was an opportunity to write about characters that grow up straddling different racial and cultural experiences and how they negotiate their own identity. There's no tribal blueprint for the type of person they should try to become. It's a riddle they have to solve on their own. 

   

On top of that, my story is set in a big financial company in Los Angeles. In this city, on top of mixed roots experiences, you have mixed class experiences, interactions between people from different educational and economic backgrounds. These are all things we have so much trouble talking about in America. A company is a good setting for a story about this. In Los Angeles, the 1 percent and the 99 percent only set foot in the same zip code during working hours.

Dmitri channels Temo

Q: Is the main character, Cuauhtemoc McCarthy, based on your own personality and experiences?

A: In many ways, Temo is based on who I've tried to be. I've tried to be someone who retains a certain honesty and purity while being pragmatic about what it takes to survive and thrive in the modern world. Temo's job as a collections agent is to chase people down and convince them to pay their credit card debt. If he can't do this successfully, he loses the only way he knows how to support his wife and family. He feels ambivalent about this, just as most working people have mixed feelings about how they make a living.

Q: I first learned about you as a journalist from your interview with Jero. How does writing fiction differ from reporting?

A: The interview about Jero is a funny story about how lives and cultures intersect. My father worked for 30 years as a schoolteacher in inner-city neighborhoods around Pittsburgh. When my wife and I got engaged in 1998, we went back to Pittsburgh and visited my father's school. There was a woman from Peru who was teaching Japanese so we visited her class to talk about Japan. I remember there was a kid in the class who knew a little Japanese from his grandmother. For the next ten years, I had no contact with him, never thought about the visit to the school, et cetera. Then suddenly, in 2008, I was on a business trip in Peru and I saw something on the cable news about Jero, a guy from Pittsburgh who went to Japan and became a singing sensation. It turns out it was that same kid I'd visited at my father's high school! He remembered my father as one of his teachers. So, after leaving South America I had to go to Asia for business. My wife and I were in Japan and I decided to do an interview with Jero for the local Pittsburgh newspaper.

I think this is the best illustration of the difference between fiction and journalism. With fiction, you're taking the essence of the people and experiences from life and molding them into a narrative. With reporting, you end up discovering these real life connections and events that are so random and serendipitous that you couldn't make them up because no one would ever believe it. I mean, look at Obama. You couldn't write a fictional story about someone with his background becoming President of the United States. No one would find it plausible.

Your Hip Hapa with Jero in San Francisco

Thank you, Dmitri for sharing. Hip Hapa Homeez, you can buy a copy of Employee of the Year on Amazon or download it to Kindle for 99 cents.

http://www.amazon.com/Employee-of-the-Year-ebook/dp/B005UJR0RW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1319933755&sr=8-2

Here are some of Dmitri’s feature articles:

Interview with Jero:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08146/884455-109.stm

Interview with Howard Zinn:

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09263/999070-109.stm

Japanese cell phone culture:

http://thefeaturearchives.com/topic/Archive/Growing_Up_in_the_Age_of_the_Keitai.html

And, books citing his journalism:

Global Cultures by Frank Salamone http://www.amazon.com/Global-Cultures-Frank-Salamone/dp/1443809942/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1319933755&sr=8-3

Smart Mobs by Howard Rheingold http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Mobs-Next-Social-Revolution/dp/0738208612/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319933960&sr=1-1

Andye deep in African Asian thoughts

Here's another shout-out; this one to Watermelon Sushi Associate Producer Andye AndinhaNiakan for this blog entry about Your Hip Hapa: http://africanasianbusinessandculturalexchange.wordpress.com/2011/08/12/yayoi-winfrey-japanese-african-american-film-maker-pioneer/

And, don’t forget, we’re still running our Ask My Cuz @Oprah campaign on twitter: http://ning.it/oEQYHS http://twitition.com/gneyv

Until we cross ISP’s again, remember to fan us, follow us, or friend us, but please connect!

http://www.watermelonsushi.com

http://www.facebook.com/watermelonsushi

http://www.facebook.com/hapateez

http://twitter.com/watermelonsushi

You can also request membership in the Hip Hapa Homeez group page on Facebook.

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Incredibly International Ilja

Aloha, Hip Hapa Homeez.

Here’s hoping you’re enjoying a shimmering summer filled with vacation vibrancy!

Perhaps like me, you’ve noticed that multiethnic communities are getting a lot of press recently. If you have articles you’d like to share, please post them at our Hip Hapa Homeez Group page on Facebook. If you’re not a member yet, please join and remember to add your friends.

Here’s a shout-out to Arana and The Topaz Club membership! Arana has made Your Hip Hapa July’s “Member of the Month” and posted my interview of growing up mixed on the Topaz Sisterhood Group page on Facebook. If you’re a woman of multiple heritages, please contact Arana to join her group.

This month, Watermelon Sushi World’s featured Hip Hapa Homee is musician Ilja Alexander. This intelligent and charming young man is making headlines with his record sales and international concerts. And, as a speaker of several languages, he’s a true world citizen. Please read all the way through this post as Ilja has a special surprise waiting for you.

Meanwhile, check out the dapper gentleman in this photo.

Incredibly International Ilja

Q: Ilja, how did your parents meet?

A: My father was born in Semarang Indonesia in 1942. His ethnic background is Chinese/Indonesian. His great-grandfather, Oei Tjie Sien, was a high-ranking military official during the Taiping Rebellion, a resurrection against the Manchu emperor (1850-1864) caused by drought and hunger. It started as a farmer’s resurrection. What’s interesting is that for the first time in the history of mankind, women were allowed to join the armed forces. Initially, the resurrection was quite successful, but then the Manchu government asked the British colonial rulers to help them, defeating the opposition near Shanghai. 

Oei Tjie Sien fled to Semarang Indonesia, at that time a prosperous harbor. He then became a merchant in Semarang. One of his sons, my great-grandfather Oei Tiong Ham, then turned the business into what was to become the first holding corporation in Asia and the biggest corporation of Asia at that time, the Kian Gwan Concern. Nicknamed the Asian Sugar King, he married 7 wives and had 26 official children. One of those 26 official children was my grandfather. My grandfather was good friends with the managing director of the corporation and this director introduced him to my grandmother, who lived on the other side of Java in Sukabumi. At that time, around 1924, it was quite uncommon for people living in Indonesia to marry someone from another distant hometown.

What makes the story even more interesting is that the second daughter of Oei Tiong Ham, my great-aunt Madame Wellington Koo (born as Oei Hui Lan), married the first Chinese ambassador to the United States. She also socialized with the Chinese nationalist General Chang Kai Shek and the wife of Mussolini.

When the first president of Indonesia, president Sukarno, came to power, my uncle Oei Tjong Tjay, then the president of the Kian Gwan Concern, refused to work with the Sukarno government, because he was against communism. As a consequence, the local business divisions got nationalized and my entire family fled from Indonesia. My grandmother moved to the Netherlands in 1948. My father was 4-years old.

My mother’s ethnic background is Chinese/Indonesian/Malay/Japanese. Actually, the Japanese part has never been confirmed, but is believed to be the case by a historian. My mother’s great-grandmother was something like a countess, linked to the royal family of Malaysia. She then married a Chinese businessman (with part Japanese origins if believed by this historian) from Indonesia and was forbidden to return to Malaysia ever since. My grandparents from my mother’s side moved to the Netherlands around the 1960’s, and my father and mother met there in the 1970’s.

Q: When did you become a musician?

 

A: Unconsciously I was always interested in music, starting piano classes at the age of 5 and songwriting from the age of 12. However, not until a student exchange course to Osaka Japan in 2004 did I realize I could become a singer/songwriter. As someone with Asian roots, it was (and still is) very difficult launching a major artist’s career in the West. But in Japan, I seemed to attract many college students interested in my music, playing and writing my songs at the Kansai Gaidai University campus.

Q: When you went to Osaka as a student, did you speak Japanese? As a "hafu", how were you treated by Japanese—or by people in the Netherlands?

A: No, I did not speak Japanese nor did I know anything about Japan. In fact, I chose to follow an exchange course program in South Africa, but was told that there were only places available for Japan. I thought Japan would be similar to Bali. Upon arrival at Osaka Airport, I knew I was wrong, not seeing any palm trees or beaches. My entire worldview changed during my exchange course to Japan and, ever since, I feel Japan could one day become my home country.

I did not experience any discrimination in Japan. Many Japanese thought I was Japanese, too, and all around the world being a musician really facilitates me making friends. In the Netherlands, society has become more and more individualistic over the past 10 years. There is so much violence here, caused by a minor group of youngsters from Morocco. It resulted in political parties, including the party of the politician Geert Wilders, favoring to close the borders and focusing on people’s fears rather than on constructive solutions about how to prevent cultural and regional conflicts. But this is no different in other Western nations. I believe this is not a good policy and will certainly not lead to any solution, but to even more cultural and regional conflicts. As a consequence, the Dutch are much more open-minded and, I certainly feel, more and more extremist right calls are present here than 10 years before.

Q: What's it like for you speaking so many different languages? Is it confusing? Which language do you think and/or dream in the most?

A: I always get confused. I speak Dutch, English, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and am now studying Korean. Some people think in their mother tongue language then translate to another language when they want to communicate. In my case, I start thinking in the foreign language and culture. As a consequence, for example, when I’m in Indonesia I can speak Indonesian quite fluently, thinking in Indonesian culture and thinking buying something for 1 euro (12,500 rupiah) is already expensive. Calling to the Netherlands, I would forget my Dutch vocabulary. In fact, if I’m in one country where I am able to communicate in the local language, I tend to forget all other languages, pushing those other languages to the background processes of my brain.

Q: Your music has a very gentle, spiritual quality. Do you attribute that to your cultural upbringing? Can you say that your music is more one culture than the other, or is it totally cross-cultural?

A: I think this has to do with different aspects. First of all, I can never get angry. In fact, even if I encounter problems, like some fraud cases in Indonesia, I would not feel any anger against those causing all the trouble. Second, I lived in Thailand in 2006 and 2007. I then became very much interested in Buddhism, started meditating and learning to always think positively and enjoy the day. Third, I graduated as an economist, specializing in development economics, and studying third world countries. Lastly, I had to make some concessions producing my last CD. I co-operated with some arrangers and conductors in Asian countries and, while I preferred a more edgy and rock sound, sweet and romantic is more common to the Asian music industries.

I don’t know if my music is cross-cultural. However, I do know my own personality is cross-cultural and maybe, therefore, my music becomes cross-cultural, too.

Q: Tell us about your latest release.

A: My latest album is called Hold On To Her. This is track 1. The subtitle is called Aria’s Song. Aria is my first niece, now 2-years old. When she was just born, I sat beside her and she was crying. Then I wrote her this song called Hold On To Her; that there is no reason to cry on this beautiful day and that she would always have the unconditional love of her mother. So, I sang to her Hold On To Her (your mother) for always.

The entire album is something like an autobiography. All the songs are personal experiences and the lyrics really tell exactly what I did back then. I mentioned the songwriting date above the lyrics in the booklet, so it’s like reading a diary.

Recording, engineering and releasing this CD took me 2.5 years and some songs have now been recorded in English, Japanese and Indonesian. Korean and Chinese songs are expected to be recorded later this year.

I offer the Watermelon Sushi World blog readers a discount when ordering my CD, since I hope many more people will get to know my music. Anyone can send an email to info@ilja-alexander.com and my management will send you an invoice of 10 euro, excluding shipment costs, using PayPal to process the order.

Q: What do you see in your future and for multiethnic people in general?

A: My objective is to start launching my career in the U.S., slightly adapting my sound to make it more edgy and rock, making my songs more accessible to a wider audience. I also have an ambition to be the first major international artist with Asian roots breaking through the entertainment industries of the West and, therefore, breaking through the entertainment industries on a global level.

I believe with the geo-political power shifting to some developing nations, more and more issues of sustainable environment and mass migrations in the next decade, the world as we know it today will soon come to an end. In fact, without major changes in the way we live (in the West) we will not survive. I do believe calls for change are more and more common, among other things leading to more equality in the world, less poverty and less discrimination. I also believe the word “multi-ethnicity” should become a word of the past, since mankind should discover that we are all one race.

Q: Tell us something about The Ilja Alexander Foundation.

A: I’m about to launch my own foundation to provide free education and accommodation to those children around the world without access to education and to their parents. Starting a foundation is a lengthy process, but I hope it will operate somewhere this year.

I designed a new educational system addressing current socio-cultural, economical, political and environmental issues. The educational system is based on three pillars. First of all, children will be taught traditional courses, like mathematics, history, geography, science, etc. Second, children will be taught country-specific courses related to environmental sustainability, (renewable) agriculture, poverty, water management, etc. Third, the educational system is focused on training the left side of our brains, i.e., personal development courses, like meditation and arts (martial arts, music, etc.), whereas nowadays in the West educational processes are mainly focused on developing the right side of our brains.

Both children and their parents need to work on the land, cultivating renewable agricultural products, renewable energy, etc. All products will then be traded on the international trading markets, the profits flowing back into the educational system, making this educational system self-supporting and self-sustainable.

When the children get older, they should get the opportunity to go on exchange courses to other schools around the world, learning about other cultures, religions and other country-specific courses. By doing this, the foundation will then realize its mission to prevent cultural and regional conflicts in next generations and to make the world we live in more sustainable.

To finance the foundation I’m transferring a percentage of my annual revenues to the foundation, and also working with donor companies.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me by using the contact info listed below.

Ilja Alexander Productions

E: info@ilja-alexander.com

Blackberry PIN 26AD1F89

www.ilja-alexander.com

www.1upmusic.jp

www.myspace.com/iljaalexander

www.twitter.com/iljaalexander

www.facebook.com/iljaalexander

Arigatou gozaimasu, mahalo nui loa, hsieh hsieh, merci beaucoups, muchas gracias, danke schoen and more, Ilja! Hey, Hip Hapa Homeez, don’t forget we have Hapa*Teez t-shirts for you (like the one I'm wearing here), and you can also like our newly created Hapa*Teez Fan page. If you haven’t had the chance yet, check out our updated Watermelon Sushi film website and like our Watermelon Sushi Fan page. My Sexy Voices of Hollywood co-host, Robert Taylor, and I are about to relaunch our internet show, so please stay tuned.

Until we meet again, I am…

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi

Perfectly Precious Topaz

Welcome back to Watermelon Sushi World! This week, Your Hip Hapa profiles Arana, founder of The Topaz Club, along with member Deborah Braxton. That's Arana, below, seated at the center of the table surrounded by Chicago Branch members at the celebration of TTC's 6th year anniversary last January.

Q: Arana, what is The Topaz Club and what does its name mean?

A: The Topaz Club is an online-based sisterhood for biracial/multiracial women who are of partial African/African American descent and are mixed with other heritages. The name “Topaz” is taken from the yellow/golden topaz that has varying shades of yellow, orange and brown. These colors represent the beauty and range of our skin hues.

Q: What inspired you to start and lead this organization?

A: When I founded TTC in January 2004, at Yahoo! Groups, I wasn’t inspired at first to form the sisterhood that it has grown to become. However, in seeing the immediate and sudden growth of membership--and in seeing the need for the members to bond and connect to each other, it was at that point that I became deeply motivated to build a strong family and community of and for Afro-biracial/multiracial women.

Q: How did you grow up?

A: My mother is a multigenerationally-mixed woman of African American and English/Irish/German/Dutch descent. My father, who is also multigenerationally-mixed, is of African American and English/French/Italian/Creole/Choctaw and Comanche descent.

I grew up in a home where my family didn’t really care about [multi]racial or [multi]ethnic identifications. My family tended to go with the trend of identifying with how society viewed them to be as only African American. I believe that this had to do with the Jim Crow laws and One-Drop Rule of the day. They knew about our multiracial/multiethnic family backgrounds, but did not often speak about them. Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I knew for myself that an African American racial/ethnic identification did not accurately describe who I am and what I racially/ethnically am. And it doesn’t. I’m proud to belong to all of my racial/ethnic groups.

Q: How does the new community at Ning differ from the original Yahoo! community where The Topaz Club was founded?

A: Our new online community at Ning is an entire cyber network where our former online community at Yahoo! operated as an email-based listserv. At Ning, the Topaz sisters are able to see each other through their profile pictures as they communicate with each other, participate in special-interest groups, share blogs and videos with the community, and connect to each other at our bi-weekly chats at the site.

Q: Aside from its online community presence, what other activities and events does The Topaz Club offer?

A: The Topaz Club is slowly growing and evolving beyond its cyber community. TTC has several branches that host occasional social gatherings and outings in Chicago, New York City, and the San Francisco Bay area. Right now, we’re working on establishing a foundation of TTC branches in Dallas, Houston, Washington D.C., and Minneapolis/St.Paul. We had our first National Get Together in Chicago in August 2006. We’ll have our second National Get Together on a cruise to the Bahamas in December 2011.

Q: What are some of The Topaz Club’s goals?

A: Right now, the three main goals that The Topaz Club seeks to accomplish are: to increase membership at our online community and in the branch cities mentioned above; to establish a stronger foundation of our already-existing branches; and, hopefully, to establish our national home base in one U.S. city with active chapters eventually in other U.S. cities.

Q: What will women joining The Topaz Club gain from becoming a part of this sisterhood?

A:  Women who join The Topaz Club will become a part of a growing network of professional, educated, and sophisticated ladies who come from different walks of life and share the same bond of being biracial/multiracial and of African/African American descent. They will have the opportunity to connect with other members both online and in person, and to make a positive impact on the growth and success of the sisterhood through their involvement in various areas of leadership within it.

Q: How can women join The Topaz Club?

A: We are always looking for new women to become a part of the Topaz sisterhood. They can join us by signing up for membership at http://thetopazclub.ning.com or contacting us at inquiries@thetopazclub.com

Thanks, Arana. 

TTC sisterhood member Deborah Braxton is the daughter of an English, Irish, Scottish, and German blended mother and an African American, English, Irish multigenerational father. That's her in the photo below as a child and beneath that, wearing a white shirt, at the San Francisco Bay Area TTC branch luncheon in 2007. 

Q: How did you grow up, Deborah?

A: I grew up my first 10 years in a racially charged part of Philadelphia. I lived in a "black" housing development. Literally, right across the railroad tracks (which were approximately 50 feet from our front door) was a white neighborhood. There were often bottle fights between our neighborhoods. Commonly used words were "nigger, cracker and honkey". My mother even called us "Honkenigs".

Shortly after my father’s death, we moved to a more integrated housing development that seemed to be more racially balanced, but it wasn't.

I grew up with a very clear understanding of racism. I am a very light-skinned woman and often "pass" for white or Latina. This has made me privy to "insider information" within the white world. Sadly, I often heard (and occasionally still hear) prejudicial statements, opinions and the like that were (are) not meant to be said around a person of color. 

Q: What’s your involvement in The Topaz Club?

A: I am the Chair Representative for the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter.

Q: What are some activities that you’ve participated in through your involvement with the Topaz sisterhood?

A: I have organized and attended a few dinners here in the Bay Area, and attended the Founders Celebration in Chicago in 2007.

Q: How has The Topaz Club supported you as a multiethnic woman?

A: I am blessed to have found a group of women that truly understands my life experiences as a mixed woman of African American descent. I find that if needed, The Topaz Club can be an excellent site for venting, and education.

Thanks, Deborah and ladies of the TTC sisterhood!

And, thank you Hip Hapa Homeez for your continuing support. Check out the numbers of you liking our Watermelon Sushi Fan page on Facebook! Remember, our Hip Hapa Homeez group page is for you to post the latest news about multiethnic and cross-cultural issues. You can also continue to show love for the Watermelon Sushi film by making a Hapa*Teez t-shirt purchase, like Eva did below. And, don’t forget to follow our erratic tweets on Twitter.

Many of our Hip Hapa Homeez have products available on Amazon. Please take a minute to check them out.

'til we meet again, I shall remain..

Your Hip Hapa,

Yayoi