THERE are countless New Year traditions, but as I, actor Daniel S. Janik (aka author Raymond Gaynor) and my partner, actress Sakura Kai (aka author Setsuko Tsuchiya) represent a melding of Western and Asian cultures, one of our favorite New Year traditions is making mochi.

The “recipe” is quite simple: Make some rice, specifically mochigome (糯米), a short-grain glutinous rice. In general, the better the “quality” of the rice, the better the mochi. But that’s only half of what make...

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IF not, then it’s definitely past time to prepare. I went to the grocery yesterday, and was struck by the presence of actual food lines, not for feee food, simply to get inside the store and have a few seconds to grab what I could of what’s left. Interestingly, the one thing there was plenty of was turkeys. Raw, pre-cooked, stuffed, half and even TV dinnered. Lots of turkey(s). Everything else seemed in limited supply. What’s going on? Is the turkey abundance in response to the Presiden...

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DURING these difficult times of unprecedented change, it’s easy to fall into a kind of blank-like despair. What’s important is to remember that life is the journey, and at least to some extent, we make our journey. One thing of which I like to remind myself during times like these, is that while I may have only one birthday a year to celebrate, I have 363-1/4 Un-Birthdays, all of which deserve celebrating, if only because I’m alive for another day.

But how to celebrate an Un-Birthday? ...

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ACCORDING to the History.com, “the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia. Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

“To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacr...

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To my fans and all readers, I send my sincere wishes for a Happy New Year! Keep Reading!
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Okay, so it's Labor Day, and I thought maybe a labor of love would be appropriate, this time emphasizing my theory and method of learning, Transformative Learning, of which I write in UNLOCK THE GENIUS WITHIN (Rowman and Littlefield Education, 2015) - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BY13D2Q. The key to my approach to transformative learning is empowering the learner through curiosity and discovery, so I was particularly pleased to read "To Raise Confident, Independent Kids, Some Parents Are Tryi...
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It's Christmas Day, and, irrespective of one's religion, it is, in many ways, the ultimate humanity day. True, it's constantly being assaulted by individual religions vying for supremacy, businesses vying for participant's money, and hackers attempting to steal identities and information, but over the centuries, it has remained the epitome of humanism. It remains a day of reflection on all that makes us human. 


Religions are social clubs consisting of humans garnering others to share in and va...
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Most people don't think of warm, sunny, Honolulu, Hawaii, when they think of pumpkins or Halloween, which, in my mind is a travesty. We actually do grow pumpkins here. Really! This time of year, one can cruise the island and grab a plump pumpkin from a variety of pumpkin patches. 

And we actually do celebrate Halloween here, and we celebrate it big time in Waikiki. Walking along either side of Ala Moana Boulevard as it courses through the heart of Waikiki, one can observe and even have thei...

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