 I'm Marsha Joyner and we are navigating the journey. So if you're ready to navigate the journey, stay with us today. This is an absolute wonderful journey that we're on. My new best friend, Sam, Sam has a marvelous story to tell us. He has been on all kinds of adventures, speaks Japanese and English, and all kinds of wonderful things. So let's get started. Let's don't waste time talking about... There's a lot to talk about. There's a lot to talk about. Welcome, welcome, Sam. Thank you. Thank you for having me today. Now you are in the process of creating a new television station. Yes. And you're a chef. Chef, I like to eat. And a surfer. And you were on the Hokulea. And my God, there's so much... Yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot of life to live. A wonderful life to live. And so it blows me away to hear your Japanese when you look like you do. I'm sure that blows a lot of people. A lot of people, yes. Yeah, that's an interesting story. There's so many interesting stories in my life. I don't know if we have time to tell them all. I'll try and stick to the best ones anyway. Okay. And you grew up in Japan? Yes. Well, my family traveled a lot when I was younger. My family moved us to Japan when I was 11. And I went to public school over there. So you had to learn the language? I had to learn the language. I was lucky my homeroom teacher was the English teacher for the Japanese school. And he sat me in the front corner and kind of translated a little bit while he talked. And I picked it up after about two years. Children do. Children are good at that, yeah. We were young and malleable and easy to learn. It was a good experience, good time to be there and learn. I was there until I was 16. What part of Japan? In Yokohama mostly. Close is about an hour away from Tokyo, 45 minutes from Tokyo. A lot of military. Yeah, there's a lot of military. There's several bases nearby. Negishi base is the closest one right up on the hill. There's a lot of history there too. There's old foreigners, gravesites with some of the first missionaries to the area 120 years ago. And it's really interesting. When I was young going to school and then walking home, I'd walk through some of the graveyards, the old ones, and read how some missionary had like five attempts on his life by a ninja back 150 years ago. And I'm walking in that same area where these incredible things happen. Yeah, and Nagasaki, they have to show you where they hung the missionaries. Yep, yep, there's a lot of history. Hard life for a missionary. Yeah, yeah it is. So then, but you grew up there. So that's where you learned to cook as a... Yeah, so I learned, well, I was born in the Bahamas. And my family, we've moved around to 20 or 30 countries. So Japan was the longest next to Hawaii. Hawaii I've been here 20-some years now. Bahamas. Yeah, Nassau. Nassau. I definitely don't look like I'm from the Bahamas. No, what is your birth certificate? Yeah, it's a very, very unique birth certificate. Actually, I was born in 1977, I believe. They gained independence the year before. So when I lost my birth certificate, it took me almost three months to get a new birth certificate because of the country change and everything. Now, what do you remember about the Bahamas? Oh, I don't remember much. I have been back to Jamaica a couple of times, but I like Hawaii. I think there's a lot that reminds me of my youth. I don't recall it vividly, but there's things that make me feel good, like going to the beach. The weather. The weather, exactly. I think it's just something that's subliminal that we felt as children that we relate to. The ocean. Yeah, the ocean, absolutely. The ocean is my life. Yes. And you know, we do have pictures of you on a video in the ocean. Yes. We have video one, I think it is. And there you are. Yeah, it's a secret spot in Waikiki. Secret? How does Waikiki be secret? You can't tell anybody where it is. Oh, okay. So we won't show too much of the picture because you can tell where it is. It's a really small day, but surfing is really one of the things that has kept me healthy and focused It's kept me away from a lot of traps in life. You know, I think sports in general, children away from a lot of traps. They do. And I've always found that surfing, you don't have an opponent. So it's basically you against the ocean. It's basically you against yourself to see how far you can put yourself to do something on that one wave. It's good. It's good without... It's not a team sport, but it's a healthy, good lifestyle sport. I guess it's a team you and the ocean. Yeah, it's a dance. It's a tandem dance. Sometimes it's not a dance. Sometimes it's Judo with the ocean throwing you for a flip. So tell me now, when did you start this business of being a chef? How did that come about? Well, it's an interesting story. I started working for a travel station in Japan, the Travel Channel, the Japan Travel Channel in 2002. And my show was dedicated to showcasing Hawaii to the Japanese public. And we did that show for almost 10 years. Every two weeks we had a new episode. And by doing that I shared all the different restaurants and activities to do in Hawaii. And that got me into tasting all the foods that all the people have. Do we have a clip of that one? I... of you as a chef? Oh, Taki, maybe we have one of the... one of our shows. So this is an opening. Oh, that's one of your shows. Yeah, this is one of the newer shows. Not the one 20 years ago. I'm definitely the same way as there right now. Yeah, so this is one of your shows. Yeah. That's the character I play in the show. I play myself. I play around and have fun and eat. I showcase Hawaii, what there is to do, and there's a lot to do in Hawaii that doesn't cost money. You don't have to spend money to enjoy your time. You can just go to the beach, have goofy underwater, or just swim. Look at how blue that is. It is gorgeous, isn't it? Yeah. Showcasing the new international marketplace. It's a new shopping street. It's big. It smells good. Now you have restaurants. Where are they located? Also, right now... Are they nearby there? Nearby there. My main restaurant is a little takeout. It's not really a restaurant so much as a takeout. Late lunch in Royal Hawaiian Avenue. We showcase... Our main product is a garlic shrimp. Oh, wait a minute. Now, we're sitting here at lunchtime and... I'm sorry. If I brought it, we wouldn't be able to do the show. We'd just be eating the whole time. This is your place. Yeah. Well, this is a coffee shop that I recommend. It's a really good coffee shop. And Ed Canney. Everybody knows him. Town. And this is a little video on his... Suparet. Kaimuki Suparet. Really awesome guy there with a great... So now this is what you're showing in Japan. Yeah. So this is a show that's aired in Japan. It's on the travel channel now. And people will watch it before they come to Hawaii, see if they like any of the places and go and try it out. And I get to choose where we go. So I really get to focus on what I really think is good and interesting people and, you know, a good meal and a good time, good memories for people to have. Yes. Yeah. There's one memory that I saw on one of these about you on the Hokulea. So tell me about that. I think... You're talking about the one where we caught the fish. The one with the fish, yes. And the shark, yes. And the shark, yep. There was quite a few shark stories on that trip. I was actually on the Kamahele, which is the escort vessel, following Hokulea from the big island to Palmyra. And we hadn't caught any fish in a couple of days. And that's... Our main fresh food is fish. Everything else is cans and, you know, dried food. So we finally caught this fish and we're reeling it in. A big fish. A big one. A big tuna. And it was... We were looking at it. Oh, this is going to feed us for a week. And everybody... We share food with the Hokulea and the Kamahele. They sail side by side. Oh, everybody's going to have fresh fish and poke in. Man, right before we got to the boat, it just... The line went slack. I was like, oh, I thought the fish got off the hook. But I still felt some drag. And as we pulled in, we realized the shark had come and bit the entire fish off. The entire... All that was left was just the head. And it was... People moving. And there was like, like, spit, like, shark spit on the edge. It was just like, I'd never seen a shark. It must have been a huge shark. The head was about this big. So the fish must have been three feet, four feet, for a shark to just one bite. The whole thing is gone. But we turned that unfortunate situation into... So you had the head. We had the head. And I'd talked to different sushi chefs about how they scraped the bones of fish to really get the fish off the scraped bones. So the crew was a little disappointed. But I chopped open the head and got a spoon and actually scraped it off all the, you know, the soft meat everywhere. And we had a really good meal. It fed everybody on the boat. That one section just scraping off the fatty, super, super tasty. I know it kind of sounds weird, but it tasted delicious. It was really wonderful. Yeah. How long were you with the Hoke layer? Well, that trip is the main trip that I volunteered on. The total trip, I think, was about five months, of which I did a couple sections. I probably did about four months of the escort. Mostly the escort is what I was on on that side. So, when was that? I was in 2007. 10 years ago, 11, 12 years ago. Time flies, man. Yes. It was good because it was one way for me to be able to give back to the people that I really admire in the community. And, you know, when I started, it was volunteering here at the harbor down at Sand Island and volunteering on these little inner island sails and whatnot, volunteering cleaning up the boat. And when I got invited on the escort, I didn't have a real gift to give. I was just cooking, cleaning, helping, whatever, until we got to Japan. And then when we got to Japan, I was able to translate and really help on that voyage. So, it was it was really inspiring and actually, that's what made me decide to start a restaurant because after the four or five months that I was gone, I came back completely broke and realized I had to have some sort of income if I were to do these kind of chips again and that got me kind of on the mindset of opening up a business. So how many restaurants do you have? Well, are they here in Waikiki, in Oahu, we opened up five of which only one is surviving. So, I've learned a lot to put it in a good way. One is surviving, where is that? That's the one we saw. That's the one we saw in Waikiki on Rohoin. It's just a little tiny alley. Take out late lunch but we do really good there. We have one restaurant in Japan that opened up a year ago. Kind of slow, it's a little bit outside the main city but it's a good step in, a good slow acclimatization. We're acclimating to the Japanese style. Not really promoting it that much over there yet but it's a good step in the direction we want to go. So you're going to have restaurants on both? Yeah, yeah, my goal is to open up we're actually opening up another restaurant in Waikiki called Ko, it's a tiki bar concept that's planning to be open next month, August or September, hopefully. Things take time it's a really cool concept, we're using all different carvers to carve tiki and wood designs and stuff. Oh wow, a real Hawaii then. Yeah, I think that's because that's lost in Waikiki. Exactly, everything's cleaned up and it's nice but it's not Hawaii. It's not Hawaii, no. I'd like to bring a little bit more of that mystical kind of old one. You're not old enough to remember the magic but it used to be really magic. Yeah, yeah. And now it's very commercial. Yeah, there's no speaking birds around the corner that might lead you down somewhere, it's just a city. I'd like to create a little bit more magic down there, that's our goal. That's your goal. So in creating this television station you will feature your restaurants and other places in Hawaii to the Japanese audience. That's the goal. That's the goal. Yeah, so our goal is to actually try and open up the Asian market and we're not up and running out. So these are just goals and the concept is similar to my shows that we have not be bringing other people, other speakers, Chinese speakers or Korean speakers and do kind of the same format of visiting places that are good and worthy to be enjoyed by tourists or visitors. So we need to take a break and when we come back you can tell us more about your vision and how you work into the vision. Okay, we'll be right back. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaiiania all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Stan Osterman, a host here on Think Tech Hawaii, a digital media company serving the people of Hawaii. We provide a video platform for citizen journalists to raise public awareness here on the island. We are a Hawaiian nonprofit that depends on the generosity of its supporters to keep on going. We'd be grateful if you go to ThinkTechHawaii.com and make a donation to support us now. Mahalo. Aloha. I'm Marcia and we're back. We are navigating the journey and this is an incredible journey. We don't usually get to go all these wonderful places and we have our, are we calling you a chef or the producer or what is it we're calling Sam? I'm trying to be human. That's my goal as human as I can. Well, you have been all over the world and gathering recipes and memories. Memories, yes. Now let's take a look at some of your memories. How's that? Yeah, absolutely. We can, part of what I've done, traveling, I've taken photos, but maybe some of, some of the things we can talk about is the restaurant, the recipes and a lot of those I've gotten from places that I've been to. This is our menu up here. You can see, these are our basic things, the shrimp, the steak, the chicken and the poke. Well, what you might find interesting is on the left, the name, you see the shrimp and then underneath that it's shrimp in Chinese, shrimp in Korean, shrimp in Japanese and then it's the word for shrimp in Hawaiian as well. So, five languages there. Trying to make it a little more inclusive. I know it's an experience to go travel, but food, you don't want to guess. So, I'd like to make it easier for people to order. The concept is you can pick one of those and then you pick a sauce which is of course in the five languages that I have up there and then you can add it, make it a salad or a rice bowl or however you like. Trying to make it easier for- That's the one that exists right now. So we can go down there now. You can go there right now. It's open. It's open today. Today. Then this is a photo of our spicy garlic shrimp. See it's spicy with the red there. That looks- It's quite spicy. It's quite spicy. It's quite spicy and there's a lot of garlic. Okay. When we make the garlic sauce we cook it for about four hours. So a lot of the strength of the garlic is gone so you can eat a lot of it without overdosing on garlic. That's a- Yes. Now, so you are- you have those restaurants and I'm trying to get the concept of this new television station and why your television station is different from all of the other television stations. Oh, okay. Okay. Now what makes it unique? Okay. So similar to the menu that we just had I'm trying to create a station that is inclusive to the Asian market. Because what I have is in Japanese. Yes. So we have our focus is on Japanese. Absolutely great because it's in Japanese and they were nice enough to give me English so I could- Yeah. Take and read it. Yeah. So it's a- it's a concept we're still building it out. We haven't actually gotten on the air yet so this is- we're still building out the concept but it's basically a travelers network for the Asian market to show them what to do with my brother in Hawaii. It's something that can be watched in Japan. We're trying to tie in with a travel channel in Japan so they can see it in Japan before they come here and kind of make a list of where they want to go. But we're trying to get it not just for the Japanese we're trying to include Chinese speakers and Korean speakers. These are all goals that we're working towards. We haven't actually started our broadcasting yet but that is our concept. It's a great idea. Yeah. And is it shown here in Hawaii? It'll be shown here in Hawaii and then hopefully- Not that I could read it but- You can practice your Japanese learn from it maybe it's a good learning station but we will we are going to try to get it over into the Asian market as well. So that's the whole idea so that they get a sense of Hawaii before they come. Yeah. Yeah. Sense of Hawaii before they come and when people come to Hawaii they get into their hotel rooms and their language they don't understand so one channel that just kind of introduces them to Hawaii a little bit So it'll be in the hotel? Yeah we're hoping to have a broadcast here in Hawaii as well. In the hotel. Yeah. Now so many of them book and pay for everything before they leave Japan. Yeah. So how do you get around that? Yeah. There is a large amount of people that come as a tour group where they're already doing everything they can do but it's still nice to give them the information and even the returning ones. Yeah the returning ones kind of come on their own but even if it's even if we're showcasing a place that they're already planning to go to say Pearl Harbor which a lot of people go to having a show on Pearl Harbor and explaining it a little bit. You did a show on Pearl Harbor didn't you? Yeah we did we've done episodes over there as well but it's nice to have that knowledge even only to entice people to go but also to give them information when they do visit or just information in general. There is one restaurant in Kailua and I thought I've never seen any local people they're all Japanese waiting in line around the corner to get in there. Yeah. Yes. It's like what? It's incredible if you advertise properly they'll come. Yes. It's amazing it's absolutely amazing. Yeah. So how long have you been working the two bringing the two together the idea of bringing your skills your restaurants and your love of Hawaii into this concept? One big umbrella well the the TV shows I've been doing almost 20 years the restaurant has been about 10 years so the TV show you're doing now are all in Japan. Yeah. Do you see any of those? Actually we can you can see some of the shows here. Did we have a minute or two of one of the shows? Yeah. I don't know Oh there we are that's one of the new businesses hotels the Leilo restaurant in Waikatsuki that vegetarian oh no that's not vegetarian it's a little vegetarian it's some good vegetarian restaurants though we've showcased some really delicious that that one looks good yeah it's good you can tell by the size of my belly what was the one where you were dipping the sandwich in the soup? oh that's that's a place Piggy Pig and the Lady has this really good sandwich that they dip in the soup it's kind of like a take on au jus which is very tasty it's hard to stop eating some of these places so now back to the shows you were doing in Japan you said you did 8 years or 8 shows we did 9 years probably about 400 shows 400 episodes in Japan from 2002 to 2009 2010 and then I started another TV show called Made in Hawaii TV which is a show you can see here in Hawaii right now in all the hotels it's also aired on Japanese but you can click on it and watch the show showcase a little bit about Hawaii and the other TV show that's aired on the travel channel in Japan is called Hawaii Local News kind of similar concepts just different name and different market our goal is to try and bring all of those under one umbrella all the food all the different episodes and bring new faces not just me bring young kids that want to do a TV show what about well music Hawaiian music we do not contemporary well some Hawaiian contemporary but the old Hawaiian music you know the you don't see it anymore you don't all of those wonderful artists we don't hear anymore can you find them yeah we have done a couple episodes a couple of documentaries on some of the musical artists here all we try and add their music in where we can when we get the rights to do it and showcase different artists even following an artist around and where they go to eat and then who they talk to and where they get their inspiration from music from so there's a lot of yeah the music is absolutely wonderful I host the yearly ukulele picnic over six years it's a Japanese put on show but they showcase all ukulele Hawaiian music there's people from Thailand that come over that are ukulele musicians in Thailand and it's a really fun fun do you get halal a halal on any of your shows we have done halal before because the Japanese love oh my gosh yes they love the halal and each halal each group follows different kumus I host the Pan-Pacific Festival too for the hula side and every year we have all these different halals coming hundreds of people from Japan just to showcase their hula here in Hawaii it's really nice 20 years ago I think it's 20 years ago Derek and I that's how I met we met we were both working for the international hula festival I think it's been 20 years yes probably yes some of these events are 40 years running it's incredible yes I'd like to bring that all together and it's food it's activity it's culture it's experience it's music it's what we do living here just being here and absorbing it but people that can't live here I'd like to memorialize it and then edit it the only thing is you can't record you can't can't bottle the trade wins no you can't bottle the trade wins and you can't bottle the taste of food either so I agree that yes well and so how long do you think it'll be before you're up and ready to go well we're hoping within the next two months to be up and running it's a little short time time frame we've been working on it quite a while we've been up and running within the next two months so but it won't look like television we're used to is that it yeah it won't look like television we're used to the goal is to kind of create information hub with little it won't have commercials so much as little information tidbits maybe little vignettes yeah little vignettes basically three minutes or so maybe something from the police department about walking with your cell phone an episode or something like that so it'll be a little bit different than a regular TV wow well we're almost out of time it's been a pleasure it's been a pleasure to be here thank you and you will have to find your restaurant because I love I love love just looking at it just looking at it and you will come back and keep a surprise as you move through your project and how you getting along with it thank you I really appreciate being here today this is a real pleasure I'm guided by my stomach all of my life I'll find you I'll bring a plate lunch next time I'm here I'll find you okay well thank you so much this has really been a pleasure and we'll see you next time