NEIGHBORHOODS
Duo sells fried mochi
Rod Ohira
for the microwave
Star-BulletinClyde Matsuwaki and Roy Nakashima were scoping ideas for a church fund-raiser two years ago when Susan Matsushima walked in with a platter of fried mochi.
With her special recipe, Mililani Missionary Church on Kipapa Drive has been able to raise $8,000 and $16,000 in the past two years.
Matsuwaki, 49, a food broker, and Nakashima, 50, a county motor vehicle inspector, have taken the fried mochi idea to another level as business partners in Innovative Development Enterprise & Associates Inc.
"Clyde's been experimenting and has come up with a mochi mix that can be either microwaved or fried," Nakashima said. "All you have to do is add water. Ours is the most versatile."
"Happy Mochi" comes in three flavors: cinnamon, kinako (powdered soybean) and li hing (powdered plum)."Business is good and we're building to be full-time," Nakashima said. He said the partners pay Matsushima a royalty for the use of her recipe. They use Carol's Bake Shop in Moiliili as their commercial kitchen.
Illustrator John Dawson's career has come a long way since he did 20 paintings of ants for a National Geographic project in June 1984.
"It was my first giant job," said Dawson, 61, a San Diego native who moved to Hilo 10 years ago. "I became an ant artist."His latest work is featured in 10 new commemorative Sonoran Desert postage stamps, released in April by the Postal Service.
Twenty-five plants and animals are depicted in the desert collection, which uses self-adhesive stamps as part of a larger illustrative scene.
The Sonoran Desert stamp pane is the first in the "Nature of America" series. Dawson will be doing five other stamp projects.
He also is working on two projects for the National Park Service and one for National Geographic.
Joshua Cooper, a doctoral candidate in political science who teaches peace studies at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, attended the recent Hague Appeal for Peace in the Netherlands.
The event was held on the anniversary of the first world Peace Conference, held in 1899.
"Peace is a primal part of the soul that is strengthened when you meet others working on it," said Cooper, 29.
"One of my goals next year is to present a bill to the Legislature for peace studies or conflict resolutions to be taught from grades K to 12," he said.
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