TheBuzz
TheBuzz
Mits' Basic Foods, opened in 1979 with a special appearance by not-quite Hollywood star but multiple bodybuilding title holder Arnold Schwarzenegger, has left Manoa Marketplace. Octogenarian working
hard to stay fitHowever the 83-year-old bodybuilding, health and fitness buff for whom the business is named has not retired.
"Retirement is out of my dictionary," said company founder and President Mitsuo Kawashima. "We're made to move, so we should keep moving."
Move he has, to Kakaako, setting up new and smaller space in the Hawaii Athletic Club at 432 Keawe St.
"Mits works out here," said club general manager Ray Sagum, "People like him and Timmy Leong from Timmy's gym -- he's in his late 70s -- they've been really instrumental in promoting health and fitness with weight training in Hawaii."
Sagum said he and Kawashima have been friends for many years, and that the combination of a gym and Mits' Basic Foods was a natural fit.
"He is a walking dictionary of supplements and herbs -- that information is very valuable and good for the clientele," Sagum said.
Kawashima handles the nutrition segment of the club's resistance training classes, which include weight room etiquette, the mechanics of lifting weights, exercise and the importance of cardiovascular work in a work-out. The shop is open to the public, but classes are for gym members.
Fitness gyms occupied 31 years of Kawashima's life, including the '70s when he operated Mits' Health Studio on Ward Avenue near Kawaihae Street. He closed it in 1979.
"We didn't have time to do anything but work," he said.
Substituting the health food store for the gym afforded him the previously unknown luxury of Saturdays off, and time to go to football games. His shop carries vitamin supplements and powders and some health foods and dried fruits. It will sell bottled juices temporarily, until the health club sets up a juice bar. That will happen "eventually," Sagum said.
Kawashima plans to keep moving forward with his 23-year-old Hawaiian Islands Body Building Contest -- a Schwarzenegger/Kawashima production -- staged in June each year.
Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin.
Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle,
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210,
Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached
at: eengle@starbulletin.com