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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

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<title>🚧 Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Dogs are cooler than humans</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @HumphreySaccaro, stylin’ in his lifted yota.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Dogs are cooler than humans

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Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Everyone’s looking to save money and get the most bang for their buck. This series will show you where you can save while still savoring a good meal.

I wouldn’t have expected to find a loco moco at a popular steakhouse in Waikīkī. Yet, that’s one of the best deals on the happy hour menu at 

Wolfgang’s Steakhouse in Royal Hawaiian Center is known for its U.S.D.A Prime steaks that are dry-aged in the eatery’s own aging box. The restaurant offers its happy hour menu from 3 to 6:30 p.m. Mondays to Fridays at the bar and lounge; first-come, first-served.

Fun fact: The eatery’s happy hour has been around since 2010. It used to be from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The eatery’s housemade chips with sour cream are complimentary and a nice way to begin your dining experience. Your server should bring a basket to your table, but if not, just ask about the chips.

The seafood combo ($26) is one of my favorite dishes from the happy hour menu. It comprises six crostini topped with ‘ahi tartare, lobster and crab. Both the lobster and crab are reminiscent of a refreshing crab salad. Each crostini features a generous portion of seafood.

The ‘ahi tartare ($18) and lobster crostinis ($18) can also be ordered on their own.

At $12, this mini loco moco is cheaper than some plate lunches, and it features a good portion. The patty itself is thick and flavorful, and we can’t get enough of that savory mushroom gravy.

Other dishes on the happy hour menu include steak sliders ($24) — a customer favorite — hamburger sliders ($14) and steak tartare ($24). We held off from ordering more to save room for steak.

The Taste of New York ($83.95) is one of the most popular deals on the happy hour menu. It includes a 12-ounce, bone-in, dry-aged New York sirloin that’s brought sizzling to your table. It’s served with sides of creamed spinach and mashed potatoes, and New York-style cheesecake for dessert.

Nearly $84 sounds steep for a happy hour deal, but the eatery’s New York sirloin steak is about $110 on the a la carte menu — and that’s without any sides or dessert. It’s a nice option for a special occasion if you’re celebrating during the week.

If you order steak, just remember — the steak is still cooking slightly on the sizzling hot plate, so keep that in mind when choosing your desired level of preparation (we often go with medium rare).

Drink discounts on the happy hour include wines by the glass, martinis and cocktails ($8 each) and draft beers ($6 each).

Wolfgang’s Steakhouse by Wolfgang Zwiener

Happy hour is 3-6:30 p.m., Mondays-Fridays

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<title>🚧 Budget Bites: Happy hour at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse</title>

You can get an entire steak dinner during happy hour.

Budget Bites: Happy hour at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse

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Stephanie Salmons

Arts & Entertainment

Hawaii History

For Larry Kimura, language is more than the nouns, verbs and object markers.

“We’re talking about [the] way a people behave and a way a people live their lives,” he said. ”… Language is important, very key, very vital in offering you a better way of living.”

Kimura, a professor of Hawaiian language and Hawaiian studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, is often called the godfather of the Hawaiian language revitalization movement. He was "instrumental in the conceptualization and realization of core programs created in the 1980s that brought Hawaiian language to the spotlight,” his university bio notes.

Kimura was a member of ‘Aha Pūnana Leo founding team and its first president. He says ‘Aha Pūnana Leo — the first Hawaiian medium preschool which now has a number of locations across the Islands — helped initiate the establishment of Hawaiian immersion programs within the state Department of Education.

He also was a producer and coordinator of Ka Leo Hawai‘i, a radio show that ran from 1972 to 1988, where Kimura interviewed individuals across the Islands who were among the last traditional native speakers of the language, ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi; a founding director of  Hale Kuamo‘o Hawaiian Language Center at UH-Hilo’s College of Hawaiian Language, Ka Haka ‘Ula o Ke‘elikōlani; helped develop culture-based education programs at what is now known as ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center; lead of Kaniʻāina, a digital voice collection of Native Hawaiian speakers, and more, according to his biography.

[{"text":"Early life","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]

Kimura was raised in the Hawai‘i Island community of Waimea, in a Japanese and Hawaiian family.

His father was a native speaker of Japanese and his mother was a native speaker of the Hawaiian language. His maternal grandfather was monolingual and only spoke Hawaiian, Kimura said, while his maternal grandmother, whose first and preferred language was Hawaiian, spoke little English.

“But by the time we came, and there were four of us, things had changed a lot, and one major impact was the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941.”

Although the bombing took place before he was born in 1946, Kimura said it affected the “social and political situation” of their upbringing. The ideal promoted at that time was to become an American, and to do so, you needed to speak English, he said.

Kimura said he heard both the Hawaiian and Japanese languages spoken daily, “but we were always, always reminded that we needed to speak good English in order to get ahead in this world.”

He later attended Kamehameha Schools on O‘ahu, which offered a several weeks-long enrichment course in the Hawaiian language during his eighth-grade year. But when he was in high school, Kimura said Hawaiian language was offered as an elective course.

He took the class through his 10th-, 11th- and 12th-grade years. Kimura said the class “made me become fluent enough to begin to write to my grandmother in Hawaiian because I was a boarder in Honolulu.”

“That’s how my grandmother discovered, I guess, ‘oh, this mo‘opuna, this little grandson, is into Hawaiian. She never knew that I was always interested in Hawaiian.”

[{"text":"A brief history","type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}]}]

 by the state Department of Education, Hawaiian was the main language used in Hawai‘i’s public education system when it was established by King Kamehameha III in 1840.

But English eventually became the medium of instruction, and three years after the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, teaching and learning in Hawaiian was banned in public education, the DOE website states.

“Many Hawaiian elders have told of being punished for speaking Hawaiian at school. Hawaiian language would not be heard in schools for the next four generations,” the website notes.

The state Legislature voted to remove the 90-year ban in 1986, and the 

 that in 1987, it worked with the DOE to “develop curriculum for the first elementary indigenous language immersion classes in the U.S.“ The first 

, or Hawaiian language immersion schools, were established that year at Keaukaha Elementary in Hilo and Waiau Elementary in Pearl City, the site states.

In 2019, UH-Hilo launched Kaniʻāina, or “Voices of the Land,” a digital, spoken-language repository that includes recordings of Ka Leo Hawai‘i.

 that Hawaiian was the predominant language in Hawaii, but by 1985, fewer than 50 children were Native speakers.

Kimura estimates that there were fewer than 2,000 Native speakers in the early 1970s, most of whom were in their senior years, but census estimates show more than 25,000 people now speak Hawaiian at home, he says. 

[{"text":"Kimura says he knows how valuable the Hawaiian language is.","type":"text"}]

“It is unique to a people, like all the languages of the world are unique to a people, and all the languages of the world have not only a uniqueness, but value and … beauty, a way of living life on earth. … The word for Hawaiian is kanaka, which is just a person, a human being, making ourselves, humankind better for what we are.”

[{"text":"But work to perpetuate the language continues.","type":"text"}]

Kimura, for example, has given Hawaiian names to astronomical discoveries made in Hawaii.

That includes the first black hole to ever be photographed, which was detected with the help of telescopes on Maunakea. Called  Pōwehi, or "embellished dark source of unending creation," the name was sourced from the Kumulipo, a Hawaiian creation chant, according to a 

 that UH-Hilo would lead a three-university consortium that was awarded a five-year, $6.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to establish a National Native American Language Resource Center. This is the first award of its kind to “lead, advocate for and implement training and resource development for indigenous language education pathways in the U.S.,” the university said at that time. Kimura told Aloha State Daily that representatives from various endangered languages will meet with an advisory committee in March.  

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<title>🚧 UH-Hilo professor helps perpetuate the Hawaiian language</title>

Growing up, Larry Kimura heard Hawaiian spoken at home but didn't have a chance to really learn the language until boarding as a student at Kamehameha Schools. In the decades since, he has worked to save the language, doing everything from recording then-rare native speakers in the ‘70s to now naming astronomical discoveries made by Hawaii's telescopes.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Dogs are cooler than humans

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Dogs are cooler than humans

Authors

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

More in Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Daddy Day Care

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Man’s best friend

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Most read