Fantastic Okinawa

Locked On Cage Fighting Tournament

International Movie Festival rebrands to entertainment

MMA moves to Cage action on Okinawa tournament

The 7th Okinawa Inter-national Movie Festivalis debuting next weekunder a brand new title;

the five-day affair is now the AllIslands Okinawa Festival.

The festival opens March25th at three locations; the redcarpet will be at GinowanTropical Beach, Kokusai Streetand for the first time, on Gate 2Street in Okinawa City. Themost notable aspect of thisrevamped festival is that virtuallyall events, except for specialmovies screenings, are free.

The main venues will be theOkinawa Convention Center,Sakurazaka Theater and the openspace in front of Tenbus Hall onKokusai Street in Naha, andKoza Music Town and Gate 2Street in Okinawa City. One ofthe highlights of the movie festi-val has been the red carpet. Arecord high 595 guests frominside and outside of the countrywalked the red carpet runwayslast year.

This entertainment event is

representative of Okinawa, andhas become a common activityeach spring. Last year, organiz-ers counted the total number ofvisitors at 380,000 over the fivedays. The name of the event hasalways been movie festival, how-ever, it’s not only about moviesbut live music, fashion shows,comedy shows of popular come-dians, idol performances andsports events. With so manygenres of entertainments mixedtogether, organizers decided tomake the event name all-inclu-sive. While special screeningswill have a fee attached, the nightmovie playing on the screen setup at Tropical Beach, inGinowan, and baseball and soc-cer schools for kids will be heldfree.

The festival is co-sponsoredby Yoshimoto Kogyo, which hasproduced popular comedians,delivered happiness and peace inthe hearts of people around theworld through laughter, and hassupported the film festival thathas a ‘Laugh & Peace’ concept.

Three young American militaryfighters are ready for Sunday,when Mixed Martial Arts grows toa new dimension – Locked On –

Cage Impact — for the very first time inOkinawa.

The matches use standard rules ofMixed Martial Arts, but take place in aseven-meter-wide hexagonal wire cageinstead of a square ring. The wire net cageis new to the island, and three military menwill enter that cage to face three of main-land Japan’s strongest fighters at NamuraHall, located in Naha City’s Matsuyamaentertainment district.

Ryan Allard, Darious Williams andDerric Threatt are ready for action, which isdivided into three categories. It begins with

the first round Lpcked On Cage, which isfor beginners. The second stage is LpckedOn Cage for experienced fighters, leadingthe way to the final stage Locked On CageImpact where professional rules apply andonly power fighters enter the ring.

Sunday’s action sees doors open at 3p.m., with the MMA fights beginning at 4p.m. Advance Tickets are $65 or ¥6,000for SRS reserved seats, $55 or ¥5,500 forreserved seats, $45 or ¥4,000 for regularseats, $30 or ¥2,500 for standing room. Alltickets at the door will be an additional¥500.

This is the tenth year of the tourna-ment, which began under the name ‘TheOutsider’ on Okinawa. The name changedto Locked On in 2011, and is now continu-

ing to grow. Organizers are billing theisland as “King of one-on-one fightingOkinawa” with a goal of bringing fightersfrom outside Japan to mix it up withJapanese fighters.

The Americans are at the tip of thatContinues on page 4

No less than four American fighters faceJapanese opponents in Sunday tournament.

The festival ends with fireworks over the Tropical Beach.

The main venue for free movie screenings is a temporary screen set up on Tropical Beach in Ginowan.

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Kids star at Street Dance Championships on SundayThe 9th Street Dance

Championship Dance MaxJapan is bringing togetherdozens of pre-teens and

teens to Tamagusuku SogoGymnasium in Nanjo City thisSunday.

This nationwide dance event isfor children, having grown to its cur-rent 1,500 participants and a totalaudience of more than 20,000. Youngdancers who passed the preliminaryrounds for each area divided by fiveJapanese regions: Kanto, Tokai,Kansai, Kyushu and Okinawa, werechosen in January and February.They are coming together to competein dancing performances within arequired three-minute program.

Admission is free for the com-

petition, which sees doors open atthe Tamagusuku Sogo Gymnasium,200 Tamagusuku, Fusato, NanjoCity, at noon. The program begins at1 p.m. with emcees Q-Taro, VictoriaAsami and DJ Hossie. Guests willbe Da Pump and 5th Elements.Dance judges will be Shintaro (BeatBuddy Boi), Kenji (Pinocchio), Bezi(Busta Jakk Boogie), So (Be BopCrew) and Kazuhiro (AllArea/OGS).

Children participating are amaz-ingly skilled and serious year afteryear, and in fact, have been preparingfor the competition for a year. Thereare two categories of the competition,one for kids who are 12 years-of-ageand under, and teens who are ofage18 and younger. Basically,

there’s one team per one block, a sec-tion of Japan that will dance in thefinal round, except for Okinawa. Inthe kids’ category, six teams, includ-ing two teams from Okinawa, andfive groups in the teens’ category willcompete this year.

In addition, there are five well-known and experienced dancers inthe field of street dance. It would beexpected people will listen to valu-able comments of judges. As a spe-cial guest, new DA PUMP, a hiphopdance and vocal group, is comingand is scheduled to perform. Themain vocalist and the original mem-ber of the group ISSA is fromOkinawa and popular nationwide innot only for his dance and singingbut his entire lifestyle.

The annual All Yachimun Chinaware Market isdesigned to offer quality products aimed at justabout every conceivable taste, and in every

price range.The 22nd Yachimun Fair opens tomorrow at the

indoor exhibition “Beach Floor” at Hotel Moon

Beach in Onna Village, running through Sunday. Asone of the largest pottery events on Okinawa, therewill be more than 50 pottery studios from around theisland participating. The site is in a resort hotel sonot only local people but also tourists from MoonBeach and nearby hotels will visit.

This year, a pottery wheel of Tsuboya-yaki andcoloring Shisaa experience classes will be held, withthe classes running 11 a.m. ~ 5 p.m. for the potterywheel experience and 11 a.m. ~ 5 p.m. for the color-ing Shisa. Admission to the fair, which has been run-ning since 1994, is free. The programs run 10 a.m. ~8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday, and 10 a.m. ~ 7 p.m.on Sunday.

A live mini music stage performance of potteryartists will warm up the event from 2 p.m. ~ 3 p.m.on Saturday and Sunday. If people are interested inseafood and farm products, there is a corner for themoffering produce from Onna Village and around theisland. When visitors are hungry, the hotel restau-rants will be offering a pottery fair special lunchservice.

Hotel Moon Beach hosting 22nd Yachimun Fair this weekend

The fair is held on the inner yard of Hotel Moon Beach.

The fair features Shisa for every taste.

Many of the groups have trained for more than a year.