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Kady Pascual

Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"We’re sure those came out fire!"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Make sure you follow:"}]

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YISSYSIS KAHUKU

<title>Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Picture day</title>

Today’s social media find comes from @yissysis, with a sneak peek of Kahuku football's senior photo shoot.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Picture day

We’re sure those came out fire!  Make sure you follow: Content Creator: @yissysis School: @kahukuhigh Photographer: @takoeyephoto Athletes: @isaiahhhx24_ and @kiamaiacampbell For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up here for our free Daily Edition newsletter!

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

[{"type":"text","text":"Darren Matsuda is no longer the head boys basketball coach at Punahou. "}]

"After many years with the program, Darren Matsuda will no longer serve as our varsity head basketball coach," an email sent to Punahou basketball families and obtained by Aloha State Daily read in part. "We appreciate his years of service to Punahou and the time he has given to the boys basketball program as head coach, and we extend our best wishes to him."

Matsuda was first named the head coach for the Buffanblu in 2010. He led the Buffanblu to state titles in 2012, 2018 and 

Matsuda also coached Punahou to five state runner-up finishes, most recently in February, back when the Buffanblu lost to Kahuku 40-38 on a Inoke Lloyd layup with three seconds remaining. 

In addition to his success at the state tournament level, Matsuda also guided the Buffanblu to four ILH titles, including in 2026. 

Since the introduction of the state tournament in 1957, Punahou has won 12 HHSAA titles in boys basketball. 

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Punahou boys basketball 052226

<title>Darren Matsuda out as Punahou boys basketball coach</title>

The Buffanblu won three HHSAA titles under Matsuda.

Darren Matsuda out as Punahou boys basketball coach

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

Known for its speakeasy atmosphere and vintage 

 recently relaunched its brunch service under a new chef.

Executive chef Keith Endo is now at Vintage Books Hawaiʻi. Endo is originally from Hilo and graduated from Kapiʻolani Community College. His previous culinary experiences include leading the kitchens at Vino and, most recently, Ki Club.

His goal is to bring a “fresh and simple menu with Italian and Asian influence” to the Kaimukī eatery.

Some of the dishes on the menu from the eatery’s previous chef still remain, but their presentation or ingredients have been updated.

The Hau ‘ula Farms tomatoes ($18), Hawaiʻi venison tartare ($24) and Island farmer salad ($16) especially highlight locally sourced ingredients. The tomatoes are topped with a fried curry leaf, pineapple vinegar and cilantro.

The Island farmer salad comprises Sensei greens, local vegetables, citrus dressing, Burmese trail mix and Thai basil. If you want to enhance its creamy consistency, add mozzarella ($3 more).

The Island fresh catch (market price) is a new entree, according to Endo. During our visit, mahi mahi was featured, but sometimes shutome or kanpachi is used. The mahi is light and flaky, while the leek caper oil gives the dish a slightly briny, savory flavor.

The house karaage ($23) is not a new dish, but it’s a customer favorite. It’s served with kewpie mayonnaise and kimchi catsup for dipping. Crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside, the chicken is flavorful in and of itself.  

Customers can look forward to a rotating selection of specials. During our visit, Endo featured an herb-roasted lamb ($36) served with porcini mushrooms, gnocchi, shiitake mushrooms and foie gras demi glace.

The lamb is tender without a strong gamey flavor. The gnocchi — a nod to Endo’s travels to Italy to master pasta-making and explore the country’s regional cuisine — boasts a slightly chewy texture, especially when eaten with the mushrooms. The foie gras demi glace enhances the dish’s umami flavor.

The dessert menu features one new addition — chocolate creme brulee ($14). This re-imagined rendition features a white chocolate custard, which boasts a creamy, cheese-like texture, topped with a sugar crust.

Vintage Books Hawaiʻi paused its weekend brunch shortly after the new year, but re-launched it with Endo’s new menu on April 11. Brunch highlights include jumbo lump crab Benedict with yuzu hollandaise ($25), smoked salmon avocado toast with edamame hummus ($21), steak and eggs with chive hash browns ($32), French-style omelet with lemon ricotta and shiitake mushrooms ($22), and buttermilk pancakes with fruit compote ($20).

Brunch is served from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Customers can also enjoy a variety of brunch cocktails that were designed to complement the menu.

Validated customer parking is available in the restaurant’s lot.

Open for dinner from 4 to 11 p.m. Sundays to Thursdays, 4 p.m. to midnight Fridays and Saturdays

Vintage Books chef Keith Endo 051226

<title>Vintage Books Hawaiʻi relaunches brunch service with new chef</title>

Chef Keith Endo, whose culinary background includes leading the kitchens at Vino and Ki Club, is now the executive chef at this Kaimukī speakeasy. Vintage Books Hawaiʻi re-launched its weekend brunch with a new menu in mid-April.

Vintage Books Hawaiʻi relaunches brunch service with new chef

Higa headshot white shirt square

Sterling Higa

Government & Politics

Columnists

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Ben Sasse is bleeding from the face."}]

He’s seated across from New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, 

, and he pauses to note it. He’s dying of stage 4 pancreatic cancer. One side effect of the treatment is that his body can’t grow skin.

“Yeah, you look terrible,” says Douthat.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"“Thank you,” says Sasse with a smile."}]

Since his diagnosis, Sasse has appeared on 

 stage, and a parade of podcasts. He uses the time to say what most politicians never dare to.

He talks about faith. He quotes R.C. Sproul. He discusses Tocqueville with the ease of someone who has actually read him.

Sasse is a two-term Republican Senator from Nebraska, a Harvard graduate, a Yale PhD in History. He voted to impeach Donald Trump and took the consequences. Though popular with voters in his home state, he left the Senate to serve as President of the University of Florida.

Now he spends his last days making one argument: American political life has gone badly wrong. Not because the wrong party is winning. Because the whole enterprise has lost its bearings.

Sasse starts with something most politicians would rather ignore: the pace of technological change. Previous economic transformations — industrialization, electrification — unfolded across generations. This one won’t. Robotics and automation will wipe out whole careers within a single working life.

Sasse sees a second shift: disembodied consciousness, the way screens let people leave their world. Families are breaking apart. Communities are dissolving. The local ties — churches, civic groups, the small-scale institutions Edmund Burke called “little platoons” — that help people absorb hard times are being stripped away. The formation of souls and citizens is at risk, and government is mostly ignoring it in favor of clickbait and rage.

He thinks our loves should be ordered, first to God, then to those nearest us, rippling outward from family to neighborhood to state to nation. Caring about a national political party more than your own community isn’t just confused. It’s a disorder of affection.

What’s true of the nation is true in Hawai'i. The legislature introduces three thousand bills a year. How many of those take the large challenges seriously? The demographic shifts, the cost pressures squeezing local families, the slow hemorrhage of young people off the Islands? The floor speeches and press releases gesture toward these problems, but the lawmaking doesn’t match the problem.

Sasse’s example suggests why. He can sit for an hour-long interview on dense political and theological matters because he has a clear philosophy — a disciplined way of working through problems. It also gives him the power to persuade, which is the precondition for coordinated action.

The founders studied rhetoric and philosophy with the same care they gave the law, because republican government runs on argument and clear speech. Most of Hawai‘i’s lawmakers couldn’t sustain an interview like Sasse’s, and the laws show it. There’s no clear direction. No will to rally the public. Few signs that anyone has thought hard about what government is for. What fills the vacuum is performance: press releases, floor speeches written for social media, outrage timed to the news cycle.

Sasse has a simple framework for what a coherent politics looks like. He describes four ways of valuing government, measured in cheers. No-cheer people — hardcore libertarians — don’t understand that government exists to secure liberty. Three-cheer people believe in a state that controls everything. Republicans, he says, are the one-cheer party. Democrats are the two-cheer party. Each has an extreme wing. Hawai‘i’s loudest voices are at the extremes.

What we lack are the one-cheer leaders: those who see government as necessary but flawed, able to secure order but not to deliver salvation.

Government should do a small number of important things well. It should get out of the way of the little platoons. It should never present itself as the path to utopia. Hawai‘i’s government casting itself as humanity’s last best hope has always been faintly comic.

Sasse’s sharpest line comes when he describes what voters already sense about the way their leaders talk.

They know it’s bullshit, he says — and they don’t want to be lied to. Why can’t politics do a small number of important, long-term things?

There is something clarifying about a man making that argument while bleeding from the face. He has no election to win, no caucus to protect, and by his own reckoning, weeks or months to live. What he’s chosen to do with his time is sit down and think hard about what government is and isn’t for, and what we’ve lost by confusing the two.

In watching Ben Sasse die, Hawai‘i might learn something about how to live.

Ben Sasse Getty Images 1231346544

<title>Ben Sasse is dying in public</title>

The former U.S. senator from Nebraska is talking about big ideas everywhere he can as pancreatic cancer takes his life. Hawai‘i's politicians could learn from what he has to say about government doing fewer things well, says ASD opinion columnist Sterling Higa.

Ben Sasse is dying in public

LĀ‘IE — For the Le Jardin boys volleyball team, destiny was decided by a vote. 

With O‘ahu battered by heavy rain, flooding and lightning strikes on Friday, the possibility of postponing the HHSAA Division II championship match between Le Jardin and Pearl City at BYU-Hawai‘i's Cannon Activities Center to a later date was floated to both teams. 

Back in Kailua, Le Jardin already loaded its team bus on campus. Head coach Makana Wade told his team they didn't have to play on Friday if they didn't want to, that tournament organizers could move some things around to get the match played later in the weekend. Wade asked his players to raise their hands if they wanted to play on Friday.

"Everybody's hand went straight up," setter Brennan Nakayama said. "We just knew we were ready for this, and we knew what we needed to do."

Following a commute to the North Shore that lasted three hours due to traffic brought on by the weather, the Bulldogs arrived prepared to do something the school had never done before. With a 25-18, 25-9, 25-21 sweep over Pearl City, Le Jardin won its first HHSAA boys volleyball championship in school history. 

"Just a real surreal feeling," Wade told Aloha State Daily following the match. "When I took this job, this is the last thing I could ever dream of, was being here. I'm just so happy for Le Jardin and everybody there for believing in me and giving me this job. And so blessed to be able to coach these amazing players."

When he saw the look of determination in his team, Wade knew they were destined to take the title home. 

"I wish everybody could have seen inside our bus for three hours. You would have thought we were gonna play UH or something," Wade said. "The guys were so locked in, having fun. I kept getting calls from our AD, my dad asking, 'Sure you wanna play tonight, coach?' I'm asking the guys, 'Are you sure?' And they're yelling at me, like, yes, of course. There's no way we weren't going to play this match tonight. I think we really took what was ours tonight."

The notion of playing against UH is something Wade would have deep knowledge of. The son of Hawai‘i head coach 

, Makana Wade was a UH men's volleyball assistant coach for multiple seasons. He departed the program in January in order to take the position of Le Jardin head coach, as NCAA rules prohibit one from coaching high school and collegiate teams of the same gender and sport in the same season.

leading Hawai‘i to a national title on Monday

 since arriving back to Honolulu on Tuesday. After taking care of business on Monday, Charlie Wade made it clear where his priorities were during the program's celebration event on Wednesday. Ahead of a scheduled autograph session, Wade told the thousands of fans gathered at the Stan Sheriff Center that he'd have to leave early in order to watch his son coach. 

On Friday, Charlie Wade sat courtside across from the Le Jardin bench, locked in on the match. When the Bulldogs secured the victory, father and son shared multiple long embraces following the match, the look of pride in Charlie Wade's eyes undeniable. 

"Very cool," he told ASD. "He's been coaching with me at the club level, and obviously the last couple years at the collegiate level. He's always kind of had that analytical brain that it takes to be a good coach, and he and I have spent uncountable hours out walking the dogs at night and talking about coaching. He's asked me about a lot of different stuff over the years, and it's great to see him take on that role as a head coach and have to deal with playing time and all that other stuff that is not coaching that's a part of it, but not the X's and O's part. He's doing a great job and has a lot of passion for it, so fun to see him have some success."

"I don't think we have enough time to talk about what I've learned, but I think the basic is just be a guy that people can lean on and trust," Makana Wade said when asked what he learned from his father. "My dad has taught me countless things, and I'm just so happy to be able to learn from him every day, really. I wouldn't be here without him."

For the 2026 season in particular, Makana Wade worked closely with UH associate head coach Kupono Fey on analytics and strategy. He suddenly received the opportunity to run his own program at just 21 years old. 

"It was really hard to leave," Makana Wade said. "I love those guys to death. It was only gonna be a special job like this, a place like this, where there's amazing people, amazing kids. ... It was pretty crazy. I got hired, couple weeks later, we had tryouts, and then next week we're playing our tournament, then we're playing ILH. It's been a pretty hectic couple months, but it's all worth it in the end."

Makana Wade, a UH-Mānoa junior, also had a French final exam he had to take on Friday morning. "It's been a crazy day, but it's been awesome," he said. 

On Friday night, the Bulldogs were in control for the entirety of the match. Nakayama paced the offense with 39 assists, while La‘akea Kamahale had 20 kills on 31 swings. Following a commanding win in Set 2, Le Jardin took a comfortable 24-19 lead in Set 3. After consecutive Pearl City points to cut the lead to 24-21, a calm Makana Wade called timeout to make sure his team was composed. The Bulldogs finished their 2026 campaign 16-1 and state champions for the first time in school history.

"Our whole team can't thank him enough for how lucky we are to have him," Nakayama said of Makana Wade. "The knowledge and experience is super cool. The scouting reports, and how tight he keeps the team and everything, all the way to the bus rides, everything you want. I think we started a legacy."

For the Wade family, the week started with Charlie and Kainoa Wade winning an NCAA championship. On Friday, Makana Wade coached his own team to a championship, capping an unforgettable week for a family that has no plans to stop chasing greatness in the sport for the foreseeable future. 

"Monday seems like a long time ago," Charlie Wade said. "It doesn't seem like it's the same week, but obviously very cool, a lot of positive stuff."

Added Makana Wade: "I'm just so happy for my dad, and they worked really hard this season. To be able to do this too is just a surreal feeling."

Makana Wade 051626

<title>Makana Wade coaches Le Jardin to first state title in boys volleyball</title>

Makana Wade, the son of UH men's volleyball head coach Charlie Wade, led the Bulldogs to the HHSAA title in his first season at the helm.

Makana Wade coaches Le Jardin to first state title in boys volleyball

[{"type":"text","text":"There’s a new all-you-can-eat sushi option on Oʻahu. "}]

 at Ka Makana Aliʻi is offering a new AYCE sushi menu during lunch and dinner. Lunch costs $28.95 and dinner is $38.95. Children ages 5 to 11 years can enjoy half-price admission; children ages 5 years and under have free admission. 

Lunch is from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. and dinner is 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Monday to Thursday. There’s a 90-minute time limit for the AYCE experience. 

The menu is extensive, and comprises appetizers, noodles and rice, nigiri, and sushi rolls. 

Appetizers include cold tofu, gyoza, shrimp tempura, crab rangoon, baked mussels, and chicken wings. In addition, appetizers available during the dinner all-you-can-eat experience include salmon poppers, tuna tataki, and yellowtail jalapeno.

Diners can also enjoy hibachi-style dishes — like chicken teriyaki and noodles — along with nabeyaki udon or ramen, hibachi fried rice and a variety of salads.

Nigiri options include tuna, hamachi, salmon, unagi, tako and more. Each order includes two pieces. Sashimi options include tuna, unagi, red snapper, squid, yellowtail and salmon.

Customers can also choose from a variety of six- or eight-piece sushi rolls. Recommended options include the Hawaiʻi roll — spicy crunchy tuna and cucumber topped with cooked shrimp, avocado, unagi sauce and spicy mayo — and Godzilla roll, comprising spicy crunchy salmon and avocado topped with eel, spicy kani (crab), unagi sauce and spicy mayo. 

The dinner AYCE menu also includes options like the sweetheart roll — spicy crunchy tuna and avocado topped with fresh tuna, and served in the shape of a heart — crispy yellowtail roll and crazy Friday roll. The latter features shrimp tempura and lobster salad topped with avocado, wasabi mayo and masago. 

For an additional $20 per person, customers can have access to premium dishes in addition to the regular AYCE menu. All individuals in each dining party will be charged accordingly with this selection.

Premium nigiri include ama ebi, ikura and scallop. Premium rolls include salmon belly Osaka roll, lobster delight roll, angry dragon roll and more.

The premium AYCE experience also includes sashimi like sweet shrimp, scallop and ikura.

AYCE sushi lunch from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. Mondays to Thursdays

Sakura Kapolei assorted nigiri 021126

<title>Sakura Sushi & Hibachi has a new all-you-can-eat sushi menu</title>

The eatery, located in Ka Makana Aliʻi, now offers AYCE sushi during lunch and dinner on Mondays to Thursdays. The AYCE experience costs $28.95 per adult during lunch and $38.95 per adult during dinner.

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Picture day

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

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Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Picture day

Authors

Kady Pascual

Social Media Editor

More in Hawaiʻi Scene on Social

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Neighborhood weather updates

Hawai‘i Scene on Social: Island vibes

Gotta catch ‘em all — at Ala Moana Center: voices from Pokémon GO’s “Wild Area: Global” event

Starbucks holiday launch draws crowds for limited-edition cups

Most read