Denny in the News: 23 August 2021

 Comedian Gori says of his experience of a coughing spell over an hour long  in the middle of the night, “I couldn’t breathe!”


Gori, a native of Naha with the experience of having Covid-19 and a member of the comedy group Garage Sale, engaged in a video conference with Okinawa Governor Denny Tamaki to call for countermeasures against the Covid-19 contagion on 20 August. 

Gori caught Covid-19 in April of this year. He said that with a fever around 40 degrees continuing for several days, he was told by a doctor at the hospital, “There’s no especially effective medicine for Covid-19”, and so his unease continued day after day. He repeated events like, when after two weeks in the hospital, the fever went up and he had a coughing spell in the middle of the night lasting over an hour, “I couldn’t breathe. I wondered if I’d die then and there. I came to live with the guilt that, since I was contagious, the time and lives of others had become entangled with mine.” He pleaded for the importance of everyone joining hands in life for the sake of unity in preventive actions such as wearing masks and disinfecting hands.

Governor Tamaki noted, “Vaccine! That’s the key. For the sake of our community I also urge as many young people as possible to get vaccinated.” According to the Prefecture, they intend to post the contents of the conversation publicly as a video on YouTube. 


Original Japanese article: Asahi Shimbun Digital, published Saturday 21 August at 13:00 (by Shogo Kosumi)

https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/7ccf75fc9202b19b306d7bdfdac2433008cca177


Translator’s Notes

  1. Denny in the News: news about Okinawan Governor Denny Tamaki.

Denny Tamaki is the governor of Okinawa Prefecture in Japan. Although Okinawa is important as an international tourist destination and a key element in strategic US Military Forces, its governor receives very little coverage in the Japanese press and almost none in the English language media. 


  1. This blog hopes to  translate one news article a day on the governor.  It is unsponsored and unauthorized. The translator simply hopes to improve his skills and perhaps give the governor an English speaking audience. Any suggestion on improving the translation will be gratefully accepted. However, please leave political comments for another forum.


  1. Where they occur, words and phrases in Ryukyuan (the Okinawan language) are rendered in italics and translated in parentheses. Names  whose readings are uncertain are rendered as Name (=Kanji?) as in Nagayuki (=長行?). Any corrections in such instances would be of great help.

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