02 Jul Family is a huge part of living a rad life

There are three things that remain constant points of focus for my life: Family, Faith and Filmmaking.

Family

I grew up in Mililani, Hawaii and was raised by two amazing parents Edwin and Corinne Watanabe. I have an older sister named Traci and a younger brother named Lance and we make up the tribe that I first new as family. We grew up with lots of amazing uncles, aunties and cousins, so family has always been a huge part of my life. Whether it was holiday gatherings or birthday celebrations, it seemed like we would always find a reason to get together and hang out.

Since then, our family has grown a bit. Traci and her husband Bryan have a son (Bennett) and a daughter (Elyse), and Lance and his wife Hillary have two daughters (Avery and Harper) and this is what our small ohana from Mililani has grown into.

After I graduated from college at Loyola Marymount University, I met my best friend Joanne and after years of dating and courtship, Joanne became my wife in 2008.

Joanne grew up in a very different family construct. As the child of two immigrant parents, she didn’t have many luxuries, but her family did what they needed to survive in a big city like Honolulu. Joanne and I first met in Los Angeles, California while she was still an undergraduate student at LMU and I was studying as a graduate student at Biola University.

Family is one of the three pillars of my life and will be one of constant threads of this blog, because it is such an integral and cherished part of my life.