My Dream Hawaii Route ☆ Ukulele Sing-along

My Dream Hawaii Route 🌴 1948 (Showa 23) Haruo Oka
Lyrics: Miyuki Ishimoto
Composer: Yoshi Eguchi

It is said that there used to be a shipping route connecting Yokohama, Honolulu, and San Francisco. 🚢 It was also made into a movie of the same name in 1950.
It is a popular song still sung in nursing homes and other facilities across the country, but it is especially cherished like a local song in the western part of Gifu Prefecture, where I live.
You might wonder, 'In Gifu Prefecture, which has neither a sea nor a port?' but that is because the composer is from this area. I first learned this from a senior colleague when I moved here.
Later, when I visited my husband's relatives in a mountain village near the composer's birthplace, his uncle proudly showed me around. (There is a Yoshi Eguchi Memorial Hall; his real name was Gengo.)
The lyricist was from Hiroshima Prefecture and apparently got the inspiration from ships sailing the Seto Inland Sea. Wait, what!? 😲 So it's a man? (Real name: Miyuki)

By the way, when I was a child, before YouTube or karaoke boxes existed, songs I learned by ear from listening to the humming of adults around me often had slightly different melodies. When I listened to the original singer's version on YouTube again, I found that this song was also slightly different in places. I tried to fix it after listening several times, but... how is it? 😘
The accompaniment uses an 8-beat rhythm with a ghost strum. When I first tried it with another song in the winter, I thought, 'It's impossible for me to play while singing,' and almost gave up, but after practicing, I managed to do it, so I chose it for this song too.
It's still awkward and my muscles are a bit sore, but since the ukulele appears in the lyrics of the second verse, I have to play it even if it's a bit of a stretch. 😅