Kemari (Japanese: 蹴鞠) is a ball game that was popular in Japan during the Heian Period. Kemari has been revived in modern times.

The first evidence of kemari is from A.D.644. The rules were standardized from the 13th century. It was the first Japanese sport to become highly developed.

The game was influenced by the Chinese sport of Cuju. The characters for Kemari are the same as Cuju in Chinese. The sport was introduced to Japan about 600, during the Asuka period.

Nowadays, it is played in Shinto shrines for festivals.

Kemari is a very physical sport; it is a whole body exercise for all ages. It is played primarily for the pleasure of those playing and watching.

The object of Kemari is to keep one ball in the air, with all players cooperating to do so. Players may use their head, feet, knees, back, and possibly elbows to keep the ball aloft. The ball, known as a Mari, is made of deerskin with the hair facing inside and the hide on the outside. The ball is stuffed with barley grains to give it shape. When the hide has set in this shape, the grains are removed from the ball, and it is then sewn together using the skin of a horse. The one who kicks the ball is called a mariashi. A good mariashi makes it easy for the receiver to control the mari, and serves it with a soft touch to make it easy to keep the mari in the air.

Melissa Ann Francis (December 12, 1972) is an American television journalist for the Fox Business Network. She is also a former child actress.

Francis graduated from Harvard University in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and served as executive editor of The Harvard College Economist magazine. She was also the captain of the Harvard Polo Team.

Francis started her acting career on television before her first birthday, first appearing in a Johnson & Johnson shampoo commercial at 6 months old. She was best known for her role as Cassandra Cooper Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie, for two seasons. She appeared as one of Michael Landon's children for two seasons during the early 1980s. Other television appearances include two series regular roles: Morningstar/Eveningstar and Joe’s World, and three films including Man, Woman and Child, where she played Paula Beckwith; she appeared in the television series St. Elsewhere in 1986; and also in the 1988 film Bad Dreams, where she played young Cynthia. Melissa appeared in nearly 100 commercials during her acting career. She is supposedly the inspiration for the fictional character Avery Jessup (conceived of and played by Elizabeth Banks) in the show 30 Rock, although Banks herself has denied this.

Sandhy Soendhoro, better known by his stage name Sandhy Sondoro, sometimes stylized as Sandhy SonDoro, is an Indonesian singer-songwriter. He is best known for winning the 2009 International Contest of Young Pop Singer New Wave, in Jūrmala, Latvia.

Sandhy was born in Jakarta, Indonesia, as Sandhy Soendhoro, to Rr. Rika Pudjihastuti and Achmad Fauzan. Sandhy is of Palembangese Malay, Javanese, and Minangkabau descent.

Sandhy came from a musical family, where the house provide the likes of American pop, folk, jazz and blues tunes coming from his mother’s or father’s guitar everyday. His cousin, Ira Maya Sopha, was a famous child singer in Indonesia during the 1970s.

After graduating from high school in Jakarta, at the age of 18 Sandhy went to visit his uncle in California and stayed there for a while, before leaving for Germany to study architecture.

In Germany, he joined a band in his campus, but they rarely appeared on stage. Later he decided to find a job as he lived alone there and needed to support himself. He had an opportunity to work in a supermarket, but didn't get the job, as he was too late. On the way back to his apartment on his bike, he saw a busker on the street, and asked if he could join him. The busker agreed and Sandhy borrowed his friend's guitar and started playing on the streets of Biberach an der Riss. They got 50 deutschemarks in an hour and shared the money. They played three times a week before he decided to do it alone.

Ahmed Rushdi, SI, PP (Urdu: احمد رشدی; April 24, 1934 – April 11, 1983) was a versatile Pakistani playback singer who worked in film music and was "an important contributor to the Golden Age of Pakistani film music." Rushdi is acclaimed as one of the greatest singers ever lived in south asia and was a natural baritone, yet could sing high tenor notes with ease. Born in Hyderabad Deccan, he migrated to Pakistan and became a leading singer in the Pakistan film industry. He is considered to be one of the most versatile vocalists of the subcontinent and was capable of singing variety of songs. He is also considered to be the first regular pop singer of south asia and credited as having sung the "first-ever South asian" pop song, "Ko-Ko-Ko-reena."

In 1954, he recorded the official National anthem of Pakistan with several other singers. Rushdi has recorded the highest number of film songs in the history of Pakistani cinema in Urdu, English, Punjabi, Bengali, Sindhi and Gujarati languages. He suffered from poor health during the latter part of his life and died of a heart attack at the age of 48, after recording approximately five thousand film songs for 583 released films. Besides popular music, Rushdi also helped popularize the ghazals of Naseer Turabi.