September 17, 2007 - Monday

Rainy and miserable.

Since today was rather a quiet day, I've decided to use today's entry to talk about my trip to Hawaii. It's a bit long, so I hope that you can enjoy what I wrote.

Our trip went quite well. We had a good time, no fights, just a lot of good weather and beautiful scenery.

We left here quite early on Sunday, had breakfast and went to the airport. We checked in and were surprised to see our friend Chris, a guy we know from Calgary. He was going back to Canada, so we were on the same plane to Tokyo with him, then the same bus to Narita. We went to different areas of the airport so didn't see him again. We had lunch in Subway, which was a highlight of the day.

The plane ride to Hawaii was thankfully uneventful, but when we arrived it was interesting. Fumihiko got fingerprinted and photographed, and the immigration guy asked him some pretty odd questions. Thing is, he asked me to ask Fumihiko the questions. He wouldn't take my answers, he had to hear Fumihiko's.

We checked our luggage in with our tour group and were given a bus stop number. We had to go there and wait. We were on our way when I saw someone...my brother Frank! I couldn't believe that he'd come to the airport to meet us, especially since I hadn't told him when we were arriving. Still, he found us, and gave us his phone numbers. His computer had been out and I hadn't been able to contact him to get the info. We made plans to meet the next morning.

We got on the bus and were taken to...the DFS Galleria (Duty Free store). But we weren't even allowed to go shopping yet. We were herded into a small room and told of all of the wonderful tours that we could book with HIS's (That's the travel company we used.)help. Oh, what fun. I came very close to falling asleep. Finally, they let us go, but only because they had another group to indoctrinate.

We walked through the store a little, then took a limo to our hotel. It was included in our package. Still it was kind of cool being in a stretch limo. We got to the hotel, checked in, told them it was our anniversary trip, and went to our room.

The room was quite nice. It had a king sized bed, a small balcony and a big TV! I was exhausted and went to sleep almost immediately, as did Fumihiko. He woke up in the afternoon and told me he was going out for a walk. He came back before I even realized he was gone! I finally roused myself around 6 pm and then we tried to have dinner. The hotel's restaurant was busy for the next 30 minutes and I was too hungry to wait, so we went downstairs to the Wolfgang Puck's Express. We both had rosemary chicken, and it was great! Then, we went for a walk along the Waikiki hotel strip. We stopped in a few stores and I got myself a muu-muu. We had ice-cream at one place, and then later went and had burgers, onion rings and calamari at another restaurant. There was so much food! I couldn't finish my burger so we brought the rest of it, plus some of the rings back to the hotel. I watched TV for a couple of hours, including the weird but sort of cool "Dog, the Bounty Hunter".

On Monday, we tried to have breakfast in the hotel, but found that it wasn't included. Sigh. So, we went along the beach a little, then came back to a place called Lulu's where we had a western style breakfast. Yay. We went back to the hotel, found that Frank had phoned and would phone again. He did, and we made arrangements to meet up.

He took us on a bit of a tour of the island. He showed us some of the best beaches and promised to bring us back the next day to go swimming. After our tour was over, he took us to pick up his wife Priscilla, then we all went to a Japanese restaurant on Waikiki. Because we went before 6:00pm, everything was discounted, so it made good sense to have a family party, which we did. My brother and his wife, my niece and her boyfriend, plus a friend of hers, and Fumihiko and I had a great time and way, way too much food! We came back to the hotel and I basically fell asleep right away. I roused myself enough a bit later to get up and put on my pajamas.

Tuesday we had breakfast at Wolfgang Puck's. We had omelettes, then met Frank. He took me shopping for a while. I went to a drugstore and then to a K-Mart where I stocked up on a few essentials. Fumihiko and him hung out for a while too. At K-Mart we had a bit of a lunch break before we hit the beaches again. We drove to some beautiful sights and even went into a cave. We didn't have flashlights, so couldn't go in very far. We were supposed to go swimming on this day, but someone (FUMIHIKO) had forgotten to bring his swimsuit!

Fumihiko HAD brought along some udon and asked that he be allowed to cook it for people, so we went to a grocery store to get sauce and some other food to have with the udon, then headed to Bobbi's house. We had quite a nice dinner there. I'm not sure if everyone liked the udon, it might have been a bit bland to North American palates, but I thought it was nice.

After dinner, Frank dropped us off at the hotel and left us. We went for a walk along Waikiki again. We went a lot further than we had gone before and bought a few souvenirs. Fumihiko got his mother a muu-muu and I got a cd and some soap. We walked back to our hotel room and got a big surprise. There, on our table was a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket, and a plate of chocolate covered strawberries. The champagne was the good stuff too, French and not cheap! We called the front desk to find out what happened. We didn't order them. They checked it out and someone from Tokyo had sent them to our room. The Front Desk told us the name of the person, but we didn't know who it was. No idea. Fumihiko didn't know them. We told the guy at the Front Desk that, but he said to go ahead and enjoy them. So, we did! Two and a half glasses of champagne later....I was quite happy, and fell asleep almost immediately. I have the sneaking suspicion that they were sent to the wrong room. I think they were probably meant for someone's honeymoon.

The next morning we were supposed to meet Frank early, so we got up at 6 am. I know, I usually can't get up before 10, but on Wednesday morning we were up early. We went downstairs and had coffee and sat on a couple of deck chairs for a while and watched the waves and the passersby. It was cool and dry, a lovely time of day there. We had breakfast in the hotel's restaurant. It was a buffet, and some things were great, but the English Muffin I had could have been used as a roof tile. It was rock hard.

We went back to our room after breakfast and waited for Frank to call. He'd had a doctor's appointment, and didn't get done until after 10. He met us around 11 and we went to a Swap Meet. It was very hot by this time, so we looked around for just a little while. Fumihiko got some souvenirs for his co-workers and a Hawaiian shirt, Frank got a seat cover for his truck, and I got a beach cover up thingy.

Then we headed into Honolulu to go to the Ala Moana Shopping Center. I asked Frank for a suggestion of where to go, and he said to try Sears. So, that's where Fumihiko and I went. Oh what fun! Just let it be known that most of the staff there don't have a clue what they are doing! Still, I managed to buy myself about 5 pairs of pants that I can wear for work, so that's a good thing.

We didn't have time to go swimming on this day, so Frank dropped us off at the hotel again and big hugs were given all round. I hadn't seen my brother for the whole ten years I've lived in Japan, and it was a few years before that that I'd seen him I think.

We came back to our room and got dressed. We were going out! On Tuesday, Fumihiko had booked us a Sunset Dinner Cruise. He'd found it in one of his Japanese Travel Magazines, and decided to splurge on it. He didn't just go out for the cheapo version, he went for the 5 star course! We were picked up at our hotel and whisked away to a ship. We had a picture taken with the captain, then a "champagne" and hors d'oeuvres welcome. We were shown to our table and were fed extremely well. It really was nice. I've had "deluxe" dinners at these kind of things before but they weren't very good. Well, this was great. Very nice. We were allowed to have up to 4 drinks, plus we also had champagne because we were celebrating our anniversary. (It wasn't as nice as the stuff from the night before though!) The cruise was great. We had great food, beautiful scenery and lovely music, so we really enjoyed ourselves.

Back at our hotel we had a small bottle of champagne that the hotel had given us just after we'd checked in, and I promptly fell asleep again! However, I'm sad to say that I didn't sleep well this night. I woke up every couple of hours. I was worried about whether my suitcase would stay closed or not!

We got up later this morning and had breakfast care of Wolfgang Puck again. Fumihiko had a sandwich, I had a breakfast pizza. It was surprisingly good. Then we walked around on the beach again, and bemoaned the fact that we hadn't gone swimming at all! Four and a half days in Hawaii and NO SWIMMING? We're crazy.

We checked out and were taken by stretch limo to the airport where we were given our tickets and checked our baggage. I noticed that there was an "S" next to my name on my ticket and made a bet with Fumihiko that I would be searched again. Darn, I hate being right sometimes. After we went through the metal detector, I was pulled aside, frisked and my bags were inspected. I didn't really care from the point of view that I had nothing to hide, but I cared from the point of view that this was the second time it had happened to me when I was the only "Gaijin" on the plane. I didn't notice anyone else being searched.

We hacked around the airport for a while. Fumihiko got his duty free chocolates for his co-workers, we had coffee, and I found a stand with Dog, The Bounty Hunter on it, so I got my picture taken next to it!

When we boarded the plane, Fumihiko and I were sitting in a exit aisle so we had to stow our stuff up top. I hate that. I got a bit smart this time, I put my lip balm in my pocket first, then put my stuff up top. This plane also had individual TV's for each passenger, so I watched a couple of movies that I thought would never come to Tsuruoka. I saw Waitress with Kerri Russell and Nathan Fillion, and liked it a lot, then Mr. Brooks with Kevin Costner, William Hurt, Demi Moore and thought it was weird, but interesting. Not for all people, that's for sure.

We got back into Narita early, and went through immigration and customs very easily. We spent the night in a hotel in Narita then the next day came back to Tsuruoka.

So, that's it. The very long winded version of our holiday.

Some really good things. We didn't argue at all! That was a big surprise. We didn't go swimming...kind of a bummer. I didn't get sunburnt at all. Yay Clinique. The weather was great in Hawaii, and we had a great time.

That's it for today. Night night!