Hawaii Trip Day Two

The second day of our trip was mostly eating, relaxing, walking on the beach, and more eating! After a leisurely morning, we made plans to meet Nozomi's mother and sister for lunch. They rode the shuttle bus to our condominium and then we walked together to a nearby restaurant. The food was delicious (with huge, American-sized servings; most of us couldn't finish ours) and we had casual conversation and made jokes in English, Japanese, and Japanglish. On the walk back to the condominium we found what might have been the favorite 7-11 store of Hawaiian pigeons. We also enjoyed seeing beautiful flowers lining the streets everywhere we went, and stopped to take a picture that was supposed to be scenic, but turned out to be a little bit comic ("Rob, why is your head magically floating in those flowers?").
Back at our place, we shared the family history pictures that we had prepared. My mother showed photos of me, my siblings, parents, cousins, nephews, grandparents, aunts and uncles! Nozomi, her mother and her sister shared family pictures that we brought from Japan, and then we surprised everyone with a DVD that Nozomi and I had transferred from old Super 8 movies. The "stars" were Nozomi and the rest of her family when she was about 5 years old. There were scenes from the house where they grew up, a school sports day from kindergarten, and the Sapporo Snow Festival. Later that afternoon, we enjoyed a walk on the beach before and during sunset.
In the evening, we all met up again for dinner. Our meals were delicious, even though the coconut shrimp was so sweet that it tasted more like coconut-shrimp donuts... Nozomi's sister, Kaoru, and my mother have birthdays only one day apart in March, so we surprised them both with waiters singing "Happy Birthday" and mini birthday sundaes.
Back at our place one more time after dinner, we watched fireworks from our lanai (veranda). From our ninth-floor room, we could just get a view of the Hilton Hotel's show across the street. The following two days we had wonderful tours provided by Nozomi's Honolulu cousin and her husband, so that's up next...

Hawaii Trip Day One

The first day of our trip started much more calmly than previous trips to America, mostly because the flight left much later in the day. We had a rather relaxing morning making final preparations and then after lunch we took the airport bus from Utsunomiya station to Narita. Nozomi's mother rode with us, and she and Nozomi had a long talk together. Even at the airport we had a stress-free time; since we were on China Airlines, we left from Terminal One instead of Terminal Two (which seems to be much busier usually-most of the international flights leave from Terminal Two). Going through security was even easy; no line and friendly staff that said not to bother taking off my shoes and belt-WOW! (My experience waiting in ridiculously long security lines in the airports in Hawaii later is another story...) The flight was uneventful (I watched the new Muppet Movie on the plane-pretty fun!) and it was interesting hearing the flight attendants use Chinese, Japanese or English depending on who they were talking to. The only negative was just before landing I started to get a headache and plugged ears. After getting off the plane I had either a hay fever attack or a cold, I'm still not sure which, and the Honolulu airport has NO amenities other than a Starbucks outside the security gate. It's laughably bad. But, we were in Hawaii, so I couldn't complain TOO much.
After meeting up with my family, we found the car rental office and drove to our condominium. (Nozomi's mother and sister were on a different flight, part of a package deal, so the shuttle bus took them to their hotel separately.) After a bit of relaxing, we drove to their hotel for the first meeting of Nozomi's and my parents. In the first pictures, you can see us exchanging gifts after greeting each other, and then a couple of posed pictures outside their hotel. Everyone was happy to finally meet each other and carefully selected gifts were exchanged. My mother commissioned my sister-in-law to custom make some beautiful tote bags for the members of Nozomi's family; you can see one in the picture if you look carefully. Nozomi's mother brought some hand-made dragonfly brooches that my mother loved. Later in the evening, we met again for a short time at the beach between where we were staying and watched the sunset together. We returned to the condo and hotel to recover from jet lag and get ready for the next day's adventures.

Another Beautiful Waikiki Sunset

Today we hiked to the top of Diamond Head near Waikiki Beach and got a wonderful view from the top; I'll post pictures of that later, but for now here is a video I took last night just after sunset. We were taking a walk along the beach and paused to watch the sun go down.

(Video is offline.)

THE ANSWER: We are in . . .

Of course, the answer is: Cleveland, Ohio, USA! Just kidding; we are in Honolulu!
Yesterday was an all-day trip to the big island for a volcano tour, but that post will be later.
This morning we went to New Hope Church for a wonderful service and also met some friends there. Later we had a delicious lunch (and you can see a picture of Nozomi enjoying a delicious beverage). After that we went to Hilo Hattie's for some shopping, took a mini tour of Waikiki, stopped at an amazing, historical hotel (the first one in Waikiki) and watched the sunset from the beach. Another great day!