Hawaii

As of Novmber, I have officially lived on Sado for a year. Time is flying and it certainly doesn’t feel like a year has passed. Earlier in the year, when it was looking unlikely that Japan would open before 2023, two of my good friends boldly purchased airplane tickets to visit me. As the months went by and the Japanese government divulged little about the travel situation, we all became concerned that the trip would not be able to proceed. We decided to formulate a back up plan. We settled on Hawaii, as this would be the most feasible. It would be like we were meeting in the middle. I was also looking forward to coming home to the United States, in a way, even if I had never been to Hawaii before. By the time October rolled around, well after we had all booked plane tickets and a hotel, the Japanese government abruptly announced that the border would be fully opened to international travel. My friends would have been able to come after all. This was a tad demoralizing, but we all stayed excited about this trip.

In Mid-October, I took the familiar bullet train trip to Tokyo and departed Narita Airport. I arrived at Inouye Airport in Honolulu late in the morning. The weather was warm, in the 70s and 80s generally, and a bit humid, but nothing compared to the dripping Japanese summer. My friends were arriving later, so I took the opportunity to get our rental car and cast my Oregon ballot in the mail (No Postage Necessary if Mailed in the United States, as they say.) My friends arrived from Portland later that afternoon, and it was great to see them after nearly a year in Japan. We drove to our hotel in Waikiki, where we would be staying for the next nine nights.

It was all of our first times traveling to Hawaii, so there was plenty of stuff to see and explore. I think we were most interested in seeing the unique nature of Hawaii, so we hiked some of the many trails on Oahu, as well as simply driving through some backroads. We made sure to take advantage of the rental car and explored a good bit of the island, like the North Shore area. I think at the end of the trip, we spent most of our time at the beaches. We visited many, but I think the group consensus favorite was Makapu’u. We also went to Waimea Bay and saw some of the big wave surfers. Of course, I made sure to visit Pearl Harbor and the Battleship Missouri. There I saw the spot where the Japanese surrendered in World War II, as well as learned a lot about life on the ship which had been used until the Gulf War.

I was impressed with the culture of Hawaii. I have heard for a long time that it is a cosmopolitan place, but it is another thing to experience it firsthand. In some ways, it was like I had not left Japan. Japanese restaurants and chain stores operate here to serve the Japanese-American and Japanese immigrant market, which has left an indelible mark on Hawaiian culture. At the same time, it is distinctly American, as the myriad of military bases will remind you. Perhaps the vast cultural fusion of Hawaii is most evident in the food, which contains influences of American, Polynesian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Portuguese, and Puerto Rican cuisines, all representative of the various communities that have lived in Hawaii. The food was also quite delicious.

We all ended up having a great time, and saying goodbye to my friends was hard. Hawaii was excellent, but simply spending time with them might have been the best part. I was greatly impressed with Hawaii and would love to visit again someday. It really is just like they say: naturally beautiful, great weather, welcoming culture, and expensive. Though, I have to say, living on Sado this long has gotten me adjusted to the quiet countryside. I found Honolulu a bit overwhelming, which is made all the more amusing when you remember it’s half the size of my hometown of Portland, which itself is no bustling metropolis. That said, it was nice to go about my day and not be the center of attention, like I am as a foreigner here in rural Japan. Finally, there was some silver lining to the border opening. One of the friends who came to Hawaii is of Japanese descent, so he was now able to visit his Japanese family. I took this opportunity to travel with him to the southern island of Kyushu and Kitakyushu, the city of his birth, which will be the topic of my next post.