Hawaii Trip 3-dot #3

This and perhaps the next several entries are being posted from Hawaii, where I’m on vacation. As naturally I’d prefer to spend my time on the beach or somewhere similar, these are more a collection of notes rather than anything I’m actually taking any time to write. Read accordingly.

ippai mono ga arimasu kara, ki o tsukete ne. Just heard that as I was walking to the internet connection, spoken by a local cop to a Japanese couple carrying the usual assortment of large shopping bags with all the usual suspects emblazoned on the sides….We were in a coffee shop yesterday and there was this rather old couple, local looking an all, and at some point I could overhear the woman saying something to her husband: asoko miru? nan toka…., and it was only after a few seconds did I even make note of the fact that she was speaking Japanese. This has happened several times this trip, like with the cop just now, where folks speak Japanese to each other and it just seems like part of my aural landscape, and that only later do I note that here it is a foreign tongue. I guess this has something to do with my improved listening comprehension, but also how ingrained the language now is in my consciousness….It’s funny, as a kid I rarely ever heard my Japanese-American friends speak Japanese, but surely they did, at home, or in the obligatory “japanese school” they all went to after regular school, a kind of mysterious place where I imagined they were folding paper into cranes and stuff….In fact, my first memory of even entering a proper local Japanese house was around 13 or 14, my neighborhood friend who lived immediately behind us in Nuuanu. I remember having to take off my shoes which I couldn’t believe, and having miso soup for the first time in my life. Funnily enough, I think it was a Japanese-Chinese household, at least my friend’s last name was Ho (but then again I remember he was adopted, so who knows). Later, after we had moved away from the neighborhood, I ran into this friend at St. Louis High, where I was going to summer school (making up a failed English class I seem to recall), and on the last day of that term, there was a big commotion and I remember during the final test someone ran into the classroom shouting that someone had been stabbed. After class was over, I found out that the assailant was none other than my childhood friend. Stabbed someone over a girl….

We went over to Kaneohe for lunch yesterday, a bit of a hike but hey, we’ve got the SUV so what’s a few miles right? Ate over at the Times Coffee Shop, rather good as far as that fare goes. Got this through the Oahu Revealed guidebook I picked up for $9.99 at Costco, something proving to be a very good deal. Published this year and all, quite frank in their opinions. You’re probably thinking why do I need a guidebook but the fact is, a lot has changed since I lived here, and in those 20 years in between, I’ve only been back a few times. Anyway, though to be fair I haven’t looked at Lonely Planet Hawaii or Rough Guide or anything else, I can wholeheartedly recommened the Revealed book if you’re headed here….Was thinking as we were over in Kaneohe that if we ever moved back here (quite frankly a pipe dream but still), I’d move over to the windward side. Although I spent practically my entire Hawaii life in Honolulu, I just can’t see myself living on this part of the island and being entirely happy. And where I lived most of my time here, in Nuuanu, well, that’s about as windward as you can get while still being in Honolulu….

The fact of the matter is that I have no “home” here, we always rented apartments or houses and now my mother rents a small studio apartment in Kaka’ako, so that surely ain’t “home”. This is the problem with coming back here, invariably one stays in Waikiki, even now we’re in a condo/apartment but that too is in Waikiki. And well, there ain’t a whole lot that’s “local” in Waikiki. When I was a kid, coming down to Waikiki was either to see a movie (all the blockbusters played at either of the Waikiki 1, 2, or 3 theaters — all gone now), or to eat out at some fancy restaurant, or later in teen years to scope out “mainland chicks”. Even after my parents’ divorce and my mother moved down to the area, we just came to visit her apartment and never ventured beyond really. It wasn’t until I was in college, my brother and I got this hellish summer job gig or handing out “dinner cruise” or “rock n’ roll booze cruise” fliers on Kalakaua, that I spent any serious time in Waikiki….So a part of me feels this weird disconnect where here I enter those ABC stores or watch the Waikiki sunset and feel I’m not home. But not having a “home” to go to, nor any friends from those days that I’m even interested in looking up (guaranteed they’re still here), “home” ends up being eating plate lunches or Leonard’s malasadas and walking in Daiei which used to be Holiday Mart when I was a kid and we lived 1 block from there.

Speaking of malasadas, saw the Leonards’ truck in Windward Mall yesterday and so after our car drive further up north to Laie (in pounding rain as it were), on the way back we hit that truck. These treats are Portugese donuts, don’t know if they still have them that way in Portugal but they’ve been in Hawaii ever since the Portugese came this way. Anyway, like donuts, without the whole, and deadly (or heavenly, take your pick) in a way that not even Krispy Kreme can touch. $.65 a pop, or $.85 if you get one with filling. I’m not sure if that’s a new thing but when I was a kid, I never had filling. But I tried one yesterday, with Haupia (coconut), and well, it was like a Japanese chou-creme only better. Speaking of chou-cremes, you can actually get Papa Beard variety in a couple of places here now. The culinary arm of Japan stretches far when there are Japanese tourists about.

Just to follow up on my bookstore tirade from the other day, it turns out there’s another used bookstore in town, in fact right across from the store I wrote about, in Pucks Alley. This other store is called The Book Shelf, and although not the greatest selection, was very neat and orderly, only one clerk who was helpful and didn’t seem a geek. Bought two books about Sumo there (old ones, never heard of them before), and a From Here to Eternity paperback. Speaking of, the Lancaster-Kerr film has been one of my DVD purchases here, got that at Walmart for $10, plus a couple of Sergio Leone 2-disc sets, River Kwai, and Raging Bull special edition. 5 DVD’s (3 2-disc sets) for $55, not bad I say. Because of the get-your-photos-on-CD deal I described in notes #1, we’ve now been to Walmart 3 times, not something I’m happy to report, especially after yesterday’s laughable encounter at the checkout register. We had bought a couple of aloha shirts that were on a 50% off (taken at register) deal. Well, problem number one was that checkout girl (actually two of them) didn’t know that. After mentioning it, the girl rings up the $15 buck minus 50% off at $5.50. The other helping (apparently more senior) says that seems wrong, and then they start all over. The girl then fesses up to the fact that she doesn’t know what 50% off of $15 should be. I say “$7.50”, but not being the trusting sort she gets out the calculator. Lordy. 50% off of $9.00 was similarly taxing.

Back to books, the Shirokiya store in Ala Moana (this was always the place to get Shisheido and other Japanese brands before they seemed into the normal consumer channels, if you couldn’t drive out to the Daiei in Pearlridge) now has a Book-Off shop within it’s store. (For those not living in Japan, Book-off is a chain of used bookstores in Japan, mainly for manga). Had a lot of manga, but also a lot of English books, something you hardly ever find in the Japan stores. And sumo magazines to boot. Chou-cremes, used manga, what else is in store to be imported to Hawaii from Japan, love hotels?….Had a coffee at Starbucks after that and I’ve become so accustomed to spending $3 plus in Japan for a “tall” coffee, that only paying $1.85 or so for a “venti” was a shock. While I was getting the coffee (and asked “room for cream?”, hallelujah, in Japan I hate having to constantly request chotto herashite kudasai), some woman was chatting up Naoko complaining about older rich women from Japan who come into Starbucks with their water bottles and fill up on the free water Starbucks provides, without buying anything. For Naoko, the upshot of that encounter was that she must not have appeared Japanese to the woman. In fact, given what usually passes for a Japanese woman tourist here in Waikiki (most of them still dressed like Kalakaua was Center Gai in Shibuya), Naoko couldn’t be further from that look. At the Alamo, our SUV benefactor Sheila remarked, “you’ve ‘local’-ized your wife.”

Kaika can’t get enough of all the various Halloween decorations, anytime he sees a pumpkin he says “jack-o-lanter” and he’s dually horrified (to the point of tears) and fascinated (wants to see them again) by the various monster/skeleton displays. It’s a shame we’re leaving before the trick-or-treat day, I think he’d get a big kick out of dressing up and going trick or treating somewhere….We also “met” Clifford the big dog the other night and the grand opening of the new Ala Moana Barnes and Noble and after initially hugging the dog (well, the woman in the big dog costume, just between you and me), he ran away from the dog the rest of the night. But he sat super still for a book reading the store gave, of local Hawaii-authored children’s books. The woman doing the reading couldn’t get over Kaika (“he’s such a darling, the girls will be all over him later” — certainly not the first time we’ve heard that, here or in Japan).