Hawaii

I know I have been fortunate in my travels.  Just the fact that I get to go so many places is pretty amazing.  But spending the summer in Hawaii - ah, now that was wonderful.

My parents sent me to work in Hawaii for the summer with the purpose of showing me that I did not need to move to Japan after college to be around Japanese culture.  They wanted me to experience the Japanese influence in Hawaii first-hand so hopefully I would move just a half an ocean away instead of a full one (and I think my mom wanted to visit me in Hawaii - certainly a lot more than she would have wanted to visit me in Japan!)  Well, they succeeded.  I want to move to Hawaii!  (But Dan has to go there at least once before I convince him to move - sigh, men).  

I spent a little more than two months living in a tiny little apartment just one block from Waikiki beach.  And when I say "tiny little apartment", I mean it.  But I was okay with the fact that my refrigerator was on the balcony.  That just meant I got a great view of the ocean every time I went to get milk.  

While I was living there, I took a class at University of Hawaii and worked for a great company, Net Enterprise.  There was a great public transportation system, The Bus, so I didn't have to worry about not having a car.  The weather was wonderful.  The people were great. And there was Japanese EVERYwhere!  In other words, it was my version of heaven.  

(Actually, I must rephrase that - in my version of heaven, I would not live next door to a porn shop.  The only sign that said the type of store was in Japanese, so I'm sure most people (tourists) didn't even notice it.  Oh, but I did.  Right there in big blue Japanese letters "po-ru-no"... "porno".  Yikes).

I would love to go back to Hawaii.  There are so many Japanese classes I could easily improve my language skills - there was even a Japanese TV channel, KikuTV, which was so fun to watch!  Japanese books, movies, department stores.  SMAP (a popular J-Pop group) even included Hawaii on their tour that year.  Add on top of that, miles and miles of gorgeous beaches and wonderful weather - well, I'm surprised I actually left at all!  (Okay, I did consider transferring to the University of Hawaii, but I thought that it might not have been the smartest move I could make going into my senior year of college). 

Of course, now I know that taxes are insanely high, food is more expensive ($6.00 for a gallon of milk - fish was cheap though), and the cost of living is much higher in Hawaii than anywhere on the mainland (except for perhaps parts of California).  So living in paradise isn't quite perfect.  But I must say, I think I'd still like to give it a shot!

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Last updated 7-Oct-03