Where Globe-Trotting meets Beach-Combing
“It’s so America!” I thought the first time I visited Hawaii, coming from Japan. “It’s so Japan!” I think now all the time, having come from the mainland. Today I picked up a tourism magazine in Japanese from a huge stack near Lanikai Juice, where we’d stopped to retrieve the hat Isaac left there a…
“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the…
The Makapu’u Point Lighthouse Trail is one of the vistas that kept me obsessing over moving here for years and years. Tom and Bonnie—our previously mentioned patron saints of Hawaii—brought me here on our 2010 whirlwind tour of the island. The (paved) trail displays glorious views as it leisurely winds its way up the rocks. …
An excursion to the Dole Pineapple Plantation is kind of an odd choice for us since we all seem to react unpleasantly to delicious pineapple. My throat burns and my stomach gurgles uncomfortably for hours. Isaac’s tongue hurts. Eloise wolfs down pineapple like it’s going out of style, then cries and tries to wipe out…
Tokyo’s PPAP Cafe came and went months ago, but that did not deter my kids from dancing and singing “pen pineapple apple pen” all the way up the Northern Shore yesterday. Chris pulled over when we saw a sign for coconuts. Oh YES, I am that kind of tourist! Scattered across the counter between pineapples…
Still doing moving things. We toured a preschool. We checked our PO Box. We went to Anchor Church, which started Life Chapel, our beloved Japanese church. We looked at more houses with our realtors after getting outbid. We attended open house after open house. We went to storytime at the base library. I went to…
“Ua ka ua, kahe ka wai. (The rain rains, the water flows)” —olelo no’eau 2801 We took a break from moving mania to hike the shady, jungly Manoa Falls Trail. It did not disappoint. Thick ferns and creeping, flowering vines, trilling birdsong, trickling water, lots of other hikers, and a guy setting up selfies…
