Aloha Hawaii

Aloha in Hawaiian means hello and good bye. But before I get to my last day in Hawaii, I want to share a few food things. 

Like this super cute honu green turtle melon bread filled with azuki bean paste. I found him at Nijiya Market and I suspect he originated from Watanabe Bakery. So cute and delicious! He even had a little tail. Stopping in at Nijiya was worth it.

I did find saimin noodles at the convention. Something I noticed about a lot of the food was much of it was salty. Maybe because of the heat it is a way to replace salt in the body?

I know sandwiches aren't that exciting. But I just had to compare Hawaii's version of egg salad with Japan's. I found these in a shop at the first floor of the hotel. They were actually pretty good. Sometimes I go with this for breakfast since it's easier. 

Fresh fruit! Cantaloupe, grapes and pineapple. I may have found this at the Ala Moana Center, a large shopping mall next to the hotel. I spent a little time looking around there. Since most of the restaurants were American chain places, I opted out of that. I finally found a food court that had places that locals recommended. One place had a good Caesar salad that I enjoyed for lunch one day.

 Also in the mall I found Honolulu Cookie Company. Yes I gave into temptation.

The cute pineapple shortbread cookies are not easy to resist. Some have dried fruit in the center. 

My favorites were the chocolate dipped cookies. Such temptation.

I also stopped at LUSH at the mall. Where I discovered they had a number of the Harajuku bath bombs. I bought a couple more including the butterfly.

Just a photo of the moon the night before I left. My room did have a decent view. 

And a pretty sky the next morning as I headed to the airport.

Time for lunch so I stopped at Makai Plantation.

Gave myself a bit of a treat with unagi nigiri which was delicious.

And I indulged in their ahi poké. It was just as good as the first time I ate it. No Blue Hawaiian this time. I was being good.  

And finally on my plane and headed back to the Mainland. One last look at the blues and greens of the Islands. 

 Waikiki Beach and beyond. 

 Diamond Head and beautiful water.

 Remembering I drove all the way along this south coast.

The Koko Crater area. It's so beautiful when you get away from all the concrete buildings and such. 

Aloha Hawaii. 

And back to Portland International Airport and the jellyfish case. 

Before I left I couldn't help but indulge in a couple purchases. 

Seriously, anyone who likes cookies would find it hard to pass this up. 

Along with a bag of Mongoose Kona coffee. This smelled so good. And the taste was wonderful.

So that's the last of my Hawaii blog posts. Thanks for sticking with me if you read all of them. Next up is a return to Tokyo. Because it's difficult for me to stay away.

Checking in at Honolulu Hawaii

Tokyo was March so Hawaii was April. Still cold really early in the morning, but thankfully no ice. Since I post photos of train stations in Japan, here is one early morning in Oregon. It's worth the savings to take the train to the airport, if I get up early. 

Back on Hawaiian Airlines and they had Honolulu Cookie Company shortbread cookies. I wanted to try these so I was glad they offered them. Hawaiian Airlines has decent service on their flights. And it was great how the pilot gave us an air tour of Oahu on the descent into the airport. Over Diamond Head, Pearl Harbor and a few more places. I was so busy looking I forgot to take photos. 

Fast forward through a taxi ride from the airport to my hotel in Honolulu. I brought my Tokidoki LeSportsac Spiaggia purse back to the place it came from. I remember actually calling the local LeSportsac store back when to get this and a couple other pieces. And yes I did visit the store during my trip and bought a little something that wasn't Tokidoki. The person running the store was really nice, even opened the store up so I could look around. He recognized my purse. Thanks LeSportsac Honolulu!

After checking in I decided to visit the Hawai'i Convention Center where the Kawaii Kon convention was being held. One of the first things I noticed was that Hawaiians drive a lot of interesting cars.

 Lots of glass used for the Hawai'i Convention Center.

Inside there were palm trees. Not real palm trees though. The venue had a nice open feeling to all the floors and was decently laid out so it wasn't too difficult to find where the various rooms were. I previously wrote about the convention so I won't go into it here. Links to the three posts are here:

2019 Kawaii Kon Moi-même-Moitié Fashion Show http://blukats.blogspot.com/2019/04/2019-moi-meme-moitie-kawaii-kon-fashion.html

2019 Kawaii Kon Mana-sama Question and Answer Panel http://blukats.blogspot.com/2019/04/2019-mana-questions-and-answers-at.html 

2019 Kawaii Kon Moi-même-Moitié Tea Party http://blukats.blogspot.com/2019/04/2019-moi-meme-moitie-tea-party-with.html

I did spend some time walking around the convention when it was going on and seeing more than I wrote about. There were a lot of enthusiastic attendees, fun cosplays and interesting vendors. I do think for an anime convention it was a lot more relaxed than others I've been to, which was good.

Back to my hotel room. Even though I was in the back wing, there was still a view of the ocean and lots of green.

And a park along the ocean. Very tempting, I headed out to take a look.

It is Ala Moana Regional Park and it was hot and humid. And that sun...yeah there was sun.

It was nice to be able to see so much ocean.

And trees.

And Myna birds. 

And Red-crested Cardinals. So many birds in these trees.

I'm not sure how effective that orange fence is. I did notice in Honolulu people tend to do whatever they want. It was an interesting place.

An inviting bench. It was a good place to sit and think.

With a view of the Ala Wai Canal. The hills just beyond all the concrete buildings were very tempting.

 Not much further away was Diamond Head, just beyond Waikiki.

I'm not going to talk about the expensive awful dinner I had that first night. The food was okay but overpriced, the service was not very good. Part of the problem is that restaurants in the area are mostly expensive and I did not have a car. I did walk a lot but it was hot and humid so I had to make sure not to over do it. So my options were limited to what was around the hotel.

It was nice that in the hotel the Starbucks also served beer. While it was not open late, sitting down to enjoy a Longboard Island lager from Kona Brewing after that dinner and the heat outside was pleasant. Considering that I had a very strange encounter in the lobby right after this, I'm glad there was this nice moment prior. I'm also glad there was a nice video online to watch once I reached my room. And I had something to look forward to the next day.