Hawaii and the start of wedding week...

After our short stay in Tokyo we hopped on another plane and made the short flight over to Hawaii. JAL airlines from Tokyo to Honolulu and then a Hawaiian flight over to Maui. We made the flight fine but upon arrival in Honolulu my backpack never came down the luggage conveyor. That's not good.

Some of the staff were kind enough to point out that our luggage had indeed come down and was sitting off to the side, we hadn't noticed it because it was wrapped in towels and plastic wrap. That's another bad sign. The wine we had tossed into the luggage when we left Tokyo decided that it didn't want to be a gift but would rather leak all over the clothes we planned on wearing to the wedding. A quick emptying of the suitcase in front of customs and we've got all the glass shards out of our now red clothes and we're ready to go....

Into Maui and to the Pineapple Inn (which we will say is an absolutely excellent place to stay) where we quickly load our clothes into the washing machine that's provided. Yes, almost all of our clothes come clean.

That first night we meet up with Heather and Mike for dinner and some drinks. It's cinco de Mayo, so of course margaritia's are enjoyed.
The next day Beth had signed everybody up to take a reggae booze cruise as a bachelor / bachelorette party. Again, good times were had by all.
Ah, then back to the Marriott where most of the people were staying for a great dinner at Mala. Heather was off to be early seeing as tomorrow was the big day whereas the rest of us stayed up and enjoyed far too much wine.

More Tokyo

The next day we met up with an old friend and colleague from Rosenbluth, Holly. We worked together when I first moved to Chicago, and she has since, married, moved to London, then Germany, had two children and now lives in Tokyo with her family.

It was great to reconnect with her again and meeting her two kids, Unfortunately Skip, her husband was flying back to the U.S. so it was Mark and the girls for the day. We spent the day, catching up with each other’s lives. What a small world!

That evening as we promised our friend that we would come back to hear him play again at the Kei jazz club. As we walked in, he told us that the owner advised him that the club was closed on Monday due to the holiday. Since Stan told us to come back on Monday, he made her open the bar for us. Glad we decided to go back to the bar!

We were very lucky as the weather was excellent the entire time we were in Tokyo, and we were able to meet up with some old friends!

Remembering back two weeks ago.....

Just two short weeks ago we were waking up in Tokyo, with no major plans and perfect weather off we went to wander through the city.

First we need coffee, and in heading there we get to witness a window washer lose his balance and go swinging wildly away from the building. He spilled half his bucket of water all over the sidewalk below, getting a few people...
Once we were fueled up we just stared walking, we had seen a lot of Tokyo when we were here last year so it made for a nice lazy day of just walking and seeing what we would run into.

For lunch we stopped at a great German style beer hall that had beautiful mosaic work covering the walls.Finally, after walking what Tina believes to be somewhat over 10 km, we made it back up to the small restaurant that we went to last year so that we could see the owner that had sent us photos of the cherry blossoms.

But, as you remember we found out when looking into trips to Kyoto, it is the Golden Week and a lot of places are closed. This small little restaurant is closed too with a small sign saying that it will re-open just after we leave for Hawaii. There is someone inside so we knock on the door anyway...

The owner comes out and is glad to see us - we gave him a photo of all of us from last year, and he decides that he will take us to another good little sushi restaurant in the area that is still open.

The sushi master and his wife

The food was excellent, and this tiny place was packed. We pulled out our little travel printer and printed off a picture of Tina and I with the owner, and after some mangled Chinese between us, Tina writing Chinese, and finally a call to his English teacher - we agree to come back to Tokyo sometime when his restaurant is open so that he can treat us to a great sushi meal...

Blogger Issues

Sorry - We would love to post something but somebody on blogger out there must have angered the great China firewall. It could be a universal China block, or maybe just down by us, all I know is that we can't see blogger.com and our normal workarounds also seem to be affected. It's taken a lot of time and work just to get to where we can write this, and even now we can't load pictures and aren't fully sure if this will post.

We will work on this more tomorrow since it's a weekend and I'll be able to devote more then an hour to trying to determine how to post something.

Back in Xiamen

Ah, what a trip it has been - Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hawaii. Well, we are finally back home in Xiamen and we made it back safely, although I'd a good deal sunburnt.

We took lots of pictures and have some great stories, some that we can even share - so starting tomorrow, if we can get our act together and get unpacked and cleaned up, we should be back to posting on a somewhat regular schedule.