Sunday, August 9, 2009

It's not all beach, sunshine and ocean you know

There are good ideas and there are good ideas. Among the good ideas count going to Hawaii in August to escape the heat, stickiness and crowds here in Japan and replace that with sunshine, blue skies and clear blue water. That is without doubt a good idea.

Now, a bad idea is to enjoy said sunshine, blue skies and clear blue water without proper application of sunscreen. Granted, I did not completely ignore this and I thought I did apply it in the volumes that my quite tough skin requires but waking up the next day glaring bright red skin on some parts of my body which later on turned out to be a bit painful and now in the final stages being able to peal of the skin like it's some plastic film on my body did teach me a little lesson at least.

All in all, I highly recommend a trip to Hawaii, although at times it hardly felt like we left Japan at all considering that it seemed like the vast majority of tourists at this time were Japanese and that every place we went to had at least one person servicing the Japanese customers in Japanese and that all the high end brand stores had staff completely fluent in Japanese but somewhat lacking in English...

Another lesson was that visisting a store/restaurant that is written about in Japanese guidebooks means that there will be hordes of Japanese tourists hitting up those places, making it feel like we hardly left Japan at all and ensuring some quite extensive waiting times...

The time was divided up with some beach resort time where it was mostly about enjoying the slow life, spa, good food, the ocean and the sun and then later on Honolulu with more shopping oriented activities, something which Mrs. Sunshine-Salaryman approached with considerable enthusiasm while I placed myself in a conveniently located outdoor bar in the shopping center enjoying the atmosphere and quite a few whiskey sours, gin tonics and an educating book about Ed Gein. I think it's called a win-win situation, but now we're back in a hot and sticky Japan again, I guess it can't be all fun and games all the time... But hey, at some point we will be going back there!

8 comments:

Unknown said...

I have only been to the airport on the way to and from the US, 20 years ago, so I don't remember anything but an airport.

Surely the wife didn't get all that sun damage, obsession with white skin and all.

Me said...

Though Hawaiians know which side of the seaweed their yen is on.

Next time try thr Royal Hawaiian beach bar. No Japanese (don't know why, but I'm not complaining)

Karen said...

I too love the Royal Hawaiian for it's retro glamour. All the American movie stars of the 1930s stayed there like Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. Who can resist a pink hotel?

As an American, what was 'interesting' about the Japanese tourist invasion of Hawaii was touring Pearl Harbor together knowing each side's vision of the site was so different.

Mr. Salaryman said...

Next time I'm gonna check out that Royal Hawaiian you all are talking about!

But why has no one commented on the great picture...?

Me said...

I might of commented on the pic some years ago but I already got mine and we prefer a more upscale hang out,

Karen said...

I'll comment cause now you're showing my favorite childhood comic book. I'm sure that cover is very representative of the Sunshine/Salaryman honeymoon!

Mr. Salaryman said...

Haha, well, c'mon, you have to read what Archie actually says on the cover and apply some modern day slang to it and the humour will come out in full bloom!

artin said...

So you mean that beat off actually has meant something else in the good old days?

(Do we really have to comment every pic you post? They are all brilliant, especially those that i don´t understand.)

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