Hawaii Travelogue: a Japan away from Japan
This year, I decided to go with my family on vacation to Hawaii, where we stayed for around a week in Waikiki, one of the biggest tourist areas (観光地) of Honolulu, on the island of Oahu. As someone who has a spent a large part of the last two decades of my life involved in Japanese language and culture without living in Japan, Hawaii turns out to be a good fit for me because there is a large Japanese population there. Before our trip I had read somewhere that around 25% of the population was Japanese, but we ended up being very surprised about how deeply Japanese culture was integrated in Hawaii.
In this series of posts, I will be giving a detailed report of our trip, organized by topics. While I will focus on the Japanese aspects of Hawaii (which is written In Japanese as ハワイ, not ハワイイ as you might expect), I’ll also try to talk about Hawaii in a more general sense so that even people not as interested in Japanese culture can learn something.
Links to below chapters will be updated as I post them.
Table of Contents:
- Introduction and Table of Contents (this page)
- Ch 1: Why Hawaii? and First Impressions
- Ch 2: Hotel
- Ch 3: Japanese in Hawaii
- Ch 4: Wyndham Timeshare
- Ch 5: Food in Hawaii
- Ch 6: Diamond Head Trail
- Ch 7: Japanese Massage
- Ch 8: Celebrity Tour
- Ch 9: Izumo Shrine and Chinatown
- Ch 10: Oahu Coast Drive
- Ch 11: Pepper the Robot
- Ch 12: Lala Land
- Ch 13: Transportation in Hawaii
- Ch 14: Linguistic Notes
- Ch 15: Bishop Museum
- Ch 16: Waikiki Notes
- Ch 17: Cultural and Societal Notes
- Ch 18: Final Words
- Ch 19: Selected Photos
Note: if you enjoyed this, you may want to check out the report on my 2015 Japan trip here.
Thanks for documenting your trip to Hawaii from the perspective of someone into Japanese language and culture. I have always heard that there is a strong Japanese influence in Hawaii, but I’ve never really known what to expect. I think Hawaii would be an easier sell for a family vacation than Japan, which I haven’t been to in long long time. I’m curious if Hawaii would be a good alternative to visiting Japan, and so far it’s sounding promising!
Thanks for reading and for the comment. I would comment more but I think I’ll just post the rest of the articles first, then if you have any questions I can answer then.
I have pretty much all of them written, just need to finish up editing and post them one at a time.
Glad someone is learning something from my efforts, though (:
I look forward to going through these posts, as someone who grew up in Hawaii myself but who has lived in Japan for the last 15 years (I do tend to go back every other year or so for a couple of weeks). Your use of “Japanese” as opposed to “Japanese-American” through me for an initial loop I’ll have to admit, although sometimes when you’re in Waikiki it could feel that 25% of the people were Japanese! 😉
*threw*, not “through” — argh, been over here too long is my excuse! 🙂
Kurt, thanks for the comment and let me know if you have any more comments. Was definitely an eye-opening trip for us!