Girl's Day. We never really did much to mark the occassion before, but this year — Katie's fifth — was a special one.
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Most notably, we were able to make an appointment for a girl's kimono fitting and photo sitting, probably the main attraction every year (next to the chado tea ceremony demonstration).
So, after Katie jumped out of the pool at her weekly swimming lesson at the YWCA, we zipped over to the center just in time for her fitting.
Despite her wet hair and raccoon-like goggle rings around her eyes, a team of Japanese dressers cheerfully but swiftly started working their magic. And apart from some understandable initial reluctance to undress around strangers, Katie was dazzled by the whole process.
At the very least, the experience of having four adults fussing over her at once was clearly one she savored.
Jen, Zac and I were also enchanted by the process. With every step, from the fastening of an complicated, strappy underthing (I didn't want to bother them to get the correct term) to the tying of delicate, embroidered ribbons around her waist, Jen and I couldn't help but sigh and shudder and, yes, get a little moist around the peepers.
Now, Jen and I take a great deal of pride in Katie's scrappy, rascally traits... a mix of tomboy, sneaky schemer, and sarcastic comedienne. As is especially evident when she goes to auditions (as she did last week, as reported by Jen), she's no girly girl. She loves dresses, to be sure, but she's pretty happy scraped up, covered with dirt and with her hair in tangles as well.
So, seeing her so elaborately dressed up, pretty as a cherry blossom, just took our breath away.
She got to klop-klop-klop around a while in her wooden shoes and talk to some of the other little girls before it was time to get her picture taken. By that point, she was eager to see some of the other things at the center, and the only way to get her to even look at the camera was to promise her a turn at a table with some paper and glue.
With about an hour to wait for the prints — produced on-site from digital photos — she had plenty of time to play. Zac, meanwhile, chose to use the free time to nap on Jen's shoulder.
The center had put together an arts-and-crafts room in its grand dojo, and Katie methodically went to every station. She made beanbags, then learned how to play with them, she made a little girl's day doll , she made a card for her mom (and her mom's mom), and a bookmark. She then insisted on carrying her collected loot around as we explored the center further.
I'm almost embarassed to say that yesterday was the first time I'd ever been to the Japanese Cultural Center, and most of what I knew about it was the fact that it nearly went bankrupt last year. It was a surprisingly impressive, clearly valuble facility, and I'm sure glad now they pulled through.
The heart of the center, at least from my limited perspective, was its walk-through historical gallery, allowing you to follow the timeline from the arrival of the first Japanese immigrants through World War II to the rise of Japanese American community and political leaders. It included a small replica of a plantation house, a church, and a small theater that was showing "Ganbare" — a film by Tom Coffman and Robert Bates examining discrimination against Japanese Americans during World War II.
Zac wasn't fond of the dark, so I wandered the gallery when the movie started. I bumped into a volunteer guide, who carried Zac and dutifully asked me leading questions to expand my awareness and interest in Japanese American history. I was glad to find he knew about the controvesy surrounding Rep. Howard Coble's recent remarks on internment. I told him that my grandparents had been interned at Tule Lake, and that my father was born there.
Katie, sadly, wasn't exactly enthralled by the documentary either, so they sneaked out of the theater a few minutes later. I said I'd have to be sure to check it out later. Jen, too, said she was impressed with the center, and added it to her list of family activities.
Coupled with Saturday's annual gathering of the Yamanashi Kyoyukai Friendship Club — celebrating the Yamanashi Prefecture, ancestral home of my father's family — it turned out to be a weekend full of Japanese culture.
The Japanese overload this past weekend helped soften the blow, somewhat, of the news we finally received last week: Katie would not be attending Kamehameha Schools when she starts kindergarten this year. My Hawaiian side, I suppose, was having an off season.
We'd been waiting for the decision since her interview in October. Jen would check the mail religiously, looking for the distinctive school logo. She finally cracked and called a couple of weeks ago, and they told her the letters had just been mailed. Sure enough, we got ours a couple of days later.
Jen was very disappointed. So was, surprisingly, my mom, who immediately started wondering what other private school options remained.
I was sad, too, but less so. When I was a kid, I also interviewed to attend Kamehameha Schools, but I told the interviewer the truth: I didn't want to go there. I had a poor impression of its students that, while probably unfair, still lingers to this day. And ultimately, I consider myself a relatively decent product of the public school system.
That is to say, I can't remember a thing I learned in school. It was what I learned at home, more than anything, that made me who I am today. (A decent guy who likes language but can't do math to save his life.) So, perhaps naively, I think Katie could be a genius, no matter where she goes to school.
Unless we can find another option (and unless we decide to homeschool), Katie will go to Lincoln Elementary in September.
Weirdly enough, soon after we heard back from Kamehameha Schools, I also heard back from the Office of Hawaiian Affairs. They'd finally gotten around to processing the applications I submitted for their Hawaiian Registry program back in March. They just needed a photo to make my official Hawaiian ID card.
So, at least I'll be official. Kamehameha Schools aside, it could be very useful when the revolution comes.
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The very first thing I did when I joined the office in 1998 was redesign the original site, so it was a fitting last task.
My farewell luncheon was held at Hong Kong Harborview Restaurant at Aloha Tower Marketplace, a local dim sum hotspot. G.G. was especially sweet, handing out black "armbands of mourning" for everyone to wear.
The day after Valentine's Day, I went back into the office one last time to cart out four boxes of accumulated junk. I mailed back my keys and my highly-coveted downtown parking access card. I made sure they cut my last check.
And, during my week off between jobs, just as the "where is" and "how do I" e-mails and phone calls had reached a crescendo, I (accidentally!) killed my cell phone and took the entire family on a two-day trip to the Big Island.
I knew that week would be the last free time I'd see for a while, so I figured what better way to spend some of it than traveling to our spiritual home to relax and recharge.
Jen, Katie, Zac and I flew out on the earliest flight on Thursday (that's 5:30 a.m., meaning a 4:30 airport arrival, thank you very much). It was Zac's first airplane ride, and it was looking pretty iffy for a while, as he squirmed and whined. But wonder of wonders, the very moment the plane pushed back and started rolling, he tilted his head back and passed out. Instantly. And he slept all the way to the gate in Hilo.
Having long ago given up any attempt to be cool, I specifically rented a minivan for our trip. We hit Ken's House of Pancakes for breakfast, then headed immediately up to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
After a token stop at the visitor's center, we made the long and winding trip down the steep cliffs to the end of Chain of Craters road. Feeling unusually ambitious, we then started to hike toward where the lava had crossed the road a few weeks before.
It was beautiful and refreshing at first, but at a certain point, the ground and the air suddenly turned hot, and our noses filled with the smell of sulphur. Zac started protesting, and Katie started whining. After getting an eyeful from a distance, we turned back.
Exhausted, we decided our next stop would be the hotel.
For this trip, we decided on a whim to stay at the Hilo Hawaiian Hotel, even though we usually stay at the Naniloa next door. Feeling especially mirthful, I even sprung for an ocean view room. It was there we all crashed out for a two-hour nap.
After relaxing and watching some PBS, we briefly tried out the hotel pool. Then, on Jen's suggestion, we went back on the road and headed to the north, just to take the scenic route past Onomea Bay. (Unfortunately, Zac missed out on the great view and fresh air.)
We then came all the way back to Banyan Drive to walk over to Coconut Island, crossing the bridge we could see from our hotel room. We just strolled around, admired the beauty of the island, and told a bemused Zac rambling tales of our college days. Katie collected sticks.
For dinner, we drove all over town trying to find a place to eat. It turned out that most of our favorite restaurants, like Satsuki's (where we ate in 1999), were gone. We ended up at Restaurant Miwa in Hilo Shopping Center. The eatery had a special place in our hearts, as the first place Jen attempted to eat "raw fish" sushi back in 1994. (Of course, she's since become a bigger sashimi addict than I.) We had the standard fare — tempura, miso butterfish, salmon shioyaki... plus a few pieces of sushi (unagi, anago, and ebi). Zac, surprisingly, really went for the miso soup.
Finally, we went to get some ice cream for dessert at Puainako Center.
Although we'd spent the entire day wondering the east side of the island, we truly knew that we were back in Hilo when we found ourselves turning in for bed at 9 p.m.
The next morning, I woke up early to pick up mom, who was joining us for part two of our trip. As I drove out to the airport, I passed a row of cop cars and a couple of TV cameras, and turned on the radio to discover that a hostage situation was unfolding at the Naniloa. I shuddered to think how close we came to having chosen that hotel for our accommodations that night.
After picking mom up, it was back to the hotel to relax for a bit, watching the sun rise and playing with the kids. We packed up, ate once again at Ken's House of Pancakes, then hit the road. The day's agenda — visiting the family grave in Hawi and stopping in Kona — was concentrated on the west side of the island, so we made our way up the Hamakua Coast.
It started to rain.
It was a serious rain. A "flash flood warning on the radio" rain. A "so heavy cars were pulling off the road" rain. A "how very unlike the weather yesterday" rain, and I was seriously beginning to doubt that we'd be able to accomplish much that day.
We stopped in Waimea, braving flooded streets, and picked up some flowers at the KTA Supermarket. Then we began the second half of the drive to the northernmost point of the island.
We decided at the last minute to take the winding Kohala Mountain Scenic Road along the ridge, rather than down through Kawaihae and north along the shoreline. I hadn't taken that route before, but I immediately remembered it from my visits as a kid... specifically, that I'd gotten car sick and threw up in a ditch while a cow watched nearby.
It was beautiful, though, and miraculously, the rain started to subside. As we rolled into Hawi, the skies were actually beginning to clear.
Finally we found the narrow street that led up a hill to a quaint, old church. We all climbed out, and tackled the one official task on our to-do list: cleaning the graves of my maternal grandfather and great-grandparents. I never knew my grandfather, and neither did my mom, as he died when she was three, but I inherited his Japanese name: Masaru. And it was only on this trip that I realized (or rather, Jen noticed) that my great-grandfather was eighteen years older than his wife.
Katie was adorably eager to help, arranging flowers and setting up mochi and tangerines as offerings. Zac, who'd just endured more than two hours in his car seat, was just happy to be outside.
After leaving a small offering for the church, we drove around the neighborhood a little, getting a look at Kohala Hospital where my mom was born and getting a look at Hawi's pride and joy: the original King Kamehameha statue (marking his birthplace — I wonder if we're related?)
Rejoicing in the improved weather, we then headed toward Kona. I was stunned and annoyed to find considerable traffic, and we inched along in bumper-to-bumper congestion along the highway where I once remembered being able to regularly ... exceed the speed limit. Finding road conditions in the heart of town just as bad, we decided to skip the tour and just stopped for lunch at Wendy's.
I miss Wendy's. The Kona Wendy's isn't a particularly good one — they ran out of fries, and ran over to the supermarket to buy some more — but the greasy, square burgers were still a treat.
All too soon, it was time to start the return trip. Knowing that we'd ultimately have a couple of hours to kill, we stopped in Waimea to let the kids play on the town's incredible playground set. Without a doubt, it's the biggest and nicest collection of slides, bridges, tunnels, towers and swings in the entire state. (I fussed over it during our last trip, too.)
The rest of the drive back was long, but relaxing. Everyone (except me, of course) took turns napping. When we reached Hilo, we toured downtown a little, then headed to the airport with exactly two hours to spare before boarding our flight back to Honolulu.
Against all odds, and to the great relief of the other travelers on our plane, Zac once again fussed and whined only for a minute or two before promptly falling asleep.
I really love Hilo. I thrive in Honolulu in what passes for a city, too, but the wistful old man inside me constantly dreams of buying a little cottage with a green lawn in the hills just north of UH-Hilo, spending day after day reclining on the lanai, reading and writing through endless rainy days... and eating at Ken's at least twice a week.
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One of the more notable shifts in mindset I've had to make is at the "Big Picture" level. I've moved from an international non-profit trade association (whose members are all CEOs and other corporate executives) to a small, family-owned, emphatically local and home-grown bank. The corporate climate is very different, but very comfortable. Everyone is family, and many of my coworkers have worked their entire lives for the company.
I can only imagine what it must be like to be such a long-time, loyal employee. Especially with many of my friends still working their way around the tech sector, two years seems like a long tenure.
I think I'm going to miss the extensive travel that came with my old job. On the other hand, Jen definitely won't. And who knows... there might be a neighbor island trip or two in my future.
I'm spending most of my first days reading and taking notes, working my way through three filing cabinet drawers full of audits, reports, meeting minutes, manuals and other documents. There's a good amount of administrative and internal stuff to handle, in addition to the online stuff that forms the core of my job.
I have to get a handle on just how broad my responsibilities are... an interesting task, considering that I'm the first person to hold the position. The duties I'm taking on were previously handled by several different people, all of whom required to do the work as well as their actual jobs. I'm depending on them a lot as I get started, and so far, they've been great.
On a practical level, I've been focused on two things: traffic, and lunch.
While I have work space at both the main office downtown as well as at the data center near the airport (a cause of some confusion at first), the airport location is where I've planted my roots. I actually prefer it, from the office itself to the great team working there, but it's probably five times farther away from home than PBEC was.
When I worked at PBEC, on a good day, I could get from my parking space at home to the parking structure downtown in ten minutes. Now that I have to join westbound traffic headed toward town, and then cross eastbound traffic on Nimitz Highway, my morning commute can stretch to 30 minutes. More if there's an accident somewhere.
And heading home? Since I can see the freeway from the office, and see it turn into a parking lot shortly before 5 p.m., I don't even bother leaving at pau hana time. (Which is fine... I've been conditioned to work late over the last four years.) When I finally do head out, traffic is still pretty bad on Nimitz Highway and Moanalua Freeway, so the evening commute has taken me anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour.
And Fridays? Those are clearly going to be a problem.
On a more positive note, the airport area isn't exactly the wasteland of nothing I thought it would be when it comes to lunch options.
To be sure, nothing beats downtown. But on my first day, my coworker was kind enough to give me a half-hour eatery orientation including the immediate area, Salt Lake, and basically anywhere within a short drive's distance. I plan, over the next month or so, to try each restaurant he mentioned, from Blimpie's to Byron's to 99 Ranch Market.
Right now, I'm working my way down the length of the Airport Trade Center. For a variety of reasons, I'm trying to put off eating at Big D's right next door.
Fortunately, I'll be downtown fairly often, for assorted meetings as well as ongoing orientation activities, so I'll be able to slowly wean myself off of the dining options there. And even after I'm fully in the groove, I expect I'll make a special trip now and then just to be abused at Ken Fong again.
As a last note, the search continues to find my replacement at PBEC. The job posting is circulating (even getting posted to a local tech site), but finding a single person who does networking, web development, media relations, copywriting and publication design — among other things — is proving quite challenging. I've been recruiting as best I can, though, and sending resumes in.
I have to admit, it was quite gratifying when, after I sent the job description to a friend, I was told something to the effect of, "They're looking for someone to do the work of four people who's too nice to tell them to piss off."
Okay. So I'm not exactly the world's most consistent journal writer these days. If you haven't noticed, though, I do scribble a note now and then in my weblog. (Don't miss the post where Dick Allgire and I rubberneck at a traffic accident.) And I'm always adding pictures to the gallery, even if I never get around to linking them in an entry.
Finally, my usually journal-averse wife — I'm thrilled to report — has been posting now and then in her own journal and weblog.
But I'm really going to try to do better than once-a-month entries. (February was a short month, dang it!) Really.
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