1 Monday 2009-05-25
Risa, Alana, Jana, Satoko, and Aiko at the Luis Vuitton VIP Room
Monday morning was consumed with packing. We had lots of stuff. More
than we started with.
We then left the Kahala – after a bit of a delay in finding our cake –
and went back to the Waikiki Banyan.
The big plan for the afternoon was for Risa and Alana and Jana to go
to the VIP room at Louis Vuitton. The organizer there, Mariko, a
friend of the Tanaka family’s friend (Kobayashi, who helped with a bit
of the arrangements here and a lot of the Tanaka family planning) gave
us a cake there. It was delicious.
I might not have mentioned it, but our rental car was a
Chevy HHR wagon type thing. It is a reasonable car. Mr. Tanaka said
that I should get a big car so that we can shuttle people around.
Turns out we didn’t really do much of that. It was useful when we
moved from the Kahala back to our other hotel though. But Risa was
complaining that it wasn’t really a cool car. So while she was at the
Loius Vuitton showroom, I took the car back and changed it for a
convertible Mustang. Protip: do not let them close out your car when
you want to do an exchange. Use the magic words: “I want to
exchange.” If they close it out, it might take a long time to get the
car you really want. It turns out that the change to a mustang didn’t
really cost anything. huh. Maybe it is a few dollars, but it isn’t
really much of a premium over the normal car.
Also, the speed limits are low in Hawaii: the fasted road I have found
is 55 mph. There is hardly any benefit to getting a hot car over a
normal one, but I can’t argue that the mustang isn’t cooler than the
HHR, because it is.
1.1 Dinner at Gordon Biersch at Aloha Tower
After that, I picked people up, and we went back to our place.
Eventually we made it to the Gordon Biersch Brewery where the Tanaka
and Evans family had a last dinner together. It didn’t really work
too well though because of the Japanese – English barrier, and like I
said before I am not really a very good interpreter. I was super
happy to see Eric Tschetter and Sayuri there, but it looked like Eric
was either perpetually embarrassed, or had a devastatingly sunburned
face. Turns out it was the sunburn. After dinner he was out of
commission as he (probably) repeated applied Aloe Vera to his face
while cursing his pigment-lacking ancestry. I do that a lot too.
Dinner was nice. Dad met a friend there from Omak. He had friends
everywhere. After dinner we went back home, then to the
Moana Surfrider bar for drinks with Alana and Jana. And finally back
home for more dead-like sleep.
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