Hiking in Oahu

I think Kuniko and I have finally shaken the jet lag. It took a little over a week. Even though we live in "paradise" it's easy to get into the normal rut of working, cooking, shopping, etc...which is pretty much true anywhere. Anyway this weekend we really took advantage of Hawaii. I bought Kuniko hiking boots for her birthday nearly 2 months ago and we haven't used them until this weekend. She wasn't sure if she would really like hiking. This is apparently related to a bad hiking experience at age 10 in Germany which has resulted in her avoiding hiking alltogether. She also is pretty much a city girl at heart. Anyway I woke her up earlier than she is used to on Saturday and we went to Manoa falls to hike. I chose this hike because it is easy and delivers maximum scenery for minimal effort. The hike is actually pretty short and there is a much better trail above the falls. It goes through a bamboo forest which is really cool:


We got about 2 miles in or so and it started to absolutely pour. So we turned around. We headed to Inaba for Soba (buckwheat noodles) as it's on the way home. Then we headed to Waikiki beach. We finally had a sunny day (it's the rainy season and it rained a lot before we headed to Japan). While at the beach I saw in the entertainment paper that the New Shanghai Circus was in town and we decided to check it out. It was at the Hawaii theatre which is a really cool restored old theatre. We grabbed dinner at Du Vin which is a bistro. The food was OK. The caliber of the restaurants here just doesn't compare to large cities in the mainland. Anyway the show was amazing. As good, if not better than Cirque de Solei performances I have seen.

Today Kuniko had to go to a work related tea ceremony so I went back to the beach as it was another warm and sunny day. It was one of those weekends that made both of us happy to be in Hawaii.