Wow … we arrived back in Hawaii yesterday, and boy am I exhausted! The flight from Osaka was quite comfortable since we each had our own row of seats and were able to catch a few hours of restless sleep …

The last two weeks were filled with hard work, good fun, and great food and camaraderie. A big mahalo to musicians Sonny, Kamuela, and Ryan, along with dancers Jackie, Malu, Jimbo, and Ashley for making this trip a blast! Sonny guys are great musicians, and we had some awesome jam sessions, especially the one at the Hiroshima Hawaiian Club dinner! But their best “performance” was during the final set at the Osaka Hawaii Festival - we were supposed to stay on stage after our final song and then everyone was supposed to come out and sing “Hawai’i Aloha”. Well, when Miss Hawaii (Ashley Layfield) was introduced, out came Kamuela blowing a conch followed by Sonny dressed up as Miss Hawaii!! Talk about hilarious! For a moment, the audience (including yours truly) looked stunned & confused then burst out laughing and clapping … I sure hope somebody got photos of this one!

We really enjoyed the audiences in Japan … they were so appreciative and many came to several of our performances. I hope that many of them will eventually come to Hawaii to see us and the other Hawaii musicians & entertainers. My only complaint (besides that rude bellman at the Osaka Nikko Hotel) is that everything is sooo expensive because of the weak dollar. We ate a lot of ramen and katsu, which were cheap, plentiful, and very, very ono … and oh yeah, lots of Japanese “beeru” and chu-hai! While in Tokyo, Alex even found his beloved Yama-chan restaurant which served their signature fried chicken wings - so good!