Carla & Linda just took the puppies for their walk and gave them their treats.  Our dogs are so weird – Buster grunts like a pig, Jazz plops herself down on my foot whenever I’m preparing food, and Peanut welcomes us home by grabbing one of Carla’s socks and running back into the house.  They wake everyone up at the crack of dawn demanding to be fed and walked … hmmm, I guess they really ARE a pain in the butt after all!!  But SOOOOO cute, ya?  lol!

Got a break today .. no meetings scheduled – yet.  I still have a backlog of work piled on my desk so I’ll probably be down at IOLANI pretty much the whole day.  During one of my meetings yesterday, a local banking exec stated that the crisis in Japan was not going to affect our local economy very much.  HELLO!!  WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING?!  The hotels are already experiencing major cancellations, a number of flights are being cut back, and this guy’s saying that we won’t be affected.  I strongly suggested that he go down to Waikiki in a few months and try to convince the workers that there’s no impact after they’ve had their hours cut or worse yet, been furloughed.  Jackass …

On a brighter note, I’ve been receiving emails and text messages from many of our friends in Japan saying that things are slowly improving and that they’re all trying to get back to their normal routines.  Of course, everyone is still very concerned about the ongoing nuclear crisis in Fukushima and feel that a full recovery cannot begin until it’s resolved.  I hope and pray that it’s soon …

And lastly, I want to send a BIG mahalo out to two local DJs in Japan – Vance K and Kamasami Kong – for their continuous updates on the situation there.  These guys could have dug out at anytime and fled to safety like most of the other foreigners, but they chose to stay and help.  And I couldn’t help but tear up when I heard that someone told Vance, “Thank you for not leaving us.  You being here gives us hope.”  Pretty awesome …

Aloha, “D”

Also, while at the Apple Store, we ran into our good friend Vance K from the awesome group Kawaihae!! I guess it is a small world because how do we run into him in all of Japan?!?!?

I took a lot of random videos today too so maybe I’ll try put together a vlog with all my adventures sometime soon. I hope we see you all soon and thanks to everyone who plan to come to JATA and see us in Tokyo!
Aloha!
AK

Sorry, blurry...haha

I stole this picture from Vance