HAWAII: THE WORLD'S MELTING POT

In Hawaii, everyone is in a minority.  Almost a quarter are of mixed race.  The 18th Annual Honolulu Festival was held this weekend, so I took a vacation and stayed at the Waikiki Sheraton to participate in the festivities.  Above is the view from my room.

Mind you, I don't particularly enjoy parades, but I went anyway.  I found an ideal spot where I could place my drink and lean:

I saw a dozen dragons:

In Hawaii, dragons beg for money.  Beauty queens came by:

Wait a minute, is that a finger?  Remember the Super Bowl?  Nah, must be the positional angle.  There was the full range of international dances:

Most in the parade represented hula halaus from Japan.  It is the dream of these "past middle age" ladies to actually hula in Hawaii (I made this up, but I think it's true).  Without a doubt, Japan has more people regularly dancing the hula than from Hawaii.

It began to rain, and as La Mer is undergoing enhancement, on my way back to my room, I ordered an Osso Buco (Italian) and Caesar salad (Mexican) take-out from Il Lupino, and enjoyed my international meal with a California Cabernet (Ridgeline Stanford Governor's Selection), and New Zealand beer:

One problem was that no utensils were provided, so I had to use my fingers, which was great, because I like to eat with my hands.  I wondered how I would get to the bone marrow, but found a coffee packet with a tiny straw, so sucked this delicacy out.  Diamond Head looked magical:

What a meal, what a view, but halfway through, the fireworks started:

The difference tonight was that the fireworks occurred just outside my room.  The noise was stupendous.  The Nagaoka fireworks were fabulous.  Click on that link, for Honolulu and Nagaoka are the book ends to the end of World War II:  Pearl Harbor began the war in the Pacific and Nagaoka was razed just before the end.  A sister city relationship was signed between Honolulu and Nagaoka earlier this week.

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