Brian: Hawaii, Day 2

Every trip has its milestones, the unforgettable moments that you recite endlessly to your friends when they ask you "how was it?". Today wasn't one of those days. Today was one of those days spent in traffic, going outlet shopping, running errands, and loafing around at the pool. I didn't even get a decent tan (although I'm still recovering from a mild sunburn on my back). There were still some highlights from a relatively uneventful day, however. One of the errands we had to run was to get a JR pass (Japan Railways pass) which lets us travel an unlimited amount on the trains in Japan for 7 days. It cost $238, which isn't exactly cheap, but when you consider that a round-trip ticket from Kyoto to Tokyo on the Shinkansen is about that price, 7-days worth of unlimited travel suddenly sounds golden. We also had a marvelous lunch at an all-you-can-eat Japanese buffet. They had crab, lobster, bowls of ikura (fish eggs), sea urchins, soft-shell crab, ... pretty much everything I like to eat except the plain old tuna nigiri. This is not including the chocolate fountain fondue and made-to-order crepes for dessert :P. And the sweetest thing is that the bill was only $12 per person. We also did some outlet shopping because Patrick needed some gifts for his co-workers. I ended up buying a messenger bag from Calvin Klein for $40, minus 10% because it was a little defective. Then at night, I soaked in the Jacuzzi for a while. It was pretty cool because I met this couple - the guy was white and the girl was Japanese. That seems pretty typical. We started out pretty cautiously, as you tend to do with strangers - they revealed that they were from San Francisco, I revealed that I was from Stanford, we talked a bit about Mandarin Chinese (which they heard me speak to Patrick's parents), and that's when I found out the girl was Japanese. Then the guy reveals he's sort-of a professor, before finally spilling the beans that he and his wife are in the San Francisco Symphony. It turns out that he plays the French horn and his wife is a violinist (how the stereotypes hold up) and we talk about all sorts of music things and education in general. I gathered that the girl must have been a prodigy because she said she went to conservatory in Vienna (that just knocked me dead!) and combined with the information that she started violin when she was 4 and was now in the SFS, pretty much sealed the deal. Their names were Naomi and Doug. Back to the room after that: dinner was buffalo wings and instant ramen.