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Good bye, party girl…

●I am NOT that cool chick…
Hello readers, and welcome to Aloha Diary — a quick peek into the lives of people who call Hawaii “home.” So far we’ve read about the trials and tribulations surrounding the lives of the student, the golfer, the surfer, the newlyweds, and the new mom, just to name a few. So what am I adding to this social fabric? Good question. I think my editors are hoping for a story of a local girl — you know, the “sawayaka” chick who surfs, dates some fabulous local boy, and hangs out with beautiful people at the town’s hottest spots.

Well, I hate to break it to ya, but I am NOT that cool chick. In fact, I don’t do water sports, and I’ve been married eight years. My weekends consist of taking my three-year-old daughter around the birthday party circuit at various homes, parks, and Chuck E. Cheese’s, and at night, occasionally getting drunk at home. I wear more spit-up (did I mention I also have a three-month old baby?) than I wear Roxy, and most of the “beautiful people” I hang out with are also weary parents of toddlers and babies.

Here are the Hapa Kids!

The closest thing to being local is that I’m hapa, which basically means I blend in with the local crowd. I can also throw around a few local lingo, but I’m actually a transplant from Japan. Yep, born and raised, a bonafide rice- and natto-fed nihonjin. How I ended up here in Hawaii is a tale in itself, but in a nutshell, I went to international school in Tokyo, flew faaaaaar away from home to a college in the Midwest, then started gravitating westward over the next decade until I reached Honolulu in 2003.

Kintaro look-alike… Hotei-sama…　God of happiness!

What I like to think is that my roots run deep here. For starters, my parents met while they were students at the University of Hawaii. My mom ventured here from Japan to pursue music, and my haole dad studied by day and by night, played guitar at local dives. They spent close to a decade here, creating lifelong friendships and starting a family (my brother was born here) before moving back to Japan in 1975. I came along soon thereafter, and my family stayed in Japan. But the Hawaii bug never escaped my mom, who took me and my brother on vacation to Honolulu as often as financially possible. And over the many summers we spent here, Hawaii became our second home.

So after my parents’ marriage fizzled and my mom retired, she did what she’d longed to do for years — pack up and leave for Hawaii. And thank god she did!

We got here shortly after my daughter turned one. While raising my first child in a big city (San Francisco) without any family nearby, I quickly realized I needed a stronger network of support. Almost all of my friends were single or married without kids. The good thing about this set-up was that I was constantly surrounded by my youthful, bar-hopping buddies who would, even momentarily, help me escape from the truth that I was now a domesticated, breastfeeding, sweatpants-wearing mom. It also meant there were a lot of adoring adults in my daughter’s life. The bad thing was, for her first birthday party, instead of a luau befitting a baby, hers started at 7 p.m. with wine and pupus, and by 10 p.m. most of the guests were sloshed and my daughter was high on birthday cake frosting. Might I remind you, there were NO KIDS at my daughter’s birthday party?
Sure, I miss my friends, not to mention the life I left behind. But for my little girl’s sake, we needed a change of scenery.

Before I move on, let’s name a few “main characters” in my life because they’ll be recurring throughout my stories. Daughter = Erin Kyrie (pronounced kee-ree-ay), mostly a coy, sometimes precocious, toddler who loves rainbows, Teletubbies, Hello Kitty, her best friend Kiara, and her daddy. Those around her call her “Ki-chan” for short. If I may digress a little, one of the coolest things about living in Hawaii is that people are “Japanified” enough that names aren’t difficult to accept. Back in San Francisco, when I called my daughter Ki-chan, people looked at me like “what the heck is Qui Chong? Is that a Chinese martial arts form?” Over here, even the haole kids in her preschool — and their moms — call her Ki-chan without a flinch. I love it.

Kintaro looks alike…?

Moving on… Son = Marsden Ry (pronounced marz-den rai), my kintaro-esque baby born three months ago, complete with chunky arms and legs that look like spiral ham. So far he’s this super-chill kid with no complaints as long as he’s got a full tummy and a warm body next to him. He’s quickly becoming Ki-chan’s punching bag (the other day I caught her sitting on him while she watched her Barney video. He didn’t wake up), but at the rate he’s growing, that won’t be for long.

And last but not least, dear husband = Paul. The love of my life I conquered back in college, a fellow hapa also born and raised in Japan (and he eats natto).
So there you have it — my introduction to you. Whether or not anyone finds this interesting, I have no idea. The hope here is that I’ll be able to share with you life’s perspective from someone who’s as equally nihonjin as she is American. Most of my topics of choice will probably surround mundane, “everyday” things we encounter here in Hawaii, but I’ll try to tell you like it is — hapa style!