Hawaii
Allison organized an all-day, 16 stop (actually 17) tour of central and eastern Oahu with Nui Island Tours. Darren, aka Uncle Dee, provided to be quite a driver and tour guide to his bus full of people despite long hours-- he picked up the first of us before 6:50am and didn't return all of us til after 6:00pm. I think there were at least 30 people in total including two very obvious influencers from mainland China, and we hit most of the big tourist highlights, including expensive houses owned by the rich and famous just east of Diamond Head, Halona Blowhole, a crappy lunch at the Polynesian Cultural Center, snorkeling with sea turtles outside of Haleiwa, a coffee plantation, and of course, some Dole Whip at the Dole Plantation. Was quite a packed itinerary with a solid dose of culture and history, including the annexation process forced upon the islanders-- a reminder that some pretty ugly things were done.
Yakitori Haichibei for dinner; it looked nice enough inside and was clearly a hopeful side of Honolulu's old Chinatown, however they opened with a decidedly tasteless chicken breast skewer and had to recover from there. Chicken hearts and a few other items were pretty delicious, but in the end for $80/person we left unsatisfied to the point that Bernard, AJ, and BK openly discussed getting pho at the restaurant next door.
Was probably overkill for me, but upon parting ways for the night, I headed to Furusato Sushi down the street for their assorted sashimi platter. It wasn't anything special, but their hamachi (yellowtail) and akami (bluefin tuna) were pretty solid. The botan ebi (live sweet shrimp) and the salmon were also not bad at all. They were pretty quick too, which was important as we had yet another early day coming.