We are eating soba and watching Kouhaku! Yay!

While on Maui last week, my brothers, father, and I stopped by a ukulele store in Wailuku. Mele Ukulele has some beautiful instruments and a really nice staff. The price of their instruments is a little out of my range, since I am just a beginner, but it was nice to see some quality koa ukuleles and be able to hear them first-hand. While talking to one of the guys who “seemed” to work there (maybe he was just hanging out), he recommended I get a concert size ukulele to play, rather than the standard size. He said they sound fuller and will be more versatile.

I already have a really cheap Johnson standard ukulele which I broke, so I wanted a new one. The bridge snapped off, and although I was able to reattach and glue it cleanly, it is out of tune. Plus the tuning pegs were terrible and it never really stayed in tune for more than a minute or two. Bay still likes to play that one, though. It’s his “guitar”.

Anyways, today I ordered a concert ukulele, Hilo brand. It is not expensive, but seems to be ok for a student. It was $39.99+shipping. I will play around with it and see if I stick with the ukulele.

I was checking out Mie’s webpage Kokochi, and she has this cool Nokia pen that she used to jot down messages, and then the messages can be emailed to her blog using her keitai. It’s pretty sweet!

That got me thinking about my own crazy handwriting, which is not too different from hers. You can see some of it in the title banner at the top of this page. I like my handwriting, except when I have to write an uppercase “M”. It always ends up looking like an “H”. So when I write Mariko’s name, it looks like “Hariko”. Maybe I should try a different style “M”, sort of like lowercase, only with uppercase size… How complicated my life is.

Over vacation, I found out a lot about where my family came from. My blood is pretty mixed up, but the breakdown looks like this:

62.5% Chinese
25% Japanese
6.25% Hawaiian
6.25% English

My brothers and I always thought that we had Irish blood in us, but it seems that our great great grandfather was actually from England. I also found out that another great grandfather of ours was from Yanai in Yamaguchi pref. in Japan. I’d love to find out more about our family in Japan and China.

Mariko, Bay and I are back in Austin after a week + in Los Angeles. It was nice to see my family again, and eat lots of good food as usual. We had lots of Japanese and Hawaiian eats, I think I must have gained at least five pounds. My mom is always feeding us, so I was pretty much stuffed the whole time I was there. I will update with some photos of the good food we ate when I download them from the camera.

When we came home yesterday, we were happy to see that the new laminate flooring that we ordered and had been keeping in the garage was almost completely installed! Our friends have a nice business set up doing mainly exterior work, but they were able to lay down the floor we ordered, and they did a great job! If you ever need any kind of exterior work done to your house, make sure to contact Austin Exteriors!.

Light rays coming through Iao Valley, Maui.

This morning Mariko, Rand, and I went to Van-Van to get haircuts. Van-Van is a Japanese style salon, which is something I miss. It was natsukashii to experience all that again: reading Japanese magazines (Spa!, Mono), getting a hot shampoo, the attention to detail, etc. It was fun.

For our 7th anniversary, Mariko and I went to a tempura restaurant and had some great food. We sat at the counter, and the chef served us little by little. Imagine a sushi bar, but with tempura instead of sushi. We ate shrimp, squid, vegetables, etc.

They give you three types of salt to try with it too, as well as the tempura sauce and daikon. We also shared a daikon and ikura salad which was yummy as well.