Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Misconceptions about Hawaii - Part: The First

I just barely got back from a 10 day long trip to Hawaii. It was beautiful, fantastic, all the adjectives you can think of that make you disgustingly jealous, and then some. It was like New York City, but in another country. I felt like I was no longer in the United States. I loved it.

One of the most surprising things, to me, was the culture shock. In fact, it was the lack of Hawaiian culture. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty Hawaiian culture to go around. I had just expected to see many more islanders walking around speaking in a language I couldn't understand. Well, sure enough, everyone WAS speaking in a language I couldn't understand, it just wasn't Hawaiian. What surprised me the most about Hawaii was the high number of Asian tourists and residents.

I guess I shouldn't be entirely surprised. Hawaii is a widely publicised tourist destination, and many of the visitors were there to see the Pearl Harbor Memorial, which makes sense....but still.

Anyhow, there were a lot of Asian couples wandering the streets. And lots of little Asian babies. I can't get over how cute Asian babies are!! No offense to all you white babies, I was one too, but there's no beating this:



Seriously, how cute is that? Another thing that just simply made me giggle was the number of matching Asian couples. I know it's a trend (I guess), but I was still shocked at how many of the guys actually went along with it. Everyone I was travelling with agreed that it was disgustingly adorable. Everytime we saw one we all wanted to squeal. And then freak out because we were grossed out by the fact that we thought it was so freaking cute.



But ya, biggest surprise to me was the sheer number of Asian people wandering the streets of Hawaii, getting married on the beach, taking their children to Denny's, etc. Threw me off a bit, but I loved it.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Asian babies are way cooler than white babies... ah we whites are so lame sometimes.

That second picture is amazing! They both look amazingly adorable...can't believe the guy was actually willing to do that.

KITTY said...

50% or more of Hawaii is all asian population, most people in the mainland especially non-asians probably dont know that and go to Hawaii expecting the "aloha, mahalo, Honolulu, lets all sit around and watch fire dances while playing little guitars and singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow" experience but thats not what Hawaii is anymore, its much more than that

The large asian population has turned Hawaii into a more urban and developed state, no shacks on the beach, no instant nirvana howvever the weather is still beautiful, the sunsets are amazing and the tradewinds make you feel free

KITTY said...

Hawaii's economy is LARGELY based on Japanese tourists, if you did more research on Hawaii you would know that the asian population has been a big part of Hawaii for a long time, about 70 yrs or more and has been growing ever since, everything in Hawaii is tailored towards pleasing Japanese tourists, ever seen the directions on the buses? the menus in all bars? the food in McDonalds? (The McDonalds in hawaii serve rice and spam as a popular and quite normal menu item)they all have Japanese translations right below the english words