Day 10: Last-minute Shopping

Today, we have decided to forgo nature and embrace our consumerism.

First, we tried to go to the Swap Meet at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu again. This time, we succeeded.

Aloha Stadium Swap Meet

By “swap meet”, I really mean giant flea market with a whole bunch of stalls with people hawking their wares. The market is setup in the parking lot of the stadium, and surrounds the entire stadium in a giant ring of capitalism.

A whole lot of the market sells what you would expect: souvenirs of all kinds and shapes, foodstuffs like dried fruit and ice-cold coconuts with straws, home goods like wooden ornaments, etc. Honestly, after a while, the stalls started to blur together, making me wonder if a lot of them buy from the same souvenir distributor or something.

We went around all the stalls, and I ended up buying these awesome pair of rice bag shorts:

Tsuru Mai in your pants

I also got some kendama as gifts for friends. I’ve been seeing kids (and some adults) play with these the entire time that I’ve been in Hawaii. Also, it’s what Genis uses in Tales of Symphonia, which is amusing.

Kendama. 60 ATK, +1 INT

After going around a bit more, we fought our way out of the traffic jam that is the Aloha Stadium parking lot and went out in search of lunch. We found ourselves in front of Haili’s, which is a Hawaiian plate lunch place:

Haili’s

Inside Haili’s

I ordered a Laulau pork and stew plate lunch, which came with some haupia, a coconut-milk jelly dessert.

Laulau and stew plate lunch

The laulau pork is kind of like a Chinese zhongzi (粽子), except that instead of rice and stuff, it’s only pork that is wrapped in what seem to be banana or taro leaves. There’s also a layer of some kind of mustard green that is both edible and delicious.

After lunch, we headed to a place that I specifically wanted to go to: Shirokiya. It’s more or less a Japanese sub-mall within the larger Ala Moana Center super-mall.

Shirokiya

Inside is a first floor with different Japanese shops and a second floor with a large food Japanese court. Specifically, I wanted to come here to visit the Book-Off in there. Mostly, I wanted to see if they had any Japanese books/CDs/games. They do, but a lot of it tends to be a year old or so, which isn’t surprising, really. I ended up buying Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus for the Vita since it was $50 and play asia was asking for $62.

Boobies. Ninja Boobies.

Also at Shirokiya is a cafe called Kulu Kulu which has a bunch of drinks and pastries.

Kulu Kulu

I got myself a Diamond Head Puff, which is more or less a fancy cream puff:

Diamond Head Puff

I haven’t had a cream puff in forever, but this was amazingly tasty!

After wandering around a bit, we headed to the mecca of consumerism: Costco. I know it seems weird, but it was suggested to us because the Costco in Honolulu sells souvenir stuff in bulk like snacks and coffee and stuff like that. It… looks like a normal Costco, so I didn’t take any pictures of it. It more or less is a normal Costco too, but they sell a bunch of Hawaiian snacks that you see being sold at ABC Stores as souvenirs. I bought a big pack of Hawaiian Host chocolate-covered macadamias to give out as gifts when I get back.

After wandering around Costco, we had our fill of capitalism for one day and headed back relatively early to start figuring out how to get all this stuff back to the mainland.

To end our last day here, we decided to visit the nearby Kailua Beach Park in order to watch the ocean a bit and watch the sunset.

Kailua Beach Park

Unfortunately, we failed to realize until going there that the sun sets in the west, and this beach park is on the eastern shore of Oahu. So, watching the sunset might be a bit difficult. Oh well. We sat on a bench and enjoyed watching the waves and beachgoers for a bit.

Kailua Beach

We headed to a nearby Korean place called Willow Tree Cafe to end out the night. I totally forgot to take pictures since I was too busy stuffing my face.

We’ll be heading back tomorrow so this is my last post for this Hawaii trip!

Overall, this trip has been a lot of fun! I’ve seen, walked, and driven through a whole bunch of different places on different islands of Hawaii. I’ve also gained probably 5-10lbs eating lots of delicious food, so I’m very happy about that. This trip through Hawaii has been thoroughly enjoyable, and I’m a bit sad to leave here tomorrow (and to be returning to colder climates :<). Hopefully, I can return here someday down the road!