Waikiki Beach is such a breeze to do a walkabout. The beach is clean, full of shopping malls, beautiful things and people to watch out for. There is also an Apple flagship store just a few yards away from the beach. Imagine going into Apple shop in your Hawaiian blue floral shirt and crocs flip-flop with a straw hat, getting into the grooves of i-this and i-that. The feeling is 500GB vs SPF60, zap on the music and slap on the sunscreen lotion.
Somehow the feeling in Waikiki (not the whole of Honolulu) was not American, it was like walking in the streets of Tokyo minus the population and the neon lights, speaking English but reading Japanese, eating American foods in Hawaii but eavesdrop Japanese chit-chat.
There are more Japanese writings and Japanese people in Hawaii than, I think, anywhere else in the world outside Japan, per sq m space.
For a while, I was confused, was I in Waikiki or on the beach in Odaiba. Everywhere I looked, there were signboards, flyers, buntings, banners etc all in Japanese. At one of the biggest mall in Waikiki - Ala Moana Hawaii Centre, almost all their eatery counters have their signs in foreign language, Korean too.
Nevertheless, the beauty of these clusters of island that formed the archipelago, being so divinely protected exclusively by the Pacific Ocean, is blessed with so many natural wonders. Great place to just unwind and not to worry if you have covered any other places in Hawaii. Being in Honolulu alone is all that is - for the time being!
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