Our fingers sticky and our breath smelly, we continued on, winding up at Tako-No-Ki, a Japanese pub, or izakaya, on Royal Hawaiian Avenue tucked between a surfboard shop and a massage parlor. We married eight months later, in 2003, and haven’t looked back. She was slinging drinks and studying English I was a wide-eyed Island boy. That proved prophetic: This was where I met Hiromi, the woman who would become my wife. People drank, talked and sang like adults (for the most part). After a few years in Japan, I was dragged to a hostess bar in Vancouver, Canada, by a friend and was hooked not on the hostesses but on the vibe.
These bars have a special place in my heart. Traditional hostess bars are supposed to be about subtlety, platonic relationships and karaoke. Drinks, laughs and karaoke are shared, but that’s about it. In Japan, salarymen - white-collar executives - gather in hostess bars to unwind with female companions, modern-day geisha for those on a whiskey budget. Honolulu also has several traditional hostess bars. Anyone looking for an authentic taste of Japan will find it in noodle houses that serve udon and ramen, and in cubbyhole convenience stores that sell rice balls, green tea and bento box lunches just as in Tokyo. Japanese history runs deep here they began immigrating to Hawaii in the mid-1800s, and signs of that culture are everywhere. This year we decided to get our Japan fix on Oahu. Our daughters yawned through Kyoto, shivered in Sapporo, and longed for the beach.
Our regular family visits to Japan to let the kids soak up the other half of their culture had reached the point of diminishing returns.
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