August 2022 recap - Sunflower field, back to HI, Hakuba Yari Onsen hike & lots of ramen

A variety of goings on this month made it seem really long! We started off with my husband going on another work trip to Okinawa, followed by us both returning to Hawaii for 9 days, an overnight camping trip the following weekend and then even a baseball game to close out the month!

Nagai Uminote Park Soleil Hill Sunflower fields

I saw this come up on one of my social media fields and was glad we had an opportunity to go. There's a large sunflower field on Oahu in Waialua that we visited in July 2019 (bottom of this post) that was more fun than I thought, so this seemed like another good chance. The sunflowers are plentiful but not quite as tall as the Oahu field, and we did end up visiting on a day with impending rain which meant grey skies, but I think it was still worth it!

Return to Hawaii, again

We went back to Oahu for a bit because my husband's childhood friend got married, and he was in the wedding party! Almost all of the groomsmen were traveling from out of state, so they had pretty much all of the pre-wedding festivities in the week leading up to the wedding. This gave me a few days to myself, but it didn't seem like I had as much downtime as I initially would have thought. 

Day 1: first stop Taniokas, then unpacking and a brief nap. We went for a 5 mile run around the neighborhood and then dinner with (my parents and) grandparents - take out from Young's Kalbee. 

Day 2: slept in just a little bit and then went to dim sum at Nice Day with my high school friends who had just returned from a trip to Belgium. Did a little bit of shopping for some stuff we thought it would be easier to buy in the US and then went to see Thor: Love & Thunder. My husband was having a lot of connectivity issues with his phone, so we went to the T-mobile store to see if they could fix it. They couldn't apparently lol. We followed that with a longer run (~7 miles) before having a low key stay-home Thai food dinner with my parents with Holy Bakery pie!

Day 3: take out breakfast from Liliha Bakery with my in-laws before dropping off my husband at golf with the rest of the groomsmen. I stopped at the mall for a little bit for a li hing lemonade, bought a dress from Aritzia which I wore out of the store, and then an eye doctor appointment so I could get my contact lens prescription. Went home quickly to get my stuff and then over to the airport to catch a flight to Kauai where my friends/old coworkers picked me up since they were there for a work trip. We had dinner in Poipu at Eating House 1849 and then of course ice cream dessert from Lapperts.

Day 4: I tagged along for their work day (it's my old job anyway and still mildly related to my current job, just in a different location) and then we headed back to the airport to drop me off, stopping at a few places along the way - Jojo's for shave ice, Kauai Chocolates for opihi omiyage and 7-11 for Lawai manju. I got Big Kahuna's pizza for dinner once I landed back on Oahu.

Day 5: went to get my nails done in Waikiki and then picked up my husband after they checked out of the hotel from their bachelor party festivities. We grabbed Taniokas again and then he got his hair cut by the bride's good friend. We went for another run (shorter this time) and then headed back out for take out dinner from Assagios with my in-laws (parents and sister & her husband) to complete the night.

Day 6: I started the morning with long run for me because I had minimal plans. My husband went to attend the rehearsal walk-through but returned home for lunch. We went to check out the outlet mall (I wanted to look for running shoes), get shave ice, go to Sam's club and the bank. We did take out from Spicy Ahi & BBQ for dinner before my husband got picked up by the other groomsmen for the night before wedding. 

Day 7: The wedding finally! I had a relaxing morning and just took care of some small things at home on my own before heading over to pick up one of the other groomsmen's girlfriends and heading over to Kualoa Ranch in the early afternoon. It was a phones-free ceremony and I didn't end up taking very many photos myself, but I trust that we'll see some great results from their photographer. They wedding was so full of love, happy tears and laughter, but we were exhausted by the time we got home at the end of the night. 

Day 8: went to get our Japan-acceptable COVID tests from the airport and then my husband wanted to revisit our old running route from our old house (before I sold it/we moved to Japan) because it had been quite a while and we had both done tons of running since then. We managed to get through it at a pretty quick pace because we were short on time before meeting my long-time friends for a casual lunch at Zippys. I bought a few more omiyage items and then had just a couple of hours to start packing (me) and a nap (my husband) lol. My other old coworker generously offered to host a small get-together at his house with a pool for my old work group and whosever's families wanted to come. It was so nice to see everyone again! We stopped at my in-laws one more time to saw goodbye, returned home to finish packing and called it a night. 

Day 9: hurried last minute packing and then left for the airport! Our flight seemed to take an extra 1 hour to actually get off the ground, but somehow we managed to land back in Japan at pretty much the exact time promised anyway. This was another Zip Air flight and it's damn cheap but definitely low frills and comfort lol. 

I've gone back and forth between Japan and Hawaii like 6 times over the last 12 months which seems ridiculous because it is lol. This recent one couldn't really be helped because of the specific timing of the wedding, but at least it was nice and relaxing for me, and I even had a chance to make it to Kauai for a day. We likely won't return for a while now, but we're hoping that Japan opens up for tourism soon so friends can start coming to us!

Hakuba Yari Onsen hike 

[Standalone blog post!] The planning for this started way back at the beginning of the year even before I had officially moved to Japan, I think. A couple of our friends have done this hike before and invited the group to join them. It ended up being 5 of us due to some work commitments but it was still fun to have whoever could make it. 

I'm a bit behind on blog posts, but this one deserves its own so expect to see it in the next week! published now. Spoiler: it did rain and things did not go according to plan lol.

 What we ate

Apparently what we ate this month is a lot of ramen, haha. I put all of the Hawaii meals in the first section, so this is just meals in Japan. We did try quite a few new things but definitely have fallen into the comfort zone with some old favorites too and are trying to cook for ourselves a little more!

Ramen En ラーメン縁

Ramen Hasegawa らぁ麺はせ川

Mendokoro Shinya

pan-fried xiaolongbao, chicken green onion pie and koshomochi from 3 different shops in Yokohama Chinatown

kakuni ramen and kalbi ramen from 龍昇ラーメン

Tsukesoba and mini meat/katsuo don set and mazesoba from 札幌海老麺舎えん 横浜店

Ramen Banya らーめん萬家

Evie themed scoop from Baskin Robbins and Magikarp taiyaki from Kuriko-an

Crab shio tonkotsu ramen and crab shoyu tonkotsu ramen from 魚焚

Seafood doria and meat sauce gratin with unlimited bread at BAQET

Personal life/miscellaneous

I got a clickity-clackity new keyboard that I'm currently typing on, courtesy of my husband. This is my first time having an after-market or mechanical keyboard and I love the aesthetics and the light up colors. It also comes with a white cloud wrist rest which I love but am so afraid to stain lol.

This month's outfits in Japan can be found here.

There weren't as many as other months due to our trip, but I had a lot of fun wearing some new clothes in new (to me) silhouettes. And of course some typical "classics" as well.

The bike - finally. It ended up that the bike was ready probably last month but either I didn't understand the instructions when we bought it (I kind of doubt it) or I missed the phone call somehow (I don't see how) but, in any case, with the help of my Japanese coworker calling the shop, I figured out it was ready and now I have it! We've only really ridden our bikes together once so far but I think after it cools down a little we will use them more for those distances that are a little far for a walk but seems wasteful to drive.

We reduced the number of miles we ran during the higher temps and humidity, but we are slowly getting into a new routine and even ran 4-5 times while we were in Hawaii.

Went to a Yokohama DeNA BayStars baseball game. My husband's coworker had two tickets she wasn't able to use so she offered them to him. He's not much of a baseball fan but I love watching most organized sports, including baseball, and it's a lot of fun in Japan. 

Also this month, I went on a summer sales EATME spending spree and I have like 15+ items waiting to be blogged. I've really been enjoying just doing things and otherwise just exercising or watching new (to us) tv shows with my husband, so I've definitely been slacking with that, but that hasn't been stopping me from wearing the clothes, so look out for what seems new in my OOTD post :)

We have even more to look forward to in September, and I can't wait to see how it goes!