June 2023 recap - Iris Garden & lychee picking in HI

June brought out the humidity and the rainy season! It was a fairly mellow month for us aside from the travel we did as we adjusted to the change in the weather and getting back into our routine.

Yokosuka Iris Garden

This time last year, I was still getting used to living in Japan and figuring out what kind of seasonal things would be interesting. This time around, I started looking into the seasonal flowers and iris was big for this time of year!

My husband was traveling for work at this time, so I took the opportunity to try to check out this park on my own when I had a free weekend afternoon. 

Being by myself, I wasn't able to get the best pictures with me in them, but I still enjoyed the flowers in person.

There were also some really nice hydrangeas in the same color scheme as the irises too!

I did have a little bit of an issue because there was this man who was consistently following me around from a distance for about 10-15 minutes with a camera, but otherwise I had a good time seeing all the different types of flowers. I've never seen so many varieties of iris before!

2 weekends in Hawaii

Every summer, my husband's family gathers on their family farm on the Big Island to harvest lychee. It's a little less convenient for us to get there now, but we still wanted to participate, so after discussing when the fruit would likely be ripening and looking at our work commitments, we scheduled our trip to include 2 weekends in mid-June. 

We flew via ANA this time and actually were on the Pokemon plane! I wasn't able to get a good picture of the outside since they were kind of rushing us for boarding lol. But the inside had some cute designs and special takeaway items. 

We landed in the morning and didn't want to waste any time or slow down and get tired lol. First stop Taniokas.

And then we were on a flight to Hilo that same afternoon. We spent the weekend there with my husband's uncle, aunt, sister and brother-in-law picking as much fruit as we could, but had a bit of a difficult time compared to past years.

During the week, my husband had training for work. Even though I didn't go with too many commitments, I still somehow had less free time on the weekdays than I anticipated lolol but at least I had a chance to catch up with friends and family. 

Back to Hilo for weekend 2 of lychee picking.

We entered the second weekend knowing there would be a lot less fruit and much more of a challenge to fulfill the orders. It seems like this year some of the lychee started ripening a bit earlier (late May) and then 50+% was still green and wouldn't be ready until mid-late July! We still tried our best but it was a lot of work with very little return lol. 

Soon enough, we were back on Oahu and on a plane back to Japan! It really did end up feeling like a quick visit because something was going on every day. 

What we ate

Kushi-yo

Yomenya Goemon

Taniokas (Oahu)

Hawaiian Style Cafe (Big Island)

Hilo Burger Joint (Big Island)

1 Plus 1 Cafe (Big Island)

Zippys (Oahu)

Nana Ai Katsu (Oahu)

Waiola Shave Ice (Oahu)

Aiea Manapua (Oahu)

Assagios take out (Oahu)

Morimoto Asia (Oahu)

Mountain Magic Shave Ice (Oahu)

Tetsumen (Big Island)

Genki Sushi (Oahu)

Thai Village take out (Oahu)

Nice Day (Oahu)

Yuzu-an (back in Japan)

Kappa Sushi

Mendokoro Shinya

Personal life/miscellaneous

June OOTDs are all collected this post here. I didn't bother recording anything from the Hawaii trip, so it's a bit sparse, but I do also just get lazier in the summer anyway lol. 

I no longer even bring a light cardigan or jacket with me when I go out, even at night and the sun is out in full force even before 5am when it's not cloud covered! 

The Hawaii trip took over this month for a bit, especially sandwiched between the excitement of May (Nikko weekend, Hakone weekend and Tohoku 5-day trip) all back-to-back. But we were glad to have a little respite here before things picked back up in July! I'm even super late (and a bit lazy with the content) publishing this post because I wanted to finish documenting all of our travel in Tohoku, but it was worth it. Please go check out those posts if you're interested. We had such a good time, and I was so excited to share about it 😊