En route to … Oahu?

Today, I'm off for a week of pure summer vacation!

Leave steamy Okinawa behind, have had some quality time in Yokohama, and then off to Narita for an early morning flight to Guam, the first stop of my Pacific adventure.

That was the plan, at least.

It turns out this was the most hectic start to any vacation, ever, as tropical cyclone Chan-hom also wanted to spend some time in Guam, it seemed. The verdict: flight delayed not by hours, but to leave the next day – my connecting flight in Guam long gone.

So, what to do?

Wait for my delayed flight to Guam? But then what? The connecting flights run only every 2 or 3 days, and that'd leave me exactly 28 hours of vacation time before my return flight...

Or ….

 I could fly to Honolulu, and catch the next best flight, cutting only 2 days off my vacation time.

Thus, en route to Oahu!

.

But first, a quick stop by the Gallery Toto at Narita air terminal!
Toto, the toilet manufacturer, of course.

Only in Japan, I think, could you have a large public bathroom in the middle of an airport terminal, with large shadowgraph murals of people merrily going about their business, changing their clothes, or getting bored and doing yoga or crawling into the toilet bowl.

Having enriched my life with that experience, I was now ready for Hawaii!

As I had had no plans to visit Hawaii at all, I was very lucky to find a vacant room at the hotel I stayed at when I came for the conference last year.

The hotel is an easy walk from the beach and the nice park in front of the Ala Moana shopping centre, and I spent a pleasant afternoon putting my new camera through its paces, and enjoying the marvellous sunset over the sea, surrounded by a horde of Japanese tourists.