Jon celebrated his 33rd birthday on Tuesday, but we decided not to do much that day other than give him cards and bring him Cheesecake Factory for dinner. We were all pretty tired, so we decided just to head over to the lagoon at the Hilton, Evan's "pretty beach" with the construction trucks. It was a lot of fun. We actually met a woman from Australia who is from Cleveland and knows people who live in our neighborhood. What a very small world. She had 3 little boys who Evan was playing with on the beach. On Wednesday we drove through the island on the H-3, an absolutely gorgeous drive. It was raining in the mountains, so there were waterfalls decorating several of the lush green slopes, plus one place that I would love to go called the Haiku Stairs. It is literally a steep staircase going up the side of one of these mountains. It looks amazing. The stairs below are not these stairs, this pic was taken of Evan feeding the Koi at the Buddhist temple.
Our destination was the Byodo-In Temple, for several reasons. Jon had mentioned wanting to see a temple, it has a giant Koi pond and Evan is now obsessed with Koi, and it was used in Lost. Despite a bit of drizzle and then downpour, we all had a great time. The only part we missed was there was a large area of beautiful Japanese graves up a hill near the temple and we had wanted to walk around to see if there were any Suganos buried there but we didn't have a chance due to the rain. 
We decided to drive down 72 on the southeast corner of the island and ended up at the Halona Blowhole lookout. We discovered it isn't actually that difficult to walk down to the beach below, famous for being the beach in "From Here to Eternity" that has inspired every grown person since to want to roll around on the beach smooching a member of the opposite sex. Interstingly enough, this seems to have been one of Evan's favorite beaches. We were there for about an hour as he and Jon explored tide pools and climbed rocks as I watched locals jump off the rocks into the surf below.I also have to mention one of the strangest things I've ever experienced. Once Jon had left for work Evan and I headed over to the playground. There was a group that walked through the park of about 20 Japanese tourists taking part in a tour with a woman narrating. I found this fascinating and was watching them for a minute or so. Once they had exited the park I stopped paying attention. Three Japanese men, probably in their 30's, left the group and walked over to me and Evan. One said, "He's beautiful," but clearly they didn't speak English well. I said thank you. One of his friends then reached out to Evan, I had thought it was because he thought Evan was going to fall climbing up the stairs to the jungle gym. I was then very surprised when the man then lifted Evan up and placed him on his lap in order to pose for a photo that his friend was ready to take. So, I'm not sure if this was one of those situations where you turn to a friend and say, "I dare you to go over to that stranger and take a picture with them" or if maybe they could tell Evan was part Japanese and found a blonde-haired blue-eyed Japanese little boy was cute, or maybe it's perfectly acceptable to take a picture with a little blonde-haired blue-eyed kid because it's novel. Who knows. But I called Jon on the cell phone immediately, not because I was concerned in any way, but because I found it such an amusing and unbelievable story to tell that I had to share it, and everyone else I knew would have been sleeping by then!
