Tomomi danced hula to a song performed by the Hawaiian duo HAPA, at the Matsumoto concert performance of their Japan Tour this evening.

Her dance, done to the song, "Ka Uluwehi O Ke Kai" was performed with half her group on either side of the stage around the two band members in the center.

After the concert, we met the musicians, Barry Flanigan and Nathan Aweau, as well as the two star hula dancers, Pi'ilani Klein and Nalani Higgins (I think...I'm ashamed to say I didn't get her name). The conversation with them was quite funny. Nathan remarked that during the concert, Barry was overjoyed to see that he was not, in fact, the only white guy in the place.

Here is Tomomi dancing in the show. The photo is of poor quality, as it was snuck with a cell phone camera with no flash.



Tomomi's teacher, Ms. Tanaka, said she will soon have photos of the event as well as video taken by a professional. When we get these, I will upload them.

HAPA's home page can be viewed here.

From January 28 to February 2, we headed off to Maui to visit Grandma and Bob at the Four Seasons. It was a long-awaited trip for us and for Grandma, who finally got to meet Sara and play with Anri for the first time in over a year.



At long last, Anri got to play on the beach, both with Mommy...(below)



...and with Grandma...



The unusually rough waves made swimming a bit too much of a risk, so Anri's beach time was limited to wading and trying to stay up against the strong undertow. She quickly got into the routine of picking up clumps of recently moistened sand in her hands, waiting for the wave to come in, dropping the sand in the water and then sitting down while the undertow brought everything back out to sea.

Anri also got to make a sand castle. Her first, although Daddy helped out.



We were "blessed" with a week's worth of Kona winds, which meant that our flight to Maui from Honolulu passed over the beautiful north coast of Molokai, but also meant that there was rain at some point almost every day. But that didn't at all spoil our fun. Anri was so happy to be with Grandma, the two of them actually got on the bed and started jumping together!



It was a great trip, and we were so happy to be able to see Grandma and Bob again. We are already thinking of going to CT for Christmas.



We took a lot of photos from this trip. To see them, click here.