Happy Birthday Marv!! - 9/30/2012

It was my good friend Marv's Kan'reki' celebration and I was really lucky to be able to help him document his Big day. The gathering was at Yoshiya Restaurant at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel.  I notice that most Japanese restaurants were really dark so I made sure I brought along my flash and I was really happy I did.  The room we were in was really cool and had mat floor and these low chairs.  The only bad part was that the interior was mostly yellow so I was glad the flash was able to take some of the yellow out.  I then used Photoshop to de-saturate and remove more of the Yellow tones.  

Everyone has to remove their shoes and the worker there even arranged them neatly by the door. They even had house slippers you can use to walk to restroom.

There were beautiful red themed flower arrangement center pieces for the milestone occasion.

There was even a performance by a Koto Sensei and her student.  I got a close up look at the how intricately strung the instrument was.

We all had a great teishoku lunch.

I used Jalna's technique w/ the white background to shoot the favor we were each given at the luncheon. I even shot this a little underexpose to see if I can get more detail using PSE.

Then there was a Sunday brunch at Kahala Hotel HOKU's Restaurant.  They offered us with our meal these very interesting 'freshly squeezed fruit vegetable juice'.  This was the true colors of the juice.  The one on the left is Pineapple Cucumber.. and the right was Watermelon Strawberry with Bell pepper.. Yeah..they lost me at the bell pepper as a drink.  It was really fresh, but mine tasted really like what it described.. strawberry..check.. bell pepper.. check.. yum?  uh...not really...  I kept thinking that 'I coulda had a V-8'..

The lunch was REALLY delicious..but I'm ashamed to say that I was really messy when I piled my food on my plate, so no pictures.  I HAD to take a photo of the dessert.. Bread Pudding...my absolute fav and I also tried this sticky toffee pudding that was like a moist brownie and also this fruit tart in a waffle cone.  Yummmm!

My friend had the cute lemon tart and these hazelnut something or another and said it was as good as it looked..

I had a wonderful and enjoyable gastronomical weekend.. Thank you Marv for letting me enjoy the great food and to take photos!!! and... H-a-p-p-y  B-i-r-t-h-d-a-y  T-o  Y-o-u!!!