Chinese New Year Festival - 01/26/2013

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was at the Japanese New year celebration, today I was in Chinatown and checked out the Pre-Chinese New Year Festivities at the Chinese Cultural Plaza. There were booths selling new year good luck trinkets and food as well as lion dance performance.

Almost everything in this booth is red and gold color.  

This booth had Jung (mochi rice wrapped in bamboo leaves) and I have no idea what is in the other pot.

They also had jin dui and other dim sum and desserts..

They set up the firecrackers before the lion dance.

There were two troops so there was twice as many drums and cymbols and it was very noisy.  When I went to lunch, my ears were still ringing for the first 10mins of sitting down.

There was a booth selling these cherry blossom which were pretty pricey, but people buy them to display in their homes for good luck.  The real Chinese New Year festivities will be next weekend on Feb. 1 and 2 when there will be a parade w/ many lion dances and street festival on Maunakea Street. 

New Year Ohana Festival - 01/13/2013

Somehow, I managed to miss this event every year but I finally got a chance to check out the Ohana Festival this year at the Japanese Cultural Center. I was worried it would rain, so I didn't bring my 50D but it turned out to be a great but super hot day.  The Lumix is great for sunny outdoor shots, but too slow for action  shots so I  didn't get any good performance shots. Still i managed to click at the right time to get some good mochi pounding pics and the long zoom helped get great closeups.

When I arrived, they were doing the Mochi Pounding or "mochi-tsuki" demonstration. It was really cool how they managed to pound the grains of mochi rice into a sticky dough.

I wanted to get pics of the entire process so I came back later to get better shots of the mochi-tsuki process.

At the cultural center, they had calligraphy writing make-it take-its.

 I watched a dance performance by these girls in brightly colored kimonos.

And of course the Taiko performers.  I recognized them from the Okinawan Festival.

I wasn't a fan of Kikaida when I was little because of the language barrier, but saw that the actor was going to appear so I fought the crowd to try get some pics..  I think he is Kikaida..

And here's the actor Ban Daisuke who came all the way from Japan.

There were also appearance of Kikaida's Friend, who I have no idea what his name is.. but I know he is a 'good guy'.  It was great fun and the kids young and old loved it.  

Honolulu City Lights - 12/27/2012

For the HPS last outing of the year, we always choose to see the Christmas lights after Christmas to avoid the crowds. There were still some crowd, but at least it was manageable so that I could get shots w/o people. I got there before sunset shortly after 5 pm and it was still very bright outside. I thought this angle was cool because it was distinctively a Hawaiian Christmas with the coconut trees.

It was still early that they hadn't even turn on all the light yet.  I decided to change it up a bit and added PSE effects to the daytime shots.

I got to try different angles of the tree since there wasn't much crowd.  

For the night shot, I decided to use bulb mode so I can control and test different shutter speeds.  I even tried lighting the poinsettia plants w/ my flash using 'manual' remote flash method by holding it in one hand and setting it off using the test flash button on the flash. it was so cool there's not even a person caught in my shot.

Since i wasn't able to get a clear shot of Mr. and Mrs. Santa, I decided to apply effects again for some distraction.

Earlier when I first arrived, i went to check out the wreath display.. alas.. no crowd..

There were some funky wreaths. Somehow I think this year's theme was on recycling.

Here are these angels made w/ those foam wrappers they use on pears.

I believe this is the winner.  It is really detailed and quite exquisite..and made of shards of cd/dvd disks.

In a closeup you can see how many pieces of CDs were used.. it was quite amazing.

Heron's Catch - 12/29/2012

I went to the Ala Wai Park and saw this Heron. I was fascinated by how he was hunting for his meal.

I watched him catch a small fish and swallowed it whole.

I watched him catch a couple more..he'd be really still (which made it easier for my camera to get a sharp shot) then go in for the quick grab.

Then he caught this humongous fish.  I was wondering how he's gonna eat that..

I can't believe he also managed to gulp it down.. I could see his neck get fat..

After about 6 fishes or so, he finally was full, I swear he looked fatter.

On my walk, I also saw this pair of cardinals.. they were really cute...but really fast.

Gingerbread Houses - Xmas 2012

I haven't posted in a while since I've been busy w/ my 'other life' and haven't gotten to take out my camera. I finally got a chance to pull out my small camera on my walk to the Princess Kaiulani Hotel to see their annual gingerbread house creation. It is really cool to see, but difficult to photograph because the gingerbread is dark and the lighting is not so great there, however, the work of art is awesome. Here are some of them.. This year, they added the Eiffel Tower and the Tower Bridge.

I had a second chance to see gingerbread houses at the KCC culinary school for the Eyes of Hawaii Christmas Party.  These were really cute.

Sushi Pics Take 2 -- Sushi Bistro 11/09/2012

We went to Sushi Bistro again to celebrate another BD and I got to take more closeup food shots w/ my Lumix.  I used the Program mode w/ Macro feature for all of these shots.  This time, for post processing, I changed my image setting at 12in. on the long side and set it to 96 ppi then do a slight sharpening to see if the shots look less 'soft' after the compression and saved the pics at High, which usually left the jpg files at around around 250kb.   Since these were originally jpgs from my P and S, I don't know if I'm seeing any improvement in sharpness of my blog pics.  I'll have to experiment some more w/ raw shots.  Also, this time, I was not afraid and I got to try some stuff I've seen but not tasted before. 

The restaurant is quite quaint.  We sat at the Sushi Bar again this time.

This time, we got this seaweed side dish.

I kinda messed up this shot because I tried to add some wasabi on top, but decided to remove it.

I know the one on the left is Salmon (sake), I have no idea what the other fish was but it was good.

I was amused by how high the foam on the beer was. By the time I got this pic, it had kinda dissipated.

I really like how glossy the next two 'macro' shots came out.  These were all lighted from the florescent lights in the restaurant.

It was so cool that ikura stuck to the side of the nori.

I tried RAW oysters for the first time. I was surprised it wasn't fishy at all.

I also tried uni for the first time.. now I know why I never tried it..sorry..but it was slimy and yucky...

I forget if this was fresh water of salt water eel, either way, it was very tasty.

By the previous sushi, I was full.. but I had to eat this one..

I raced to get this shot of the avocado sushi before it got eaten!

I got super up close of the shrimp and the rice grains.

I think this was egg plant.. not sure if it was supposed to be blue or was it my camera..

I tried to get a "head-on" shot (get it?? ha!) of this shrimp head.

Finally, my camera battery light was blinking indicating that I had run out of battery.. My last shot, I got a real closeup of the Tamago.  good thing this was the last course!!  and Happy Birthday..ET!!