So what do they call it on Hawaii Public Radio? This American Life?
“This Hawaiian Life” is what I’m living this week in Hilo. … So, where did I leave off in my last blog?

Probably at some plate lunch or other.  All I seem to do in Hilo is eat and shop when there isn’t hula going on. (Well, actually, there is hula going on — rehearsals for the Merrie Monarch hula competition — and that is one of my reasons for coming here early. However, I haven’t seen many rehearsals, except for the Mexican “halau” I happened to catch when I dropped by the Stadium to get my press credentials.

(OK, now I have to explain the Mexican thing. You know how hula has become this huge thing in Japan? Well, it’s also now huge in Mexico. And this year, for the free ho’ike (demonstration) Wednesday night, Halau O Kekuhi invited a Mexican dance troupe.)

I’m not going to tell you everything I’ve done because I want to leave something for the print edition — but look foward to a where-to-eat-and-buy-omiyage in Hilo story, coming soon to a Honolulu Advertiser near you.

OK, so Monday of Merrie Monarch week is when you find out who is a serious MM fan, because these folks are already in town, even though the hula is three days off, and you run into them on Kamehameha Avenue, the main shopping drag of Hilo across from the Bay.  After an epicurean evening with my friends Sunday night (we cooked at their house and I tested recipes on them for the “Island Plate II” cookbook that The Advertiser wil publish next fall), I woke early Monday and went holoholo.

I visited my friends at Pua Lane flower shop, right next to the Hilo Hawaiian. I had ordered a lei poo for my papale and I went over there to pick it up. (And every last person who has seen it since has asked me about it praised it and wanted to find out where I got it — it’s a gorgeous, but not over-ostentatious, mixture of liko and liko hehua and other stuff.)

Then, after doing some work, I decided to check out the shopping opportunities on Kamehameha. I found a parking place, thinking about picking up something new at Sig Zane’s and Hana Hou and checking out the rather cool Salvation Army story they have here and poking my head in Basically Books. … And what happens is, I see this gorgeous guy with long ringlets and lots of tattoos (don’t get jealous, husband, it wasn’t like that, he was 20 years younger than me if he was a day… but he’s sitting on the sidewalk, with a guitar case open next to him for tips, and singing something (can’t remember what) from the ’60s.

I started to walk by and suddenly, it was like, “Look, you don’t have to be anywhere. You don’t have to do anything. You haven’t sat down with a street musician and sung for 30 years. Do it!” And I did. I dropped myself onto the pavement and we shook hands. He said his name was Dragonfly. … (Well, OK, what else could it be in this flashback to the ‘60s?)

We sang songs by Bob Marley, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young. … He didn’t know “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane,” or we would have done that, too.
Then I have a fabulous lunch at Cafe Pesto (when you look up “consistent” or “reliable” in the dictionary, their name is next to it). Then I run ino my friends Tommy and Juliette at Hana Hou and they talk me into buying a much more daring dress than I would have otherwise. (And you guys were right!) And then I finally land up at Sig Zane’s and, just as he had told me on the phone the day before, his big new thing is MALOS … loincloths, strips of screen-printed fabric to wrap around your … well … yourself.

Zane tells me that Hawaiians tied their malo different ways depending on their pursuits: There was a malo tie for fishing, and one for dancing, one for war and one for surfing and one for working the loi. (And he didn’t stay this, but you gotta figure there was one for when you had a hot date on Friday night, yeah?)

His other introductions: A “sassy” dress they goin’ “buss ‘ out” Wednesday at the hoike and a very small, select collection of relaxed quilted, silk-lined jackets, revival of a concept created when his wife was pregnant the first time a generation ago. I could go on, but this is enough. I am in a light-filled room in a beautiful place with great food and lovely people. And I hope you are, too.

Wanda Adams’ Merrie Monarch Blog, No. 2.

HILO, Hawai’i, Sunday afternoon through Monday early morning— “Aia e la i Hilo, /’O ka nani e … There, indeed, is Hilo, Is the beauty.”
And though the skies are low and gray, and there is no view of the mountain summits today, it is beautiful. A calm beauty. Would nahenahe be the right word? I don’t know enough Hawaiian to be sure if that’s right. But it’s gentle and lovely here on a Hilo Sunday, like a sweet Hawaiian song.
What a day I had on Saturday! I packed it with adventures because, when the Merrie Monarch Festival hula competition starts (Wednesday is Halau O Kekuhi’s annual free hoike, hula show; Thursday is Miss Aloha Hula competition), I’ll be so busy I’ll have no time for everything else I love to do in Hillo.
Like eat.
And shop. And walaau (talk or gossip) with people with whom I’ve now had enough time (this is my fifth MM) to start to call my friends, like clothing designer Sig Zane and Richard Ha the Hamakau Coast banana and tomato king, and a guy I just met but consider already a friend, Derek Kurisu of KTA Stores.
Plus, of couse, I gotta call back to Oahu and tell all my friends and family what I’ve been doing. Like… I’m in Hiiiiiiiloooooooo … and you’re not!
And eat. Did I say eat?
Ohmigosh, I got in at like, 9 a.m. Saturday, and went directly to Cafe 100 for have cutlet moco and met up with the winner of our Advertiser Travel section drawing, Na Wahi Heke, The Best Places in Hawaii, which runs next week; she gets a trip for two to a Neighbor Island. … but who would want to leave Hilo???
… Anyway, she just happens to be a daughter of the original Cafe 100 restaurant family, renowned for inventing the loco moco although it probably wasn’t actually them, though their restaurant did make the moco an institution and does serve an amazing variety of mocos. (This week, the special is salmon moco.)
Her name is Gloria Kobayashi (but the family name is Miiyashiro). She’s a school teacher and writer and historian who introduced me to a beautifully written book about Hilo history that she helped prepare along with elders in the Hilo Japanese community. It’s about a densely poulated neighborhood where many Japanese lived, where KTA stores originally started.
It was called Waiakea. And though technically it was the little right elbow of Hilo, it was key to the 20th-century develpment of many Hilo institutions.
You know what it is now? Liliuokalani Gardens, the lovely park at the edge of Hilo.
So, between bites of moco, I got all this Hilo history (and history of any kind is the thing I love second only to food to any kind). More on this in the print edition, when I can get it written.
Then, I drove up the hilll to meet the Merrie Monarch’s pageant queen, Leilani Kerr, and what a lovely person she is! She does, in fact, meet the criterion for this odd bit of only-in-Hawai’i pageantry: She doesn’t have to DO very much (except keep still for hours and hours), but she has just what they’re looking for — a beautiful carriage, a beauiful character and a beautiful soul.
We met at Starbucks (well, of course, where else does anyone meet these days?), across from Sears, not too far from Borders — see? Hilo is definitely in the 21st century.
We talked about how a person who has only lived in Hilo three years and — get this — has NEVER physically been to Merrie Monarch, can come to portray the wife of Kalakaua, the person for whom the festival is named (more of this story in our print edition).
Thursday night, she will walk that stage in her holoku with the train and she will embody the queen.
Okay, so den I w’en go talk-story wit’ Derek Kurisu, who is the face and voice of KTA, the most amazing grocery store chain in the Islands. Other local stores have things to recommend them, but KTA manages to be completely local while also carrying Greek yogurt and hummous, to sell the most wholesome whole-grain breads while also offering indulgent coconut cheesecake, to live up to a commitment to local products — milk, meat and more — while also bringing in anything you want.
When I come to Hilo, I don’t turn right from the airport, I turn left, up the hill and go to KTA and buy a cooler and all kine local stuff fo’ grind in my hotel room while I’m here.
First thing he says, it’s about 12:30 in the middle of the day. He says, “Did you eat?” I say, “No.” He says, ‘Kay den, we go eat. Whea you like go?’ ”
Okay, this is like a major almost-top guy in a good-size company and he stay talking like my cuz. And not only that, he stay talking talking to ME, Miss Haole Face But I’m From Here, Garanz, I No Lie. (Most locals just look at me and assume I’m from somewheah else.)
And we walk a few doors down because my girlfrien’ tole me was good, Hiro’s Place, just Puna side of the Big KTA, the one at Puanaiko where we was.
And I think it was when I ordered the dinaguaan (Filipino blood stew, which was broke-da-mout’) AND the Chinse eggplant with chicken that he actually accepted that I was in fact a local girl.
“Good girl! Smart girl,” he said (which is nice to hear at 56). But I noticed he said similar things to people all day long. This is a man who loves to find the positives in others and praise them to the skies.
That day, we talked and we ate (not too much but all good stuff), and we drove around Hilo. He introduced me to so many of KTA’s “partners” in business. These included people who sell to them, like the Two Ladies (Mochi) Kitchen, or who work with them (like Kawamoto Lunch Shop, which sometimes does catering for them — and which is an old-style okazu-ya that may be the single reason I will move to Hilo someday).
I’m supposed to go to dinner tonight and all I can think of is the leftover nori chicken (more on this later in my food columns in the print edition) from Kawamoto’s that’s sitting on the bureau of my hotel room.
Oh, gosh, I’ve been writing for hours and I haven’t even finished my day. After traveling around with Mr. Kurisu, I THEN checked into my hotel and ironed all my clothes (because that’s what women do when they check into a room, especially Portuguese women), and then I went to Hilo Bay Cafe with my dear friends, Randall and Clarysse Nunokawa (who just opened a tiny little wine shop caleld Grapes in Hilo a few doors down from Kawamoto Lunch shop).
At Hilo Bay Cafe, my dear friend Josh Ketner is still the chef and still producing food that causes me to make embarassing noises in public (good ones, like mmmmmmmm and ooooooooh). Try the specials. The Dish of the Day for me Saturday was an appetizer, Parmesan custard (technically a budino) with artichoke hearts, roasted  peppers, sun-dried tomaotes and lavosh ($8). Num, num, num.
And, friends, that was just Saturday.
Sunday I went to church (New Hope Christian Fellowship in Upcountry Hilo, and how inspiring it was), picked up a big bento at Kawamoto’s, came back to my room, turned on mindless TV, ate awesome shoyu pork and CRASHED for hours of sleep beore writing this. And Monday, many of my friends and hula sources begin to arrive here. I’ll be attending hula rehearsals!
And I get paid to this?!

Wanda Adams here, the Advertiser’s Merrie Monarch correspondent for five years in a row. (Please, can someone else do it next year so I can come to Merrie Monarch and just enjoy myself?) As I write this, my entire living room is a jumbled sea of stuff: camera (still and video), tripods (mini and regular), a digital tape recorder, notebooks, pens, a laptop computer with all its technological accoutrements, notebooks, batteries, videotapes, pieces of paper with scribbled notes on them, file folders, lists of phone numbers … I leave for Hilo Saturday (tomorrow!!!) morning and I haven’t packed a single piece of clothing yet.

Whine, whine, whine, yeah?

Here I am, being paid to cover the most important hula competition in Hawai’i, with a seat in a good spot, a pair of great partners to help me (Rebecca Breyer, photographer and Scott Morifuji, who will edit our videos and help in other technolocigal ways), many friends in the hula world that I’m looking forward to seeing and….. ahead of me…Hilo!!! Which is one of my favorite places on the planet: so friendly, such great food and shopping (watch out Sig Zane, I’m on my way!) and I’m whining because it’s 11 p.m. and I haven’t packed yet?

Oh, please. The clothes will get in the suitcase somehow. And tomorrow, I’m interviewing Leilani Kerr, who will portray Kalakaua’s queen in the Merrie Monarch Royal Court (think about having to look dignified and royal for hours and hour and hours), and also getting a tour of the KTA grocery store (best grocery in Hawai’i, hands down, no contest) and then checking in on rehearsals at the Edith Kanaka’ole Stadium and seeing Auntie Luana Kawelu and other old friends beofre going to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants, Hilo Bay Cafe.

So, night all, I’ll be online again Tuesday (when my Merrie Monarch blog officially starts…but don’t be surprised if you hear from me before then…because once I hit Hilo, I get excited and I just have to share).

Kaulana mai ne ‘ o Hilo ‘ea… Renowned is Hilo…