Ahh Hawaii…

I’ve been running a few errands lately, and I’ve been getting a lot of opportunities to talk to my friends in Hawaii.
And since Japan has started easing immigration restrictions, I have been hearing from my Hawiian friends that they are coming to visit Japan! I makes me feeling like going to Hawaii!!

When was the last time I went to Hawaii? I went back and looked at the pictures and found that it was exactly 4 years ago!
That was a little over a year before the Corona craze started.

I was going to go to Perth in March 2019, a few months after that, and was going to go to Perth the following year in March 2020, but our ticket was cancelled and I couldn’t go anywhere for 2.5 years since the corona pandemic started around that time.

But 4 years ago, Fionn was so tiny!
Of course, he was only a little over one and a half years old when he could fly for free but we had to carry him in our arms all the time.

And the biggest difference compared to those days is the exchange rate of the dollar against the yen!
At that time, the exchange rate was usually 110 yen, so when I calculated the exchange rate, it was just a little more than 100 yen to the dollar, which was fine.
(Well, when I was there before I got married, $1 = 80 yen, so I had an image that over 100 yen was expensive.)

But now we have to calculate it at $1=150 yen. It’s a big deal if you include the tip.
The reason why my friend who is planning come to Japan at the beginning of this article, is, of course because of the open border and the extremely low yen.
And, just like Australia and other countries, inflation is huge, but the salaries are pretty good, too.

I was curious to know what the average income in Hawaii is. I looked it up and found that the average salary in Hawaii is $67,942 USD per year.
That means, at the current exchange rate of about 149 yen to the dollar, it is 10,123,358 yen!
If the average income is over 10 million yen, my friends who have better jobs might be making 20 million yen or so.

But the cost of living is extremely high, so it’s not quite the same as the 10 million I think of in Japan.
They were surprised to see such a good hotel for such a low price in Japan.

Also, my friend who was back in Japan a few weeks ago for a trip was surprised when she was shopping at the supermarket and thought she had already spent about $100, but when she went to the cash register, she was surprised to see that the total was about 3,000 yen! She was surprised that everything in Japan is too cheap.

It’s no surprise that everything in Japan is so cheap, but if we go to Hawaii, it would be the exact opposite, everything is ridiculously expensive, and our money will just fly away.

It’s a well-known story these days that a bowl of ramen is over 3,000 yen. A family of three just had a bowl of ramen and the cost of lunch was close to 10,000 yen. For example, if a bowl of ramen costs $18, that’s 2,700 yen, and if you add the tip to that, it’s over 3,000 yen. It’s hell. But since the average annual income is more than double, it is not strange if you consider that half of 2,700 yen is the price in Japan.

When will I be able to go back to Hawaii with my family again?
Well, I already bought a ticket to go back to Perth in March next year, so even if we do, it will be after that.

I hate it when I can’t travel overseas as easily as I used to…
I’ll just have to earn more money that it won’t matter!