Living here is like having a really expensive gym membership. It's only worth it if you get outside and enjoy yourself.

I'd like to weigh in on this if I may. My wife and I are moving to Oahu most likely near the end of this year. We got married in Waimanalo almost two years ago, and she loved it. We were always going to move back to the US, but didn't know where. We decided to visit Oahu again but this time without the "holiday blinkers"! We tried to imagine ourselves as already having moved and what it would be like day to day, obviously as much as you can without having to go to work. We decided that it is the right place for us, and we've been planning as much as we can since then. I grew up in a town just like Waimanalo, so for me it seems like my old town, just relocated a few thousand miles away.

We currently live in London, I've been here since 1998 and my wife has been here for only around 5 years. We live in a two floor house which has been split into 10 apartments, all have approximately 120sq feet of space, and rent in dollars is around $1400 a month. We have no yard, and no space to park a car and so we get around using public transport. It always makes my American friends laugh when I tell them you have to have a license to own a tv here, for real, if they catch you without one they fine you up to something like $2000 (they even have vans that cruise around with gear that can tell if you are receiving a signal, they check it against their license list and bust you if you aren't current with your fees. We have 20% tax on almost everything, and in central London everything is very expensive, even the basics like milk and bread. Before I lost my job I earned just enough to pay rent, my travel and a tiny amount left over to either save or to use for entertainment, about 20% of my salary.

I've been in the UK for about 15 years, and I still find it hard to adjust. Every time I speak my accent gives me away and people know I'm not from around here, let alone my real name! We have racial tension here too, we even have a political party known for it, but they are still allowed to operate. We also have known terrorist supporters who for some reason the UK won't deport because the person in question may be in danger should they return to their own country. I always defend the US when someone here berates her, I always have and I always will. But then again over here the French aren't particularly popular, nor the Germans, nor almost anyone else who isn't British  I lost my job in forensics because the government decided there was no profit in it, and so they closed all the labs down and 1600+ of us became unemployed.

I won't elaborate on how the gun ban is useless, my last job was in fighting gun crime in the UK and business was good 

My wife and I are moving to Oahu with no solid job offers, with nothing else but the determination to work our asses off and to do the very best we can. We both have very good resumés, and aren't picky about what we do for work. We are going to try our absolute hardest to make it work, if we fail it won't be because we didn't try. We would rather try and fail than wonder if we could have done it.

My point is that every state, in every country has it's good and bad sides. It has to be what you make of it. Life is to be lived and that includes the hard parts that make you sad, and wish things could be easier. One thing I have learned from martial arts is that there is no shame in not winning, victory isn't black and white.

I wish you the very best of luck in your move to Hawai'i, I hope it's the right fit for you and your family. My wife and I are headed there later this year. God bless us all 

Good luck to you Gunfu.  I hope things work out for you and your wife.

If you have any questions or need something researched, send me a PM.  I'm on Oahu by the way.  I know little about the other islands but I do know a lot about this island (I think). 

Mahalo flaboy808, I'll definitely take you up on your kind offer 

Good luck to you Gunfu.  I hope things work out for you and your wife.

If you have any questions or need something researched, send me a PM.  I'm on Oahu by the way.  I know little about the other islands but I do know a lot about this island (I think).

Hey guys, thank you all for the great responses. I really appreciate it.

For those of you who registered your weapons, where exactly did you register them? The local PD? And how did you feel after you registered them? It seems like it would be an easy way for them to come by and grab your gun if the law were to ever change! A scary thought...

As for the job situation, I can easily work from home with jobs from the mainland. I don't forsee that becoming an issue... at least not in the near future.

For being considered a haole, I'm not too worried about it. I spent my whole early life being the minority and I'm used to it. Also when I visited Oahu most locals I spoke with thought I was also a local. Regardless, it won't become a problem for me unless they block my view of the beach 

And cost of living can't get much worse than where I live now. I'm located in the silicon valley, where a 2+2 can cost close to a million in the right area. Life here is too fast, the human congestion in the valley is nauseating, and cost of living is growing every day. I think Hawaii will be a nice change of pace and I've always enjoyed surfing, but norcal waters are too f*ckin cold! 

I'm not sure which island to live on yet. I suspect cost of living and location will be a factor. I would like to be located within walking distance of the beach of course, and not too rural... wouldn't like to drive more than 15 minutes to reach the nearest grocery. I've only been on Oahu and that seemed great. I liked what I saw on the north shore.

My journey: born in Ohio, college in Indiana, moved or Oregon out of college, moved to Cali after a divorce, moved to Hawaii.

I was invited to move here by a friend who grew up here and knows a lot of people. I knew I was moving into a particular group of associations and that if I just did my best to not be an asshole I wouldn't feel completely out of place. So far that has largely been the case but I still don't feel like I fit in well with people who don't know me. I'm not from here and there is no way to completely conceal that. Nor do I try.

My perspective on living here in Hawaii... is hard to articulate clearly. It is not a simple subject and it is difficult to explain to someone who doesn't live here. I am NOT surprised that we are all kind of skirting around the idea that living in Hawaii is not what you think it will be.

Its not. This is not the US, exactly. Its somewhat like a small town in that the "locals" don't want you there and it takes years to fit in, except that here it is possible to NEVER fit in. Simply being here for a length of time is not enough. Racism is rampant and that can be very difficult for folks from the mainland to get accustomed to. There is no racial majority and everyone picks on everyone else. Those who it tends to come down the hardest on is the white folks from the mainland and their children. With good reason, I might add, if such a thing can ever have good reasons. It takes a great deal of self awareness and understanding to get past that but if you can do that you no longer fall into the category of haole. Instead you become more ilikea - "a little white." At least to the people who know you and, in some cases, to the people they know.

Most don't get it, though. So for comfort they form groups among themselves completely separate from the co-existing groups and families of locals. Its really bizarre here on the Big Island where the overall population is so small that these little groups are painfully obvious if you know what you're looking at. There are whole communities of hippies in Puna that are all transplants here, many have lived here for decades, and they don't have any real relationships with ANY of the locals. But they consider themselves to be local.

This dynamic is MUCH less obvious or relevant in the much larger population on Oahu. Which is one of the reasons why it is the easiest place to move from the mainland if you have no other connections.

You can't think of this as moving to another State. It really is a vastly different place. The government is largely Japanese - complete with its thinly veiled corruption as a matter of course. The economy is American. The culture is.... local. Local is difficult to pin down but it is based on the old Hawaiian ideals of aloha, malama, etc. with a good sized helping of all the various cultures that came here over the years: Japanese, Chinese, Philipino, Korean, etc. with a nice glaze of social injustice and smoldering resentment.

Its a complex culture to understand much less to find a place to fit into. Lots of people who move here lose their patience with it and leave.

That said, I love it here, am completely at home in the cultural paradoxes, and have never been happier with a place or the people that I associate with. Its challenging at times but everything worth doing is.

Shade, you left out the port-a-gee!!!  How dare you!

Hey guys, thank you all for the great responses. I really appreciate it.

For those of you who registered your weapons, where exactly did you register them? The local PD? And how did you feel after you registered them? It seems like it would be an easy way for them to come by and grab your gun if the law were to ever change! A scary thought...

As for the job situation, I can easily work from home with jobs from the mainland. I don't forsee that becoming an issue... at least not in the near future.

For being considered a haole, I'm not too worried about it. I spent my whole early life being the minority and I'm used to it. Also when I visited Oahu most locals I spoke with thought I was also a local. Regardless, it won't become a problem for me unless they block my view of the beach 

And cost of living can't get much worse than where I live now. I'm located in the silicon valley, where a 2+2 can cost close to a million in the right area. Life here is too fast, the human congestion in the valley is nauseating, and cost of living is growing every day. I think Hawaii will be a nice change of pace and I've always enjoyed surfing, but norcal waters are too f*ckin cold! 

I'm not sure which island to live on yet. I suspect cost of living and location will be a factor. I would like to be located within walking distance of the beach of course, and not too rural... wouldn't like to drive more than 15 minutes to reach the nearest grocery. I've only been on Oahu and that seemed great. I liked what I saw on the north shore.

You sound like a friend of mine.  He's a programmer who used to live and work in Cali.  One day, he moved to Oahu for the surf and never moved back.  He still works for the company in Cali but remotely and because he worked from home anyways, the company doesn't know that he lives in Hawaii.