On our recent trip to Hiroshima, we went to a restaurant that specializes in making okonomiyaki in many different styles. We chose the seafood and the chicken okonomiyaki.

This January, the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory will partner with the University of Hawaii at Hilo, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park Service, and the County of Hawaii Civil Defense Agency to deliver a range of talks and walks to help you maintain your volcano awareness.

Poinsettias are like Christmas budgets this time of year. Both are in the red. But what is that white flowering bush blooming freely now? Read on if you want to know. In the meantime, if you want to give inexpensive gifts with a personal flare, living plants that fit the personality of the recipient are ideal. However, be careful with your choices. There is a big difference between a succulent plant that might have romantic inferences and a spiny cactus that says something else! Poinsettias are blooming in some areas and not doing well in others.

In December candy canes appear in most of the retail stores, as 90 percent of the distinctive red and white confections are sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas, with the biggest single week being the second week in December.

The first few hours of Mauna Loa’s eruption were dynamic, and volcanologists intently watched monitoring data to track changing conditions and understand how the eruption was developing. This monitoring is crucial to issuing hazards notifications to communities that may be at risk and is why we continue to closely monitor this new eruption.

When we are keiki, Christmas is often about what we will get. As we become adults, it is more about giving rather than getting. Some gifts we enjoy are ones that are satisfying for a short time. Others are with us for the long haul. But when you think about it, gifts are overrated, since Christmas really isn’t only about gift giving or getting.

The Hawaii Community College’s Palamanui Campus in Kailua-Kona with Chef Instructors Paul Heerlein and Fernand Guiot, second-year students Kai Kale and Kama Bolosan worked with me and my Na Leo TV crew last week.

At 10:45 p.m. Sunday evening, Nov. 27, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientists were alerted to an earthquake swarm beneath Mauna Loa. Before an hour had gone by, lava had broken the surface within Moku‘aweoweo, the summit caldera, for the first time in 38 years.

November is almost over but the Christmas holidays don’t seem real until we get our Thanksgiving meal digested. Poinsettias don’t seem to care since they are beginning to show color now. Folks on the mainland think of the poinsettia as a Christmas flower but for us it blooms now through March.

Lava flows erupted from the lower East Rift Zone of Kilauea in 2018 and devastated lower Puna. In 2019, a team of scientists from the USGS, the Earth Observatory of Singapore, and GNS Science in New Zealand set out to document and assess the impacts to buildings and infrastructure to advance understanding of how lava flows impact the built environment.

Thursday is Thanksgiving but giving thanks for the many blessings we have in Hawaii should be a daily event. For the last several months, it seems many folks have been focusing on the negative, so let’s try something healthier.

After three years, the KTA Super Stores Kona Coffee Recipe Contest returned as part of the Kona Coffee Festival, the oldest food festival in the U.S.

Ta‘u volcano in American Samoa experienced volcanic unrest in the form of an earthquake swarm that was felt throughout the Manu‘a Islands (Ofu-Olosega and Ta‘u Islands) from late July through early September 2022.

Last year’s avocado defoliation due to the Avocado Lace Bug raised havoc with fruit production. Exposed fruit is quickly sunburned and that affected the quality. University of Hawaii entomologists had hoped that this season might be better with natural predators reducing the lace bug population. So far, this does not seem to be the case.

Our son Neil and friend Basti were visiting from Germany so his older brother Reid and I took them on a day trip to Maui for lunch.

Satellites have become one of the fundamental tools used to monitor active volcanoes. They allow us to monitor volcanoes that are otherwise hard to access and provide perspectives that are not possible to get from the ground. Satellites orbiting the Earth can provide normal “pictures” of a place, but can also provide thermal images, measure amounts and types of gases, changes in gravity, and topography.

Some folks on the mainland think of macadamia nut trees are native to Hawaii, but here we know it is an Australian tree that we adopted as our own. We use the nut in all kinds of local dishes, especially desserts. We even use the leaves for holiday decorations instead of holly.