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Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"We will never tire of these comparisons...."}]

Smile 26 4 17

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, April 17, 2026</title>

We will never tire of these comparisons....

Daily Smile: Friday, April 17, 2026

 We will never tire of these comparisons....

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta Headshot

Kelli Shiroma Braiotta

Food & Dining

 just opened in a bigger space. The Honolulu eatery — which used to be on the second floor of the Hee Hing Plaza — just opened in the first floor of the same plaza (in the former space of Growlers USA).

 that it would be relocating to the new space. 

The bigger space now has around 75 seats; we’re told this is 1.5 times the amount of seating the eatery’s former upstairs restaurant had.

It now also features both counter and table seating. Walk-ins only are currently accepted for April; when you get to the restaurant, sign in to join the waitlist.

Each table is given eggplant, pickled daikon and gobo. Customers can also choose a rice — seasoned mixed rice, shiso seaweed rice or Hokkaido brand Nanatsuboshi — and miso soup (red miso soup with either clam and green onions or tofu and seaweed; or white miso soup with clam and green onions or tofu and seaweed).

The menu is the same as before. Sets include premium Japanese rice, miso soup, cabbage and pickles. Signature options include the Jyukusei (aged) pork loin katsu sets ($32.50 to $38) and Jyukusei pork tenderloin katsu sets ($32.50 to $35).

The combo sets — ranging from shrimp and pork tenderloin katsu ($35) and shrimp and chicken katsu ($35) to mix katsu set ($36) — are also customer favorites.

Takeout orders are also available. Customer parking is available at Hee Hing Plaza.

Open 4 to 9:30 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays to Fridays; 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. 5 to 9:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays

For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Tonkatsu Tamafuji shrimp and tenderloin katsu 041626

<title>Tonkatsu Tamafuji is now open in an expanded space</title>

The popular tonkatsu spot just opened on the first floor of Hee Hing Plaza (downstairs from its former location). The new space features 1.5 times the amount of seating, with both counter and table seating available. Tonkatsu Tamafuji is only accepting walk-ins for the month of April.

Tonkatsu Tamafuji is now open in an expanded space

Stephanie Salmons Headshot

Stephanie Salmons

Business & Tourism

Since it opened more than 60 years ago, the Pagoda Hotel, known for its koi ponds, floating restaurant, pagoda-style lanterns and Japanese-inspired garden, has long been a destination for local families.

Originally built for and still aiming to cater to kama‘āina guests, the hotel has recently unveiled a new, property-wide refresh.

"The Pagoda has been around in the community since 1964 and generations have passed through this hotel, so it's really important that we continue to honor that legacy while also respecting the cultures and traditions ahead with brining in the new, modern, fresh concepts," Aly Wee, asset manager for the Pagoda, representing the ownership group, told Aloha State Daily Wednesday during a preview of the recent revamp. "But again, [we] still want it to be a place where people can meet, where people can come together and where people can continue to create memories."

Now, according to a recent announcement, visitors to the 199-room, 12-story hotel on Rycroft Street in Honolulu's Ala Moana neighborhood, will find:

, a bakery and cafe that originated in South Korea, and a CU Hawai‘i convenience store are planned for the future, the announcement notes. Meanwhile, Rainbow Drive-In will takeover the Pagoda's iconic floating restaurant.

"We didn't start as hotel guys," Owner Robert Kurisu, son of local real estate investor Duane Kurisu, told ASD. "We started as [food and beverage] restaurant operators. We're real estate guys kind of at our core, but our history with the property started with the restaurant, so we know ... the significance of this property to local people. And people have a lot of memories of the restaurant and the koi pond growing up here."

The hotel is focused on kama‘āina, including those from Neighbor Island communities.

"That's really why we did it, with ourselves and our friends and family in mind — what is a place that you will want to come to and what is a place you're comfortable in staying," he said. "When we took it over, it wasn't at that place yet. We took a lot of feedback and commentary from people about what they thought about the property, what their memories were."

Wee says she hopes people who come in now will have a different perception of the Pagoda.

"I think in recent years, Pagoda has become known as that budget hotel," she says. "But with this transformation, [we are] really hoping that they see the work that we put in, the love that we share for this hotel and the support that we have really for the community to better this area of town."

[{"type":"text","text":"Highgate manages the Pagoda."}]

"We started this journey four years ago, reimagining what the possibility of the hotel could be," Kelly Sanders, group president of Highgate Hawai‘i, told ASD. "It's amazing to stand here today and see just the amazing transformation. We never wanted to be ultra high-end, but we wanted to be a place still for kama‘āina to come and stay. It's always been a hotel for locals and we wanted to elevate the property so that whether you're coming to go shopping or you need to go to Queen's hospital, you have a clean, safe, beautiful place to stay."

, the Pagoda opened in May 1964. According to the announcement, Hayashi aimed to create a "centrally located, uniquely Hawai‘i venue designed for kamaʻāina rather than visitors alone. At a time when Waikīkī’s beachfront hotels catered primarily to tourism, the Pagoda offered something different – a welcoming, residential-style retreat where local families, friends and communities could gather."

The property-wide updates were led by The Vanguard Theory and Albert C. Kobayashi Inc.

Pagoda room 041526

<title>New updates unveiled at Pagoda Hotel</title>

New updates unveiled at Pagoda Hotel

Square Mike Brestovansky Headshot RGZ3736 Large

Michael Brestovansky

Government & Politics

Here’s what made the cut and what died after the state Legislature passed another major deadline this week.

Thursday marked the Legislature’s Second Crossover deadline, one of the last deadlines for a bill before it gets sent to the governor’s desk.

In March, bills were sent to the opposite chamber from where they originated: bills introduced in the Senate were sent to the House, and vice-versa. On Thursday, bills were sent back to their originating chamber, and lawmakers had the chance to disagree on any changes made to the bill during its time in the other chamber.

If any such disputes are made, lawmakers will need to hash out their disagreements at conference committees.

 have successfully passed the crossover deadline, here are a few highlights among the survivors — and some of the ones that didn’t make it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"ICE, again"}]

A host of bills that collectively limit the state’s cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement passed third reading, although most will be sent to conference committees.

[{"type":"text","text":"Those surviving immigration bills include:"}]

, which prohibit law enforcement agencies from conducting immigration enforcement actions for ICE,

, which prohibit law enforcement officers from inquiring about a person’s immigration status during a traffic stop (the House measure also prohibits the use of masks by officers in most circumstances), and

, which requires law enforcement agencies to inform people of their rights before any interview with federal immigration authorities and requires all records relating to those interviews to be preserved.

During House and Senate floor sessions on Tuesday, discussions of any measure were necessarily brief, given the large volume of bills on the agenda. However, SB 3322 generated some debate on the House floor, with Rep. Garner Shimizu (R-Fort Shafter) warning that the bill adds additional operational burdens onto local low enforcement agencies, increasing administrative costs while limiting cooperation between local and federal agencies.

Kohala Rep. David Tarnas countered that the bill instead provides clarity for what local law enforcement cannot do, allowing them to instead focus on their areas of responsibility.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Tax brackets"}]

Gov. Josh Green’s mulligan on his previously announced tax cuts, 

, passed the House despite opposition by the entire House Republican contingent.

The bill follows an announcement Green made at the start of the year that, in the face of a loss of federal funds, a series of tax cuts announced in 2024 — which would raise the standard tax deduction from $4,400 to $24,000 by the end of 2030 — will be suspended after this year. SB 3125, which implements that announcement, will face conference committees following disagreements raised by the House.

The current version of the bill does not include a long section slashing various tax credits in 2029 that was included in previous versions.

Rep. Diamond Garcia (R-‘Ewa) introduced on Tuesday a floor amendment to the measure that would have reverted the bill to a previous form that still retained some of the tax cuts for people with taxable incomes below $350,000. However, that amendment was defeated in a voice vote.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Artificial Intelligence"}]

A measure requiring AI operators to establish procedures in their AI models to respond to suicidal ideation among users passed the House unanimously, although the Senate also registered disagreements with amendments made.

 is an attempt to limit growing reports of “AI psychosis,” wherein users of AI chatbots and other AI services develop fixations and delusional beliefs centered around the AI. In some cases, users reportedly confided to the AI that they intended to kill themselves, which the AI then seemingly encouraged.

The bill requires AI developers to implement measures where the service can identify and respond appropriately to suicidal ideation in users, to notify users that it is not a human, to remind users at regular intervals to take a break from the chat and to prevent the service from producing sexually explicit content.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Noise cameras"}]

, a measure that would fund a program in the state Department of Transportation to install instruments — called “noise detection traffic cameras” in the bill — in order to identify areas of excessive traffic noise.

The bill does not go into specifics about how that program would work: the DOT, the Department of Health and the counties would collaborate to develop the actual policies themselves, and the total amount of funding for the program is still undetermined.

But the measure still drew some opposition on the Senate floor Tuesday, with Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole (D-Kāne‘ohe) warning that the bill “builds monitoring infrastructure that could eventually be expanded and repurposed.”

“Who here believes that data that’s captured by the government and eventually potentially fed into AI will ever be erased and will never be co-opted in some other form for some other purpose?” Keohokalole asked. “This risk is not theoretical … This program lowers the bar for the collection of statewide surveillance data of citizens.”

Nonetheless, the bill passed with only five senators voting against it, although the House subsequently announced disagreements with Senate amendments to the bill, which will send it to conference committees.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Dead measures"}]

 on Tuesday. The bill was one that would require people charged and held for certain non-violent offenses to be released at the defendant’s arraignment, as an effort to reduce the number of pre-trial defendants in Hawai‘i jails.

Sen. Kurt Fevella (R-‘Ewa Beach) spoke in opposition of the bill, warning that people charged with property damage, custodial interference and unlawful imprisonment would be released under the bill. Sixteen senators voted against the bill.

Meanwhile, other measures Aloha State Daily has reported on through the Legislative session have died along the way, including:

, extending Mauna Kea observatory leases for up to 10 more years (

, allowing the counties to impound rogue shopping carts and release them at the store’s expense (Read more 

, enacting incremental reductions in the general excise tax on groceries and nonprescription drugs (

, establishing licensing requirements for sports betting operators (

, including predictive markets into the state definition of gambling,

, adjusting the existing categories of alcohol for liquor tax purposes (

 For the latest news of Hawai‘i, sign up 

Hawaiʻi State Capitol

<title>What's still alive at the state Legislature?</title>

After one of the last deadlines this legislative session, many major bills are still kicking.

What's still alive at the state Legislature?

 is coming up Saturday, April 25, from 4 to 10 p.m. This year, the street festival will feature more than 40 food and retail booths, limited-edition Spam slippers from OluKai, and a Spam-themed drone show.

“Celebrating our 22nd year, and recognized by 

 readers as one of the top 10 cultural festivals in America, the Waikīkī SPAM JAM continues to evolve with more creative food options and new partnerships each year,” says Toby Tamaye, marketing director of the Waikīkī SPAM JAM. “In 2027, the Waikīkī Spam Jam will celebrate the 90th anniversary of the Spam product, and there will be even more added to celebrate this special anniversary.”

New vendors this year include Appetito Craft Pizza & Wine Bar, Waikīkī Shokudo, OluKai, King’s Hawaiian, Mahaloha Burger and Linaka’s Catering, according to Tamaye. Five restaurants will be serving Spam paired with King’s Hawaiian rolls.

The Spam brand-themed drone show over Waikīkī Beach will start at 8:30 p.m.

A portion of the proceeds from the festival will go to local nonprofit organizations, including the Hawai

i Foodbank, Visitor Aloha Society of Hawai

i and the Waikīkī Community Center. During the festival, the Hawai

i Foodbank will be on-site to accept monetary and canned food donations.

Aloha State Daily will have a booth at the Waikīkī SPAM JAM, so stop by and say hi! We’ll be featuring games with prizes, and if you sign up for our 

, you can get one of our ASD owl plushies.

[{"type":"text","text":"Here’s what the food line-up looks like:"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Awiwi Grill"}]

[{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"text","text":"Spam and hotteok skewers"}],"text":""}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bite Size 808"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Blue Water Shrimp"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Buho Cocina y Cantina"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Corner Rolls"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Da Bald Guy"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Da Hub Store"}]

[{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"text","text":"Deep-fried Spam musubi"}],"text":""}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Dicks Lechon"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Il Gelato Hawaiʻi"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Kirin Restaurant"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Kūhiō Avenue Food Hall"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Linakas Catering, LLC"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Mahaloha Burger"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Maui Brewing Co."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Musubi Café Iyasume"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"ShoreFyre Grill & Bar"}]

[{"type":"listItem","content":[{"type":"text","text":"Spam katsu tacos"}],"text":""}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sun Noodle"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Wagyuya Sizzle"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Waikīkī Shokudo"}]

In addition to the April 25 street festival, the popular dine-in Spam event will run from April 18 through May 3. Participating restaurants — including Hideout at the Laylow, Kamukura Ramen, BASALT and Wagyuya Sizzle — will be offering special Spam-themed dishes.

For more information and festival updates, visit 

Waikiki Spam Jam 2026 Maui Brewing Co 041526

<title>Everything you’ll find at the 22nd annual Waikīkī SPAM JAM Festival</title>

The 2026 festival features more than 40 food and retail booths, a line-up of creative Spam dishes, limited-edition Spam slippers for sale from OluKai, and a Spam-themed drone show.

Everything you’ll find at the 22nd annual Waikīkī SPAM JAM Festival

Kam Napier Headshot

A. Kam Napier

Columnists

Looking only at state and local taxes, not federal taxes, a 

 of the 50 states puts Hawai‘i at the top of its ranking for overall tax burden, with 13.3% of our total personal income getting hoovered up by the state and county governments.

[{"type":"text","text":"Alaska was lowest at 4.92%. "}]

The biggest portion of our tax burden, at 7.48% of total personal income, is our compounding GET, giving us the nation's highest sales and excise tax burden. ASD explained 

Second largest burden is individual state income taxes, at 3.2% of total personal income. It's the nation's 7th highest income tax burden and lawmakers are fighting tooth and nail to hold onto every penny. 

continues to advance through the digestive tract of the Legislature, seeking to repeal the historic income tax cuts passed in 2024. Click the link above to see who has been voting for and against this. 

 on how lawmakers could tighten government's own belt rather than pick our pockets. But ... it looks like they really, seriously just prefer to pick our pockets.

The smallest portion of our overall tax burden is property taxes at 2.62% of total personal income.

People believe a lot of odd things about our relatively low property taxes. I recently heard a fellow come before my McCully-Mō‘ili‘ili Neighborhood Board to elicit its support for a resolution that would call for a punitive property tax on vacant lots. He argued that property taxes are "artificially low," and therefore we could impose an additional tax — a fine, really, in spirit — on property owners who weren't doing anything with their lots but leaving them sitting empty, undeveloped, leading to blight.

I've heard people opine that our property taxes are low as a give-away to real estate investors, or to evil developers. 

[{"type":"text","text":"None of this is true."}]

Our property taxes are not artificially low. They're relatively low because, uniquely in the nation, Hawai‘i does not pay for public schools through property taxes. It pays for them through state taxes, so that cost — the DOE has an annual operating budget of $2.18 billion — appears on our income and GET bill.

This, by the way, has not stopped the government education set from 

wanting a dedicated property tax all to itself 

on top of what it already gets from the state general fund. People responsible for creating the nation's highest excise and sales tax burden forget that they've done so, then look at our property tax burden and think, "Hey! You people can afford to pay more!"

The WalletHub report shows us something else interesting about property taxes, which that plenty of states have a burden comparable to Hawai‘i and yet somehow still manage to pay for their schools with that money on top of whatever city services those taxes fund. Kentucky has a property tax burden of 1.95%, versus our 2.62%. Minnesota's property tax burden is 2.47%, lower than ours.

Well, with that, Happy Tax Day, Hawai‘i! You gave your all, more than any other Americans.

A. Kam Napier is editor in chief of Aloha State Daily. His opinions in Pipikaula Corner are his own and not reflective of the ASD team.

Taxes by state

<title>Pipikaula Corner: Congratulations, Hawai‘i, we're No. 1! In local taxes!</title>

A walletHub analysis of state and local taxes puts Hawai‘i at the top.

Pipikaula Corner: Congratulations, Hawai‘i, we're No. 1! In local taxes!

Christian Shimabuku Headshot

Christian Shimabuku

Sports

When the University of Hawai‘i football program's coaches decided to shelf returning starting quarterback Micah Alejado for the vast majority of the team's 

, that meant the signal-callers behind him were about to receive a windfall of live reps during practice sessions. 

Following the departures of Luke Weaver and Dermaricus Davis via the 

 following the 2025 season, only two quarterbacks other than Alejado were on the UH roster this spring following movement in the transfer portal, and both were new to campus in January. Bjorn Jurgensen joined the Rainbow Warriors after redshirting at the University of Virginia in the fall, while O‘ahu native 

 enrolled early after graduating from Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas. 

In his first year as UH's quarterbacks coach, Chad Kapanui built a room full of rapport, where the four players in the position group became close friends and spent ample time with each other off the field. With Alejado the lone returner in the group, the spring semester figured to be a time where Jurgensen and Eugenio would compete with each other on the field while building a bond off it. 

Though they're both freshmen competing for the same spot, both Eugenio and Jurgensen spoke respectfully of each other throughout the spring and offered each other pointers on the field. It turns out the two go back a much longer way than converging on the UH-Mānoa campus in January. 

"It's funny. We've known each other for a while and it's just a pretty cool, full circle moment, just to be here with him and compete with him," Jurgensen told Aloha State Daily of Eugenio. "We're both getting each other better, and it's been really fun."

Says Eugenio of Jurgensen: "We actually met each other in the sixth grade at a competition. I love seeing him out here. He's a good dude. Love competing with him, love throwing with him, love doing drills with him. It's just great. We both get each other better every day, and I'm just blessed."

In the summer of 2018, the Jurgensen and Eugenio families were among the many across the country to make the trip to Fayetteville, Ga. for The Duel, a national competition put on by NFA Quarterback Academy, which attracts the nation's best QBs across a bevy of age groups. 

The two-day competition was measured by an intricate point system that was out of 100. A 10-year-old Eugenio wowed onlookers with 50-yard throws and won the sixth grade division with 94 points. He was the event's highest finisher, surpassing the point totals of all the high schoolers at the event. Not far behind was Jurgensen, the runner-up in the division. The top three finishers posed for a photo afterwards. 

Eight years later, the paths of Eugenio and Jurgensen brought each of them to UH, where they'll both vie to be Alejado's backup for the 2026 season. That competition has carried over from spring ball to 

The Rainbow Warriors are unlikely to release a depth chart until the week of their 2026 opener at Stanford on Aug. 29, but Kapanui says each present plenty to like. 

"When you're looking for a quarterback in the recruiting process, you got to look for someone that has everything from a high IQ, could throw the ball well and the ball jumps out of their hands. Both of those guys are guys that can throw it and sling it," Kapanui says of Eugenio and Jurgensen. 

"Those guys want to learn. When you recruit a quarterback and they're willing to learn, to come into the meeting room and always want to sit down and ask questions, that's so important for this offense. They're doing a great job, they're coming in trying to learn the offense, and it's been good the whole time working with them."

Daily Smile: Friday, April 17, 2026

ASD Staff

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Daily Smile: Friday, April 17, 2026

Authors

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