I love Merrie Monarch week in Hilo.

Hilo absolutely shines every year during Merrie Monarch week, which started Sunday. Hula dancers and hula fans

descend upon this town from the other islands, from other states and even from other countries, for our annual, huge, week-long celebration of hula.

During Merrie Monarch week every year, when there are so many more Hawaiian people than usual around town, I feel like I can squint my eyes and almost see what it was like here a couple hundred years ago.

And there is hula everywhere. Here is the halau of well-known California kumu Mark Keali‘i Ho‘omalu practicing outside one of the hotels on Banyan Drive yesterday morning.

And I love the craft fairs with beautiful Hawaiian products, and the food, and the demonstrations and talks and everything Hawaiian.

Here are some of the other things I really enjoy about Merrie Monarch week in Hilo:

• Hearing lots of people around town speaking Hawaiian

• Hula performances everywhere!

• Seeing all the beautiful, woven lauhala hats people wear

• People wearing amazing flowers in their hair. And lei. And beautiful, genuine smiles.

• Seeing the living traditions that people still practice. Such as this hula by Halau O Kekuhi, who performed at Wednesday night’s Ho‘ike, a free performance every year during Merrie Monarch week. It was a thrill to see this renowned halau dancing in the open-air Edith Kanaka‘ole Stadium with Mauna Kea behind them.

• Hearing Hawaiian music

• Seeing Uncle George Na‘ope around town

• People who spontaneously stand up and do a hula because they’ve just gotta dance!

This was unplanned. This woman in the audience was sitting, doing the hula from her chair as she enjoyed this familiar anthem to Hilo, and then just cast aside her cane — really — and got up and danced, to great applause. It was wonderful.

• Seeing cultural traditions survive, and thrive

• Little 3-year-olds up on stage with their elders, dancing hula

• Seeing how many people—young, old, male, female—appreciate hula

At the Hilo Hawaiian on Tuesday, Iwalani Kalima’s halau performed. At one point, the students kneeled on the stage and pulled two sticks, which they would use in the upcoming hula, out of their waistbands. The kumu (teacher), Iwalani, was at the ipu, but suddenly she stood up and climbed on the stage.

She kneeled down next to the tiniest girl — could she even have been 3 years old? Maybe only 2 — and started fumbling around with the girl’s outer skirt. “She lost hers,” she finally said to the audience, and we realized the girl’s sticks had slipped inside her costume. Iwalani had to lift up the outer skirts and hunt around inside the elaborate costume for the little girl’s sticks. It went on for quite some time and was cute and hilarious. Here’s that performance.

There are a hundred other stories and photos and videos I could show you. Search “Merrie Monarch” at YouTube if you’d like to see more.

You can also watch tonight’s Merrie Monarch program live on KITV’s website. It’s Hula Kahiko, traditional hula, and it runs from 6 p.m. to 11

p.m. The final night, which will also stream live on KITV, is tomorrow and runs from 5:30 p.m. to midnight.

And then you can start making your plans to be here in Hilo next year!