Hawaii is far from Japan. Many many countries are closer to Japan than Hawaii

This is correct, but it has settled status regarding an acceptable holiday destination. I.e. while Russia is far closer, very few Japanese have had friends visit there on holiday. Hawaii on the otherhand is in "routine" holiday status, with an established Japanese-catering industry there.

Also while Russia is close, I don't think there is anything particularly interesting there, that is the Eastern Siberia.

That's what they want you to think. KAL007 didn't down itself. They have/had military posts out there (and on Kamchatka).

Hawaii is far and expensive, but has the special trait of having many Japanese speaking residents and being Japan friendly in general.

Why would any of the places you mentioned not require English skills?

What makes dating in Japan "feel like a money pit?"

While I understand it's neither the same country or culture, but for the sake of example, I live in one of the more expensive US cities and dating isn't expensive unless you insist on going to fancy restaurants (which is fine to want to do, but if neither of you feel you can afford it, who are you trying to fool by spending so much?). Coffee shops or similar seem to be the most popular cheap date choices and unless you judge people for not wanting to splurge on dates, I see no downside to them. When the weather is nice there's lots of outdoors stuff that is free / the only cost is transit to and from.

Yeah I just looked up the actual charts, the current measured drop in travel is clearly just due to the onerous travel restrictions that were around due to vaccination requirements (all the requirements to upload documents etc). Those didn't end until this year in Japan, so I don't think we'll have the numbers to make any real conclusions until the end of 2024...