YOKOHAMA TO AOMORI

Israel is escalating its incursion into the Gaza Strip. The latest count shows 8500 Palestinian deaths and 1400 Israelis. Read this to better understand the difference between the Hamas and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). For one, the former is 36 years old, while the latter developed more recently. 24 years ago. Here is what Russia hopes to gain from the Hamas-Israel conflict.

Jacob Lew was finally confirmed as the U.S. ambassador to Israel. He was Treasury Secretary for President Barack Obama.

This position has been vacant since July, so one wonders if partisan politics stood in the way of confirmation. Supposedly, it was for Lew's dealings during the Iran Nuclear Deal.

Had another excellent breakfast at the Sheraton Yokohama Bay.

Then a short taxi ride to the Diamond Princess. Took a long time to check-in and finally boarded around 1 PM and had lunch.

Noticed someone walk by who looked very similar to Steve of 15 Craigside. So went up for closer look.

Nope, not him, but remarkably like a doppelganger. Even dressed like Steve.

The view from our cabin of Yokohama.

Wakako and Bob joined us on our lanai for the sunset departure.

We had dinner together.

We than went to sing karaoke. Note my Halloween pants.

There were Halloween decorations all over the ship, for last night was Halloween.

To end the evening, we went dancing, but did not dance, for the pandemic must have changed the scene. The band played music of the past and present as before, but couples were not dancing. This was organized line dancing, or whatever you call the variations.

Walked 6719 steps yesterday.

The WiFi is a lot better than the Norwegian Pride of America, but not as good as the Seabourn Odyssey. The internet is swift, but downloading photos to this blog site takes 10 times longer. In between I was reading Time magazine, and just happened to see an article about how many steps one should take for an active person. For the longest time, this number was 10,000/day. Well, research now shows that 4,000 steps/day (an equivalent of 2 miles/day) should be enough to reduce your risk of premature death. Further, as few as 2500 steps/day may meaningfully cut back on cardiovascular diseases. This study was based on a re-analysis of 17 previously published studies on walking and health involving more than 225,000 adults from multiple countries who were tracked for an average of seven years. Of course, it would help if you also had good nutrition, slept well, minimized stress and so on.

The Diamond Princess is at sea today, cruising north towards Aomori tomorrow.

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