FALL COLORS ARE GETTING BETTER

A frenchie wishes you a Happy Thanksgiving, which is not celebrated in Japan with a turkey meal. However, more and more families do get together to express some thanks. With Japanese food. However, Kentucky Fried Chicken has become a Christmas tradition here.

In 1970 Takeshi Okawara opened the first KFC outlet in Nagoya.
In his fourth year, he launched a Kentucky for Christmas (KFC) campaign.
My Old Kentucky Home complemented party barrels of chicken in gatherings,
This practice has so much taken over that unless you advance order KFC days ahead of time, you will be left in the lurch.
Looks like I'll now need to fit-in a KFC meal before I leave Japan.

Our Japan train trip has shifted from lazy and disappointing to wow. Part of the reason has to do with the two Sheraton hotels in Hiroshima and Kagoshima, which are excellent. We also are eating a lot better because of these hotel breakfast and executive club. Plus we actually had an outing, a fabulous one to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, where we are finally now seeing more and more Fall Colors. Today I'll focus on our train rides and hotel scenes, and fully feature the Atomic Bomb memorial tomorrow.

A very sparse train meal of a tiny arabiki sandwich, sochu and beer, which all came (stolen?) from the Marriott Associa Hotel.

We whizzed by mountains that are beginning to change color.

Also passed by Himeji Castle, the largest such structure in Japan.

They have a trash bag lady on the train.

We checked into the Sheraton Grand Hiroshima.

View from room of the train station.

The meal served here in the Club Lounge was good. Minestrone soup and assorted appetizers, with scotch on rocks, red wine and sochu.

We got to talk to two Americans, Chris and Sarah. He is a naval officer stationed in Nagasaki, while, after an earlier high tech career, she is now just living it up. They do a lot of driving in their BMW throughout Japan.

Walked 8435 steps today.

Nice sunrise, followed by breakfast.

Two step breakfast.

Our hotel is adjacent to Hiroshima Station, and so close that I could hit a lob wedge shot from my table to the bullet train. Next to all the standard juices was this very large dispenser of KALE juice. Never saw that anywhere else before. Called Aojiru (green juice), it was developed way back in 1943, and popularized in 1983. It is also famously unpleasant to drink. Sometimes young barley or komatsuna leaves replace the kale.

In 1990, actor and former baseball player, Nobuo Yana was hired to make a commercial with the tagline, Horrible, I'll have another one. While high in vitamins and minerals, you need to be careful about reaction to certain medications.

So we said goodbye to the Sheraton Grand Hiroshima's Christmas tree, and walked to the train station.

My train bento lunch with sochu on ice and beer. All the drinks are confiscated from our hotels, and this particular box cost around $8.

Kagoshima Station.

The Sheraton Kagoshima is only a few months old, and provides a shuttle bus service. Went to their executive club and had a spectacular view of Sakurajima. That white puff is not a cloud, but is spewed out from this active volcano.

Notice the fancy toilet had a washlet, but something also to clean the toilet seat

So, again, Happy Thanksgiving.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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