All my ancestors are from Japan. Read about my father's father,  Kenjiro , who I was named after:  I did not learn much about him until I started my roots search after I retired.   That colored symbol says a lot, and  is explained in a 2019 posting about my visit to Utashinai , located north of Sapporo on Hokkaido, from where he left in around 1890 to the USA.  On his way back to Japan, he got married on Kauai, had a son and daughter.  This is why I grew up in Hawaii. About Utashinai, JR does not today have a station there anymore because this once coal town has dwindled into a skiing and wine spot.  Once up to 46,000, it is now down to 3000.  It was Japan's smallest city when I visited four years ago when the population was 3500. It is possible that I've landed in Japan more times than any non-airline employee in Hawaii.  At least a hundred times, and maybe 150, or more.  One reason why is that I've gone around the world so many times because I hate that overnight flig

I earlier mentioned that my very first airplane flight was when I was around 10-years old from Honolulu to Maui.  I was born at Queen's Hospital in Honolulu in 1940.  Grew up in Kakaako and when I was in high school, took a trip to Hilo.  The first 18 years of my life was otherwise spent on Oahu.  I left in 1962 for Los Angeles to spend the summer living with my older brother, who got me a summer job at the Naval Civil Engineering Center, Port Hueneme, California.  Then spent 3.7 years at Stanford University. During our junior year, most of my friends decided  to join the first full year of John Kennedy's just announced Peace Corps when they graduated.  So I had to do something similarly sacrificial.  To explore my possible future, I found a summer job with C. Brewer in Hilo.  Lived in the Boys Club, and adjacent was the little league field of a team I watched.  They went all the way to Williamsport for the Little League World Series in 1961. The Big Island became home after I

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Friday, April 29, will be the beginning of my 15th year of this daily blog.  You know how long that is? Imagine going back to your first year of pre-school, and suffering through kindergarten...all the way to graduating from high school.  That is a period of 14 years, or how long this site has existed. However, when going to school, we had weekends, holidays, semester/Spring/Christmas breaks and the whole summer off.  My blog, with rare exceptions--especially when I'm in China, for Google, which manages this site, and that country have had a long feud-- has been a daily production. Thus, the equivalent of 29April2022 is sort of like the day after graduation from high school, and I next will be off to college. I've had 5238 postings,  beginning with 29April2008 .  Click on that and you will see how unsophisticated it was, with no graphics.  Wrote about a book signing for  SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth  still on sale for $19.75.  Well, if you divide by 365, you will get 14.35