To our disappointment, we learned that the early blooming of the Sakura ten days ago....stopped, with cold weather.  Thus, the chances were that we would not see anything.  But we took the JR Yamanote Line to Shinjuku Station and walked to Shinjuku Park.  There is a small charge, but the guards said that we should come back in two weeks, so we did not even enter.  This photo was from  four years ago when on April 4 there were a lot of blossoms . We then took the Marunouchi Red Line Tokyo Metro to Ginza Station, and transferred to the Hibiya Line to Ueno Park.  Incidentally we this time had no Japan Rail Pass, and paid for these rides using a Suica card which we added around $50.  This amount should cover several days of riding about in Tokyo. At Ueno Park, we were met by my Blue Bar Pigeon.  Looked up the walk path where in the past it was all white and pink.  This time, nothing.  The season officially starts here tomorrow, March 22 with the  Ueno Sakura Festa 2024 .  Lights go on and

Yesterday I talked about Powerball.    Last night a ticket sold in Altadena, California won $2.04 billion .  The winning numbers were 10, 33, 41, and 56 for the white balls, and 10 for the red Powerball.  The previous record was $1.586 billion won by three ticketholders.  The announcement was 10 hours late because of a problem with processing sales.  How's this for luck:  the odds of winning were 1 in 292.2 million. Apparently, if you got infected with the COVID-19 virus, and took  Paxlovid , doing so reduced your risk of long COVID.  There is no data on how well this treatment works if you haven't had this disease. and later get infected. Would be worth a study.  Learn more about Paxlovid by clicking  here  and  here .  There is that matter of rebound that has occurred to some. Yesterday my posting seemed to be the only source of optimism for Democrats.  But who am I, plus I've never done this before.  Much will depend how much the Trump-effect affects those marginal 10% R