On this Sunday, in my 17th year of this blog, I thought, my life is now not as exciting as in the past.  While I did last month return from a nearly two-month long trip that took us from Honolulu to Seattle ( by air ); then a very long cruise through the Panama Canal to Southhampton, UK; another flight to Amsterdam, Netherlands; a European Christmas Cruise to Budapest; flight to Zurich for a couple of days; then a 27 hour return by plane to Honolulu; certainly more than virtually every one of you reading this has accomplished the past year, relatively, my earlier experiences were more memorable. So I thought, over the next few months, I would select a few of my past postings to re-share with you, utilizing mostly my nostalgia day, Tuesday, for this purpose.  But I'll begin today with a grand summary. My first blog was published on 29April2008.  How long ago is that? Go back to your first day of kindergarten. Imagine how long it took to get you to become a senior in colleg...

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 ti...

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 y...