1. It was a century ago that Japan's Masabumi Hosono, the only Japanese passenger, survived the sinking of the Titanic. The escaping boats only allowed women and children to board, and he might have been one of the very few men to be thusly saved. If you were a woman on the the ship, your odds of survival were higher by a factor of ten. There was some controversy attached to his good fortune, as he was forever condemned to have survived.
2. Do you realize it takes only 3 hours to travel by train (first Shinkansen above) from Tokyo to Osaka (my stop after Seoul--which means it will take me three days)? Well, that was a trial run of the first Shinkansen fifty years ago. Today, the Nozomi takes about two and a half hours, not really much of an improvement:
3. The Japanese have the highest life expectancy (actually, Monaco, Macau and San Marino are a bit better), with that of women being 86.3 years. Men? 79 years. Quite a leap, when at the end of World War II, Japan had about the lowest. Why? Diet! Also, they each visit a doctor at least every month. Why do women live longer? This is true in all countries, with the difference in Russia of 12 years, the USA, 6 years. But why? Women are superior? Men drink and smoke more, and get killed in wars? The world average today is 67, having been as low as 22 in Roman times and 30 in 1900.
Red is low (Africa has several countries at 50 years or lower), while green is high.
4. Japan has two problematic stockpiles: plutonium (45 tons--from which 5,000 nuclear warheads can be made) and whale meat (5,000 tons--high in mercury). In many ways, they are related. How? Click on that posting.
5. This blue flower is today blooming in Tokyo:
Anyone know what it is called?
6. By the way, I woke up this morning expecting to experience a typhoon, and it was sunny. Former Super Typhoon Guchol blew right over Japan at very high speed, thus not causing any major flooding. This was their first June typhoon in eight years, with Tropical Storm Talim expected on Friday.
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