1. ROMANCE in Hawaii
2. Noh Foods, so good it's literally out of this world
3. Dude, close your legs
4. Beatles John Lennon song secret revealed
5. More Climate Disasters Expected - what Hawaii could look like in 50 years
6. Danger Alert - PFAS Harming Hawaii
7. Legalizing Marijuana in Hawaii
8. Fire Ants Infestation Spreading on Oahu
Romance in Hawaii - Do you want to be a bride?
People in Hawaii's tourism business sell the romance of Hawaii. Before pandemic, according to tourism executives, Hawaii's “romance market” brought half a million visitors a year to Hawaii for weddings and honeymoons. Approximately 657,000 people came here for weddings and honeymoons in 2016; more than a third came from Japan. Couples from Japan are in downtown Honolulu in wedding attire being photographed by professional photographers, escorted by professional guides, often in some of the grungiest places downtown and Chinatown. There must be some aesthetic or fad for the grungy settings. Many young people in Japan are big on copying their latest fads.
Brides in white satin and lace with grooms in bow ties, vest and shorts may not be getting married. Some are already married, others may get married after returning to Japan. Perhaps some may eventually not even get married to each other. One couple from Japan on their honeymoon in Hawaii said the wedding pictures are just a souvenir; the woman was dressed like a bride, the groom wore vest, bow tie, and shorts. It's just another thing to do on vacation in Hawaii; put on wedding clothes, ride a limo to a professional photo shoot. There are wedding packages marketed to the Japanese with no restriction on who can buy the packages.
Before pandemic, one agency said it photographed as many as 400 wedding couples every month. 80 to 90 percent were not getting married at that time. Most of those Japanese tourists in wedding attire, especially grooms in shorts, are not here for their wedding. One company in Japan that offered full service weddings in Hawaii said about 70% of their clients who do wedding photo shoots in Hawaii are not getting married at that time. Japanese travel agents offer wedding-picture packages whether or not customers are getting married. According to HTA around 36,274 Japanese visitors came to Hawaii in 2016 to get married, but nearly 227,000 came for honeymoons. Selling honeymooners photo packages greatly increases potential revenue.
Why let Japanese tourists have all the fun? Our local people can do this for fun. Why let hotels or Japan affiliated wedding companies make all the money? Local people can start businesses offering locals or tourists the chance to get photographed in wedding attire at romantic, fun, or quirky settings. Locals know the best places. It's legal, no one is getting married, only getting photographed. You can dress up with your spouse, friend, sibling, child, parent, anybody, straight, gay, or trans. You can do it for anniversary, birthday, Valentines Day, Christmas, or Halloween.
Before-pandemic, Royal Kaila Wedding & Spa at Waikiki Beach Marriott hotel offered stylists for hair and makeup, silk flower bouquets, men's outfits, more than 200 wedding dresses to choose, mini-massage for men while "bride" gets made up, limousine transportation, and photo shoot, including 100 digital pictures. They said sometimes they had 20 couples a day, a couple every half hour. Basic “Princess on the Beach” package was $670. “Downtown & Sunset on the Beach” was $1,270. It may cost less than your junket to Las Vegas. Instead of losing money, you'll have photo memories.
Noh Foods, so good it's literally out of this world
Congratulations to local company, Noh Foods, on its 60th anniversary. Raymond Noh took over the business from his parents who started the company. Today, there are about 40 Noh products with 80% of sales outside Hawaii. Noh sauces are on the US mainland, Europe and even in space, the final frontier. In the late 1980s a Houston company that did the catering for NASA told Raymond that the Noh teriyaki sauce had already been on four space shuttle missions. They said one of the astronauts asked for teriyaki sauce. The catering company tested different brands of teriyaki sauces. Noh teriyaki sauce was the best.
Congratulations Noh Foods and our friend Howard, Raymond's brother, the only Noh we know.
Dude, Close Your Legs
I ride the bus. There seems to be a problem for riders of public transportation anywhere. Emma Fitzsimmons reported for The NY Times, in NY City “A Scourge Is Spreading. MTA’s Cure? Dude, Close Your Legs.” It's called man-spreading.
NY Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) posted public service ads to “encourage men to share a little less of themselves in the city’s ever-crowded subway cars.” These are men who spread their legs apart, occupying more than one seat. A woman who tweeted photos of these men said, “It drives me crazy . . . it just seems so inconsiderate”
MTA posted ads in subway cars. One ad said: “Dude . . . Stop the Spread, Please." Fitzsimmons wrote, “For men who think that sitting with their legs spread is socially acceptable, manners experts say it is not.” Peter Post, author of the book “Essential Manners for Men” said the proper way for men to sit is with their legs parallel rather than spread out in a V-shape.
If you don’t like it, some things you can do: If you’re sitting on an outside/aisle seat, you can move part of your butt beyond the outer edge of the seat cantilevering yourself partly off your seat and ride the rest of the way like that. Or wedge your bag between you and the man-spreader and apply gentle, firm pressure, with your leg, on the bag, pushing against the encroaching leg. Or change seats, if that's an option.
Changing seats may present a different problem. One time, escaping from an inside/window seat, I squeezed pass the man spreader through the tight space between our seats and the back of the seats in front of us. As I passed him, he stroked his hand down the length of my inner thigh. I yelled and kicked him. Before I could report him to the driver, he quickly exited the bus. I'm not the only person to have something like that happen on the bus, but lest anyone think poorly of our buses, I've been riding Oahu's buses most of my life. Most riders are not like that.
Bob Sigall (“Rearview Mirror,” Star-Advertiser, B6, 10/27/23) reported Chicago journalist Peter von Buol told him the Beatles song, “The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill” is about Richard A. Cooke III and his mother. Cooke is a descendant of early missionaries who came to our islands. Many missionary descendants became wealthy, essentially old-money “aristocracy” here. 50 years ago, after graduating from college Cooke traveled to India with his mother to learn transcendental mediation with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The Beatles were there.
Cooke went on a tiger hunt, riding an elephant. He shot a tiger. Next day his mother proudly told the Maharishi. John Lennon was listening. Maharishi coldly replied, “Life destruction is life destruction.”
Months later, new John Lennon song: “Hey Bungalow Bill. What did you kill. Bungalow Bill? He went out tiger hunting with his elephant and gun. In case of accidents, he always took his mom. He's the all-American, bullet-headed, Saxon mother's son.” Yoko Ono sings backup. Sigall wrote, “For Cooke it was a life-changer.” He exchanged his gun for a camera. He became a National Geographic photographer for 22 years. He said, "Now I am an advocate for the natural world and beauty that I so love to photograph."
More Climate-related Disasters Expected
EARTHWEEK: Diary of a Changing World by Steve Newman [StarAdvertiser 01/21/24; A7] reported, Earth's oceans absorbed record amount of heat in 2023, contributing to unprecedented planetary heat and triggering more climate-related disasters worldwide. The international team of scientists, writing in the journal Advances in Atmospheric Science, said temperatures in the oceans were hotter each year, 2012 to 2023, than the year before. Ocean heat is “supercharging” the weather, with higher heat and extra moisture in the atmosphere “creating more severe storms, more powerful winds and heavier downpours that amplify flooding disasters.”
What Hawaii could look like in 50 years
I subscribe to National Geographic. Kathleen Rellihan reported, “To predict how climate change will expose us to disaster, reshape agriculture, or make some regions unlivable, scientists run models that forecast how the world will change.” Climate change or global warming does not only make the world hotter, it also contributes to impending disasters like more powerful storms and hurricanes, torrential rains and flooding, and rising sea levels due to factors like melting glaciers. The water has to go somewhere.
Rillihand wrote, “the world will look very different if nothing is done to address climate change.” UN's 2023 climate change report says, “The planet is on track for catastrophic warming" World's leading climate scientists warn the world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature tipping point in next 10 years unless nations immediately transition away from fossil fuels. Click photo (left) - best seen on computer, NOT phone. See Iolani Palace & State Capitol. When Earth is warmed by 3ºC .
DANGER Alert – PFAS Harming Hawaii
Leila Fujimori reported for StarAdvertiser [Sun, Dec 17, B2], Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez filed a lawsuit against 25 manufacturers of PFAS chemicals (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), forever chemicals, that “contaminated our environment and can cause serious health problems for people of Hawaii.” Lopez said, corporations that created and unjustly profited from sale of PFAS concealed serious risks to human health and the environment. The lawsuit alleges manufacturers' “deceptive and unlawful actions” caused or contributed to PFAS contamination of our air, soil, surface water, groundwater, drinking water. For example samples of drinking water from Kunia Village, were found to have perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS, a type of PFAS) at levels as high as 12.5 times higher than proposed federal maximum contaminant level.
“By today's standards, the maximum concentration of PFOS measured at [Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in 2022] would be approximately 655,000 times higher than what EPA considers health-protective.”
Some of the harm U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) warned PFAS chemicals can cause are decreased fertility; adverse developmental and behavioral effects in children; increased risk of some cancers, including kidney and testicular cancers; reduced ability of immune system to fight infections; ulcerative colitis; thyroid disease; medically diagnosed high cholesterol and obesity.
PFAS chemicals have been used extensively at Hawaii airports and military installations since the 1940s and were used in Hawaii by local, state and federal fire departments. They are in some common personal and household consumer products.
The lawsuit said manufacturers of PFAS chemicals knew for decades the dangers of PFAS. “Despite this knowledge, [they] chose to not take steps to reduce those risks and instead continued to advertise, market, manufacture for sale, offer for sale, and sell PFAS-containing products . . . to State and local government, businesses, and consumers so that [they] could reap enormous profits . . . [They] seek to foist the equally enormous costs to address those problems back on the victims . . .”
A study in Colorado found every $1 in tax revenue resulted in approximately $4.50 in costs, ranging from additional health-care costs to more students dropping out of high school.
Legalizing marijuana results in more fatal car collisions. In the Rocky Mountain area in 2020, 24.3% of drivers in traffic fatalities tested positive for marijuana, up from 14.8% in 2013. 48.8% of teen drivers who use marijuana report driving under the influence.Alm explained, in Hawaii, "Marijuana possession has been decriminalized and medical marijuana is available. Violations are like a parking ticket, not handled in court, with no resulting criminal record." He said, "If we commercially legalize marijuana, we will change the character of our state forever. Colorado has more marijuana stores than McDonald's and Starbucks combined. Let's not do that. Let's keep Hawaii, Hawaii."
DANGER - Infestation Spreading on Oahu
[Honolulu Star-Advertiser, Nina Wu, 11/06/2023, A1, A6] Oahu Invasive Species Committee warned that one of the world's worst invasive species is rapidly spreading on Oahu. Fire Ants (Wasmannia auropunctata), an invasive species native to South America, infest homes and yards, damage farm crops and forests, cause painful stings, and can blind pets when the ants get in their eyes. First detected 1999 at a nursery in Puna on the Big Island, they have been found on Kauai, Oahu, Lanai, and Maui.
Christy Martin at the University of Hawaii Coordinating Group on Alien Pest Species said this is the worst she has ever seen it on Oahu. She said “If we don't do something now, what will happen is we will lose the opportunity to do something once it's too wide spread.” This is what happened on the east side of Hawaii Island. Hawaii Ant Lab has only 2.5 staff members working to eradicate the ants on Oahu. Martin said, “We know there are infected nurseries right now selling infected plants and materials.” Hawaii's Department of Agriculture should have authority to prevent sales of plants infected with fire ants, but there are no administrative rules yet to do that.
Fire ants are tiny, only about one-sixteenth of an inch long, but their sting is painful. They can blind pets if they get in their eyes.
State legislator Rep. Scot Matayoshi said, “The windward side is very impacted right now. There are three infestations in Maunawili. There are sites all over Kailua, Kaneohe, all the way up the coast. There's one next to my house.” He said, “it's too late for the Big Island. I don't think it's too late here. If we wait another year, it will be.”
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