Day 17: 10, 5, 2.5, 1.25

Not too much trouble getting up for a run today, however I have noticed I am pushing the time I get up back a little each day. Its hard to get out when you know there will be frost on the cars and a bitter wind. This is why I prefer my evening runs, the sun has already warmed everything up and, while still cold ,its not your thumbs hurt for the first 2km cold! But I still did it, with a meh time compared to my evening runs, but still.

Maybe one day I will include a more interesting picture about me running

The audiobook is really good for distracting myself from trying to calculate exactly how long it will be until i can stop. It is also a little creepy. It's a book about the zombocolypse and running early in the morning when few people are about is a little off putting. Well, at least I know I could run away if I did see some zombies...or would I be too tired because I have already ran a lot???? Maybe I need to give this running thing a little more thought.

No classes at school today so I could just catch up on some work, sort out some computer stuff and read the book that I was recommended by a friend about strength training. It's good, very informative, but very heavy on the technical stuff, such a giving lists of exactly all the muscles involved in an action and such. However, it is very informative, detailed and it has pictures! Those are the best kinds of books, ones with pictures.

This is either how to do an exercise or how to stand up as creepily as possible

This is the deadlift, it's what I tried to learn to do today, I say tried because it's not so easy and the book itself says that even regular lifters hate doing this so much they will try to find excuses not to do it that session. It is, however, the lift where you can pick up the most weight, so that is cool. Some people lifting 100's of kilos. Me??? Oh yeah, I'm like totally up there, managed a huge 50kg deadlift!...... Shhhhh, I'm still learning. 

Anyway, something much more exciting happened to me today, something that I have been looking forward to and happens very rarely, this:

Sometimes it's the small things

Yup, thats right, I have all the weights in descending order on my squat. woop woop! I dunno why but I find this really satisfying. What you see here is 10kg, 5kg, 2.5kg and 1.25kg all that on each end plus a 20kg bar adds up to 57.5kg. The next time I will see this is when I add the next biggest weight, 15kg. So I won't be seeing this again until I can squat 87.5kg. It is a long way off but I am already looking forward to it. All the more reason to train hard.

After my gym session I headed home to make dinner and do my dishes (That's right, my weekday nights are crazy!). My dinner was something I have been looking forward to. Meat in Japan can be very expensive, and there usually isn't much variety so I sometimes order from a website called the meat guy. It all arrives frozen so I had this big sirloin steak that I needed to eat before i go home because if my electricity gets cut off because i'm not here to pay it this winter break, I am not going to waste 400g of prime sirloin!

So this was my dinner:

No "witty" caption, just mmmmmmmmmmmm

Lot's of protein to help me grow the muscles needed for those damn deadlifts and get up to 87.5kg. I slightly overcooked it but it was still good and I'm sure it will do the job. I better let this digest, I have my early morning freezing run to look forward to, as the Japanese say がんばります (ganbarimasu) or "I will do my best"! Off to bed!

Day 15 + 16: Making a Mountain out of a Hill

Please forgive my lack of a post yesterday, I had to wake up early this morning to go look at some nature with some of my Japanese friends so I went to bed early. But I think going in chronological order will be better, people seem to prefer chronological order.

Saturday, my friend and I climbed that mountain that I talked about last weekend. As I said last weekend, if you climb it 30 times you can get immortalised with your name up on the wall of the restaurant, that is our goal. 2 down, 28 to go, with 30 weekends left until I leave Japan I will be climbing it most weekends. 

  

I think Mt. Fuji is in the background somewhere, maybe

I realised that I made a slight error last time I talked about this mountain. It was the result of lazy googling. I said that this mountain, Mt. Awagatake, is only 50m shorter than Ben Nveis, the tallest mountain in the UK. This was because I found a Mt. Awagatake which is 1293m tall, however the Mt. Awagatake that I will be climbing is actually only 532m. Just a tiny difference! Well, no, not just a tiny difference, actually in English (according to the UK's definition) my Mt. Awagatake is technically a hill. 

I've got some circling skills!!

Above is the book that you sign every time you reach the top. I will photograph every time, but i doubt you want to see a number increase by 1 every weekend, if you did I'm sure you would just write different numbers on your calendar.

Because of the running, strength training and boxercise on friday I felt that it was best to have saturday as my rest day. So the 5km hike counts as my rest exercise. 

Today-

As I said before, I had to wake up early, before 6am, so that we could go and look at some nature. There is a lot of nature in Japan, but the specific nature we were looking for was the changing of the leaves. Like this:

Ohhhh, look at the pretty colours

These are Japanese maples, I don't really know any more than that, but they are very pretty eh? It took us 2 hours to drive there and then there was a surprise monkey:

You may think he is jumping, but actually he is a flying monkey

To be honest I am not sure how I feel about this, on one hand there is a monkey who is being forced to perform, but on the other hand there was a bloody monkey!

It is still a welcome change to ramen

This was my lunch, not so healthy lunch but it was very delicious, and then I was told about an interesting local delicacy.

Decide now before reading the next paragraph, does this look delicious?

These are hornet larvae, they are in a miso sauce. I tried a few of them, they tasted and had the texture of boiled beans. They are also supposedly meant to give you energy, I was informed it will help with sexual energy too.... I didn't really know what to do with that information. 

I guess it worked (Not the sexual energy) because it happened again, I went for an evening run, and ended up running a 6k again, at a pace of 5mins 18 secs/km. So it would look like it is becoming a pattern. When i go running in the evening I seem to be able to run further/not look forward to the end. Let's see how I do tomorrow with my morning run. 

Day 14: Boxersize is not jumping in and out of boxes!

Here we are (Well I am here, you shouldn't be right now, I didn't let you in my apartment). Late on a Friday night. An alcohol free Friday night I might add. And instead of falling asleep, like I feel i should and did last week, I am writing this blog post. Boom! Productive.

Today I succeeded in getting up for my run. already doing better than yesterday! Then I went on my run (I know, you expected something else but no luck). I finally got the audiobook onto my iphone and listened to World War Z while I ran. I was initially dubious, music has rhythm and a beat you can run to but as you see I did just as good as before while listening to the book.

Something, something, witty comment about this boring picture

While there is no beat the story itself is engrossing which gives me a different benefit to the beat. While before I couldn't really stop thinking about what I am doing I could just let my body go and pay attention to the story. I think that it is also a bout keeping it interesting, so when the book gets repetitive I will go back to music and so on. 

Then, off to work. I learnt a very apt and interesting Japanese phrase today "こころここにあらず" (kokoro koko ni arazu) Kokoro- heart/mind, koko- here, ni- location particle, arazu- to not be. Literally, "My mind is not here" or as we would say "I have mentally checked out". This is what has happened with today being 14 days till I board a flight home for the first time in 2.5 years! I just can't wait, work is just washing over me.

At least it isn't a ramen picture

Friday is my exciting lunch day, so I went to the Japanese lunch place I have talked about before. I got green tea, some kind of fish, fried tofu (Never thought i would opt for tofu!), miso soup, pumpkin and 肉じゃが(Niku-jaga) 肉- meat じゃが-Potato, so it is japanese meat and potatoes, DELICIOUS. I am genuinely worried I will get rice cravings when I am at home, I ate half of this without adding anything for flavour!

After school I headed to the gym, did my usual work out, managed to up some weights and stuff (I won't bore you with details, I would put money on no one giving a damn about them). It was good, other than the students getting in the way and of course just chatting/ playing with the weights seeing if their friend can take a dumbell on their groin (he couldn't).

After all that I remembered boxfit, I still had a 3rd work out to do! Damn my inability to say no. I headed to Sukiya (Rice bowl topped with beef, onions and other toppings), but I had to rush my dinner to get to boxfit on time.

Like seriously, it's not a ramen pic!

For anyone who didn't read my post about eating ramen just before karate, stuffing your face then jumping about isn't good. Boxfit is no different! I felt rather sick the whole time! (Unfortunately I can only blame myself)

Boxfit, it turns out, is not about jumping into (and out of) boxes. No, it is a room full of older Japanese women, and one of my older Japanese male friends. Following the instructions of a man, who (and this is complete conjecture) has never boxed or been in a fight in his life, for an hour. Unfortunately it was not for me, I would honestly rather just go for a run and do "real" fighting in karate, but it was amusing none the less, a great experience. 

No dramatisation, these diagrams are all to scale!

For obvious reasons I took no pictures but I was comically oversized, not only because I was a head taller than anyone else but also my limbs are much, much longer than anyone else's. There was also a slight thrusting in the groin region at some point and lots of, what I imagine in a real fight would be ineffective, kicking. There was also a lot of Jazz hands. The above diagrams show all of these as best as I could represent them. 

So thats my day of 3 work outs done, off to bed now, I have to climb a mountain tomorrow. (Nothing metaphorical here, a real literally mountain)

Day 13: Strange Things are Happening!

I think I need help! Something really strange happened today. I'll start at the beginning. This morning I woke up at 6:20, and decided no, no way, I am not doing that, another hour of sleep for me! This meant that after my day at work I had to do my 5k. This was all ok, I wasn't looking forward to it but meh, I said I would do it so I will. I tried to load an audiobook onto my phone but it didn't work resulting in my phone not being able to access any of my music (a running nightmare!).

With a YouTube running playlist going and with my rage at Apple over the syncing fiasco i headed out on my run. I ran the path I walked yesterday, up the big hill near me, and around the really cool park with the amazing play area. As I came down the hill, the strangest thing happened to me.

My running app told me I had reached my 5k and I thought "I can keep going", so I did! I ran a whole extra kilometre! And whats worse is I ran it keeping the same pace I ran the other 5, which was faster than any of my runs since I started this "health" kick.

This could be the start of a downward spiral upwards!

The slowest and quickest kilometres, the red and green ones, are the hill. Also, my pace is 5:16 which is faster than my best before of 5:20. Yes I am complaining, but it's mostly out of confusion. I hate running, usually all parts of it (Except the end, that bit is great). However, this would suggest that I am starting to like running. Maybe it is just a blip, maybe I ate something funky. Only time will tell.

After my run I headed to dinner with a bunch of friends, no ramen for me! We went to a steak/burger place that is only in our prefecture, I opted for the steak because, well let's be honest, if you are going to eat beef, you may as well eat it right! instead of the usual chips I got a plate of rice (Rice goes surprisingly well with steak).

I'm not going to lie, the salad was 99% iceburg lettuce

BOOM, gone! It was bloody good (That's british bloody meaning very!) and I am sure the protein will help me with my strength training. Also, tomorrow I will be heading to Boxercise, I am not entirely sure what it is but I was invited by a friend so I will go (I believe it is when people have to exercise by getting in and out of different sized boxes). 

An interesting thing I realised, if a fellow ALT invited me to something like this I am inclined to say no, but I feel when a Japanese person asks I can't say no. I think this is because I feel it may be a good cultural experience when a Japanese person invites me to anything. I will let you know what it is when I am more au fait with boxercise.

Oh and before I forget, this restaurant we went to is famous for its hamburger that is the size of a fist, I forget the Japanese but the direct translation is literally "fist burger" (A joke here would be both too easy and vulgar). I have had it and it is pretty good.

Excuse me, sir, my fist burger has no fingers????

So, that is just another reason to visit Shizuoka prefecture. While sitting, eating and chatting we also noticed a strange picture in the restaurant, I won't discuss it, but just have a look and be as creeped out as we were that this was hanging in a family restaurant. Unrelated, but why are they white? All of the pictures consisted of solely white people, the chain started in Japan! 

erm......

Day 12: Motivational Posters....

Gotta love my day of "rest", I got to lie in an extra 45 minutes! That genuinely kept me happy for the majority of the day. Following a pretty standard work day I headed to the gym where I decided to try a new type of lift called the press. The press is where you stand upright and just lift a barbell from your chest up to locked out arm length (I know, riveting!). I would have taken photos but then I would need an arm free and that would be dangerous!

Anyway, seeing as I will talk about going to the gym every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I thought I would show it to you.

I would quite like to be here for an earthquake, just to see all those balls fall

I am pretty lucky, I have all of this, for free and, until recently, totally to myself. For obvious reasons I haven't taken any pics of the room when loads of students are busy "Pumping iron" and "bulking up" (By this I mean mostly chatting, and throwing the gym balls at each other). However, there is a good atmosphere when the student are in the room, they are all working together and shouting FIGHTO Meaning "fight" but it has come to mean "you can do it" or "do your best"(It takes a bit of getting used to).

But I know what you are thinking, you are thinking "This gym is nice but where are all the motivational posters?" Well they are all around the room on the walls, all the Japanese is motivating and those with a keep eye can see the classic "No pain, no gain", but these are all clichés, you want something inspiring. How's this?

I don't know if this is intentionally hilarious or not

Yeah, BOOM, motivation! But wait, you are thinking to yourself "This is good motivation, but I think I need something less ex bodybuilder/governor, and a bit more classical". Well, my training room teacher has that covered too:

This needs no caption (I still put one though)

I'm just gunna leave that with you........

After the gym, I rushed home, reheated Mondays dinner (Tomato, onion, carrot and leek fried with pork and on top of white rice) and forgot to take a pic. Then I immediately went off to karate. I still feel awkward with the kids, they just go to town on me during sparing but I'm literally twice their hight (The adults have to crouch down low to let them practice the high, head kicks) but the sparring with the adults is fun. They are all much more experienced than I (This was my 5th week, oh yeah! gunna be black belt in no time, well 3-5 years), however, it is still very fun to be able to be more aggressive. 

Following karate I had to have my daily 5k, but because it is Wednesday I walked it. This whole situation is vicious, when I run all I want to do is stop and walk, but when I walk, it takes so long to get anywhere so all I want to do is run! Bloody silly if you ask me. Anyway, walk done, I now must get to sleep so I can wake up and run (While just wanting to walk) early. 

Day 11: Back to daily

My day started fairly ok, got up, got out for my run, realised it was bloody windy and hated the whole run while the wind was in my face (Ok I hated the whole run, but I particularly hated the bit with the wind in my face) and had a fairly mediocre run. 5 mins 45 secs/km.

Then my usual day of teaching and back home for a quick nap before I headed out for sushi.

Once you come often enough you start judging how they put the fish on the rice

Gotta love sushi, especially when it is as cheap as it is at conveyer belt sushi. Also, look at that, top right picture, that's scallops. Yup ¥94/$1/64p for 2 scallops, I have paid 10 times that for dishes of maybe 3 or 4 scallops before. It hurts to think about. 

Yep, you can order a slice of pineapple for pudding

This was also staring me in the face, I have been fine with the whole no chocolate, no sweets and no puddings thing but when you spend your whole meal looking at the menu of what deliciousness you could be eating it is a different story. But, I resisted, it wasn't easy, as not only do they show you the menu but the desserts go round on the conveyer belt too. 

Following my sushi I had my evening class, which was a riveting lesson on auto-antonyms, words that are their own antonym. The worse example of this is "literally" which is literally one of the most difficult words to explain the usage of.

My ramen friend from before invited me to go to the onsen (Hot spring) with him again and this is what I did. After 10 days of running most days, working out at the gym, karate and climbing mountains my body really appreciated it. I now feel very relaxed and content. 

I had also been advised to try this no calorie, alcohol free beer by my evening class students (They are adults), so I thought why not.

Even if you don't read Japanese everyone knows what "kcal means" eh?

I will tell you why not, because it doesn't taste like beer, and it's not very good! I gave it a try, thought it might help me relax even more but it barely even tasted like beer. So I think I will be happy to keep this month free from alcohol substitutes too, shouldn't be too hard if they all taste like this.

Oh and if you were wondering, you still have to be over 20 (The legal age to drink in Japan) to buy this less than tasty water substitute. 

Day 7, 8, 9, 10: Yeah, it has been a while eh?

I know it will come as a shocker to many of you but it turns out that I suck at posting blog posts at the weekend. I would like to pretend there is a good reason, maybe I broke my laptop, lost the keys to my house or even died. But no, none of those are true. All that happened is that every night I was really tired and decided to just rest my head before I began writing. Needless to say, this didn't work out.

So lets have a quick run down of how it is all going rather than me update every day one at a time.

Friday:

Had the best run up so far, 5 min 26 secs per km. I then had a full day of work and following school I headed to the school gym where there was a gym full of one of the sports clubs, I'm gunna say the track and field club (I have absolutely no idea which club they were but it's better to pretend I know). I used to find it intimidating having students watching me work out but now since I have become established and have done a fair bit of working out I now find that having a busy gym makes me feel more pumped. (Yes, I just said pumped, I am aware of what a tool it makes me sound. Sorry)

After the gym I had to get ready for the thanksgiving party that was happening on Saturday. And this is the reason I got so exhausted and didn't blog:

What a sexy bird! (Bird is sometimes used British slang for woman. Get it? Get it?)

I prepared the turkey, I didn't just spend hours staring at it cause it looked so good (Honest).

Saturday:

Woke up at 8:30 to get the turkey going and then I just sorta rested putting off my necessary run until the final 40 mins of the turkey. It was around midday and it was warm(ish), the sun was shining and I managed to run my best 5k since I started this thing. 5 mins 20 secs! (Thats my average pace, not how fast I did the 5k in).

When I got home this was what was waiting for me:

Carnage: before and after

The thing on the left was waiting for me, the pile of delicious meat was what happened when I removed all of the bones. Mmmmm boneless meat! Off to the party! This was the thanksgiving feast for the 30 partygoers:

It was in Japan so of course there are rice balls in there

Everyone ate far too much, which I am told is totally in the thanksgiving spirit. So, YAY we did thanksgiving properly. And I didn't blog because I was in a food coma!

Sunday:

Check this out, my city, years ago, planted trees in the shape of the Kanji for tea 茶(cha) on Mt Awagatake near my house.This is because Shizuoka, my prefecture, produces massive amounts of green tea and my city is famous for it.

cha cha cha!

And I, with a couple of my friends, climbed that mountain. It is actually only 50 metres shorter than Ben Nevis (The tallest mountain in the UK). As my running friend told me to take 1-2 days off of running, I thought I would take this 5km hike up a mountain as my day off from running and have it be my rest day's walk.

Oh and if you climb it 30 times you get to have your name put up on the wall in the restaurant at the top of the mountain. One person has climbed the mountain over 1,700 times! He is in his 70's. Never say you are too old for anything, the Japanese will just laugh in your face!

One day I was talking to a teacher about climbing it and she said "Is that a hill or a mountain?" Thats right, the tallest mountain in the UK is nothing to the Japanese who's tallest mountain is nearly 3 times its height.

Just like CSI: "Zoom, enhance, zoom, enhance" "My god I can see the killers reflection in the snow" "How chilling"

Speaking of which, you could see mount fuji from the top Mt Awagatake, and check out this that was also at the top of the mountain. I will leave it to your imaginations

Today:

Not much to report today, I woke up, didn't wanna get out of bed so by the time I got running I was late and so much so that I rushed getting ready and forgot my Jacket, my protein shake and my bananas (I know, not the bananas!). After school I hit the gym again and was pumped (Sorry) to have a busy gym again, I upped some of the weights and got very frustrated with all the teenagers getting in my way and using the equipment that I want to use. Pretty standard gym stuff. And here I am now, looking forward to tomorrow because on Tuesdays when my run finishes I have no more working out to do all day, I'm free, FREE!