(no subject)
Accomplishment of the day: I went RUNNING.
I don't know if anybody reading this will recognize that as an accomplishment. . . maybe, at this point, it's not really, anymore. But I've come to realize, in various ways, that there's some legitimacy to the stuff the shrinks are all on about when they say that your childhood affects your adult life. It's not that I haven't been fit (heh, I'm thinking back to Warwick when I was working out an hour and a half a day, five days a week) but RUNNING is a big deal, because over half my life has psssed since I could run a mile without having to pause for several walk breaks and still feeling like I was going to fall down dead at the end. Even when I was healthy, I just couldn't pace myself properly for running distance. But, I don't know, somehow tonight I just got in the zone or something and ran about a mile (I think). When I stopped it wasn't even because I was about to fall over, it was because it was late and I knew I wanted to walk back because I can gauge distance better while walking than running.
So far, my joints aren't protesting too much (which kind of makes sense -- I have to wonder whether running with good shoes is any worse for my ankles than walking ten miles in birkenstocks, which I do at least one day every weekend. . .) I guess I'll see how I am tomorrow, and if I can still walk comfortably, then maybe I'll try it again. This is a good season for it because I couldn't run every day even if I wanted to, because of the rainy season (the trail by the river where I like to walk/run has long dirt segments, so running there in the rain isn't such a hot idea).
The reason I've become a bit concerned about aerobic fitness is that I'm going to climb Mt Fuji in 3 weeks. I'm not concerned about my ability to get to the top (kids and old people do it), I'm just a bit worried about my ability to get to the top without losing my mind to altitude sickness. Oxygen will definitely be purchased beforehand, as a precaution. I"m not actually being paranoid -- people DO get altitude sickness climbing Fuji, and while my blood iron is in normal range, I'm sure it's still lower than most people, which definitely wouldn't help my odds. Worrying about this 3 weeks before I tackle the climb is a bad case of Too Little Too Late, but I figure that I'm, you know, psyching myself up or something.
Today was a decent day. I woke up completely on the wrong side of the bed, and kept to myself for the first few hours of work because I didn't trust myself not to snap at people for stupid things. But I took a good walk at lunch, which helped to level things a bit, and then taught this HYSTERICAL class. The students were these two guys, 18 and 23 years old, one of whom was taking his first class at the school, and they just hit it off. Actually, if I didn't know better (and really, I don't know better) I'd guess they were flirting. So that piicked me up a bit for the rest of the day, and then after school I went and got ramen for dinner with two students, Yuko and Reiko. Yuko and I have really become friends over the past couple of weeks; we've hung out several times outside of class. I think this was my first time to hang out with Reiko, but she's been a favourite student of mine for awhile, too. So, yeah, that was fun. Actually, that reminds me: I wonder if this is a Japanese phenomenon, or if it exists elsewhere. . . does anyone know anything about honey toast?
I don't mean just toast with honey. I mean, this massive dessert thing. The base is a huuuuuuge chunk of white bread -- had to be over half a loaf. It's cut from the top down into nine sections, like a tic-tac-toe board, and the whole thing is toasted a bit and coated with honey and/or maple syrup, and then topped with ice cream and more sauce and whatever else it comes with. The resulting dessert is seriously the size of my HEAD. I'd been wanting to try it for ages, mostly because at that point I'd seen nothing but pictures and honestly didn't understand at all what these things WERE. So I went, about ten days ago, with Yuko and another student, Tomoko (yes, it's true -- it takes about a week before all foreign teachers in Japan learn that the best way to handle forgetting a female student's name is simply to go "mumblemumblemumble-KO", because probably at least half of women's names out here end that way). We ordered two honey toasts between three of us, and ate them on an empty stomach, and still couldnt' finish either one. Those things are DAMN GOOD. Seriously. Incredibly sweet and heavy, but delicious. But somehow, the design of them doesn't strike me as particularly Japanese. Does anyone know of a simlar dessert from some other country?
Oh, and a final note: I am. . . wary. . . to report that I've started reading a Harry Potter book. I got about 75 pages into "The Kite Runner" when I just decided to set it aside for awhile, because it's a devastating novel, and I've just read too many of those lately so I need a break. And, in some fit of. . . something, I decided to read "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" in the interest of finally reading a Harry Potter novel before seeing its movie (I haven't read the first three books, but I've seen the films). And -- I'm enjoying it. I'm not enjoying it to the point of blasting through the whole 700+ pages in a day, but it's a really fun, easy, non-threatening read. So I'll finish this and then resume "The Kite Runner" afterwards, with a stronger proverbial stomach.
This was a long, boring entry, dragged on by the fact that I felt like writing, and, eh, I suppose some of these things will be things I'll want to remember at some point. I have less than three months left in Tokyo. That's wild.
like the breeze, cool your skin, fill your hair, even when I'm not there
Damn, this song is good.