Another Ride around Town

Today, I thought I would try to get to the Tamagawa River (I think). All of my rides have been through the city, and you can't get a good, continuous stretch doing that. It's about 6 miles from where we live, so there are plenty of opportunities to get lost. One good thing is that the river curves around a focal point around where we live, so coming back should be easy. For, what seems like, the first time, I arrived to my destination without a problem.

The river was huge and full of activity. There are continuous baseball fields along the river with organized leagues playing on them. I took a picture of one of the only soccer fields I saw.

I got there pretty late in the day, so things had died down a bit. I'm sure it's packed earlier in the day. I had been hoping to find some bikers to tag along with to push myself a bit for my ride. I found a couple and ended up having an awesome workout. In total, I rode for about 3 1/2 hours. I need to get an odometer so I can keep track of my mileage.

Last Wednesday, I went to Heather's running club to run with her. They were doing a timed 5k for their workout, which they do at the end of every month. She ended up not showing up, so I ran a timed 5k for the first time, by myself. It definitely was a little different than I expected. We ran it on a track, so you had to keep track of what lap you were on. That simple fact eluded me until around lap 3, but by then I already didn't know how many I had done.

The track was packed, but I forgot to take a picture. It was in an area called Shibuya, which is a huge shopping area. I also forgot to take a picture of that. The reason for bringing this up was to introduce that I tried to go there again to get those pictures. This is a picture of the main square in Shibuya:

As you can see, it's well lit up and filled with thousands of people. The huge shopping areas aren't extremely localized, either. They sprawl many blocks in all directions with similar intensity. About 5 blocks from this is where the track is. On the way to the track, I ran into a huge Indian festival. I wish I had some cash on me because the food looked delicious. This is a picture of a concert they had going on at the festival:

The track is very close to where the festival was, but it was closed, unfortunately. I'll have to include that picture later. What I did see, however, was an improptu techno...gathering? It was right next to the track and had about 100 people.

That's about it. I'm exhausted from the ride, so keep that in mind when reading. I also didn't stop long to make sure the pictures came out well. My legs hurt very badly every time I stopped. Now I will hopefully pass out, quickly.

Autumn Equinox Day

I think they purposefully sprinkle some holidays all around the year in Japan. Autumn Equinox Day is a national holiday. It's already Heather's second work holiday, and we've only been here for 2 weeks. They have about 25 holidays, so this trend should continue.

On this momentous holiday, I decided to go for another bike ride around the city. Since so many people were out, I thought I might get lucky and tag along with some other bikers to discover some good routes. I "planned" out a route to a river that I've read people like to ride along. As usual, I made a wrong turn. I thought I would get lost, but ended up almost back at home. I've made that my standard procedure by now. I glance at a map, try to end up somewhere, then figure out what actually happened when I get home. I'm still not sure I'll end up there next time, but I'm sure I'll get closer, and maybe farther as well. Seeing how I could pretty much make a U-turn without knowing it, I could easily get really lost. At least I know I can't end up in China.



This is where I ended up when I realized I made a wrong turn. This is the park right next to where we live. I'll put more pictures of it up later. It's a pretty great place to live next to in such a big city. Heather runs around it for her workouts almost daily. The grass is so nice, I thought people weren't allowed on it. It's really a beautiful park.



I haven't shown pictures of the big, crowded side of Tokyo, yet. This is one of the major shopping areas near us. There are several areas like this within a few miles of us. They block off the streets on weekends and holidays so people can shop comfortably. It must be necessary; there's no way this many people can't fit on the sidewalk.

This is the most enourmous footbridge I've ever seen. It's also the most enormous ferris wheel I've ever seen. This area was kind of like a ghost town. There was overgrown grass, rust, and huge accomodations with no people. I shouldn't say NO people; not far away was also one of the biggest lines I've seen, and I've been to Disneyland. It looked like it was for a junkyard, though.

At the end of the bridge, I found this. At first I thought it was a high school or something, but quickly realized it was something else. I don't know if it was anime convention or what. All of these people were dressed up like anime characters and were being professionally, or at least skillfully, photographed. I would have taken a closer picture so you could see more acurately what was going on, but I would have felt too weird. It felt weird being there at all.

Unfortunately, it's no longer Autum Equinox Day, so it's back to the real world.

I Can't Figure Out How to Use My Apartment

From the first moment is was very obvious that the Japanese are much more inclined to integrate technology with their daily lives and most simple tasks. Here are a few samples of gadgets we found upon arrival to our apartment:

This is the control for the water heater. You turn it on when you want to use warm water and turn it off when you're done. It takes very little time for the water to warm up. It took longer for the shower to get warm in our apartment in Boston or my apartment in Santa Monica than it does here. I think this is a great idea for saving energy.

As with the water heater control, many of the interfaces are less intuitive and simple than interfaces in the US. The gray buttons say "maruku" and "atsuku", which basically mean hot and cold. I'm surprised that it doesn't just have up and down arrows.

This is probably the most used control in the house. It's the toilet control. I would not have imagined that using a toilet would be so complex. Luckily, I knew the kanji on the top before I got here; "big" and "small". The rest is pretty easy to figure out. It's nice to be in a country where bidets are commonly used. I just never expected them to be electronically controlled.

This is one of the controls I have yet to figure out. I don't even really know exactly what it does. The buttons on the right are light switches, and I can clearly see some timer buttons and indicators, but I don't know what they time. Maybe one day I'll be bored enough to try this guy out. It's outside of the shower room, so I hope it has some special surprised in store.

This is apparently our washer and dryer. I have not attempted to use this one out either. I'm still recovering from learning to use the rice cooker, so I'll have to leave this one to another day. Heather had someone at work explain to her how to use it, so at least one of us knows. Supposedly, it weighs your clothes and tells you how much detergent you need. I hope it also has a smell-o-meter, otherwise, I'm going to have to do some calculations of my own; mostly multiplication.

TV has Turned on Me

I briefly watched TV when I first got here. It's just programmed into my brain. The first thing I did in the apartment was see what was on TV. It didn't look good, so I turned it off and pretty much haven't watched it. It seems to be a combination of the Home Shopping Network, Food, and paid programming. Pretty much the 1am with no cable nightmare in the US.

I told my mom that I needed more practice with my Japanese and she suggested I watch more TV. I decided to give it more of a shot. It's a good way to practice if I can't get out of the house. I had thought that maybe in a pinch this TV could provide some entertainment. I quickly realized how wrong I was. When I turned on the TV I was greeted with a combination 18.02 / 8.02 lecture.

How could you TV? I didn't go to the lectures at school. What makes you think I want this in my home? The TV either actually tried to make it up or simply mocked me with a drama / action / comedy / ....? about bicycle parking lot attendants.

We were clearly not on the same side anymore. I thought I'd check one more channel just to make sure. The TV decided to kick me while I was down. "Umm, yeah, a typhoon is coming."

Sweet. I hate you, TV.

I do have to say though, we could replace a lot of our crap programming in the US with some of the stuff I've seen here. They teach you how to do everything during the day on TV. No wonder everyone thinks Japanese people are so smart. TV's make them more knowledgeable, not dumber and less funny. But still, bicycle parking lot attendants, wtf?!

Heather Puts on Her Game Face

Heather has been turning up the heat on her running these days. She is preparing for the Tokyo Marathon in March of next year. Keep your fingers crossed because she doesn't actually find out if she gets in until November. March isn't all that far away, so she's getting serious about her training. To combat the effects of this new training regimen, Heather thought she might try out the infamous ice bath. The results were great, although not what she was expected. It resulted in a hilarous photo.

As you can see there is an ice cube tray in the tub. She got the ice bath down to a frigid 65 degrees with a couple bags of ice and our ice cube trays from the freezer. Temperatures that low are rarely even reached on the coldest summer days in Santa Monica. It's like Lance Armstrong says, "Pain is only temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.”

Around Town

We heard about a track not too far away that you can go run on in the city. We went to it one morning, but it ended up being closed. The area had several sports facilities that were very nice, but they all seemed a bit old. We found out later that it was the site of the 1964 Olympic Games. Detroit was the runner up. I guess 1964 was a LONG time ago. Don't worry Detroit, nobody's perfect. Below is a little "village" I saw next to the track.

It's nice to know that if things get a little too expensive in Tokyo, we always have a backup. I don't know though, there didn't seem to be much room. I'm guessing the waiting list is pretty long. As you can see, some of those tents are pretty big. I'm sure some of them have close to or more than the square footage of our apartment.

The next search was for a bike helmet. I looked online for a bike store and found a place called Map Sports. I tried to memorize the map, but was prepared to get lost, which I did. I rode all around for a couple hours. I ran into a tiny outdoor bike shop/stand, but they had no helmets. Not everything in Tokyo is big and grand, as you can see in the picture to the right at the top. However, as you can see in the picture below it, there is no place an American franchise can't work it's way into. The picture below the ampm is a traditional looking building I found right there as well. All three pictures were taken within 50 feet of each other.

Tokyo has little treats like this scattered about. My view is probably skewed by the fact that we live next to the biggest parks in the city. I have yet to travel more than 5-10 miles from our apartment, which I did on my search for this bike store.

I ended up going home and looking at the map again, now that I knew the area better. I found it immediately the second time. Unfortunately, I didn't find any helmets under $80 or $100 or something. This was beginning to be a real pain.

As in this case of Map Sports, many places will be generically labeled with the word "sports", but they rarely contain sporting goods from more than one sport. Some may not actually even be sporting goods stores. I assumed the store called Sports Land would be a good place to shop, but it turned out to be an arcade. Another little piece of info, golf seems to be the most popular sport, although, I have no idea where everyone plays. I'll have to find a course one of these days.

To conclude this rambling story, I ended up asking some guy on a bike the next time I went looking for a bike store. It was only 6 blocks away with no turns, but he went with me. People are very nice and go out of their way to help you. The store he showed me was great, and had a cheap helment.

We Made It

We arrived at our apartment in Tokyo last Tuesday. I had already seen pictures of the apartment, so I wasn't that shocked, but it is small. It's starting to feel more spacious, but I think part of that feeling is due to the fact that everything is scaled down. So it looks big as I sit here typing, but when I get up and walk around everything shrinks. I think Heather feels more at home. This picture of Heather in front of our front door should give you an idea of proportion. In case you haven't seen her in person, she is about 5'5". She is not a giant, I promise.

Here are some more pictures of the apartment:

Our first morning here we went to the grocery store together. It was a bit of an adventure. We were probably there for an hour trying to figure out what was what. As you can imagine, fresh fish isn't that hard to come by. Here is a little glimpse of what you might find.

We go to a grocery store that is not just for individuals, but also for restaurants, so I don't know if everything there is standard. At this grocery store you are supposed to bag your own groceries. This is Heather doing that very thing:

Now that food and shelter are taken care of, the rest is cake.

And We're Off

I am now married, possibly for a long time, and planning to live in Tokyo for about 1 year. A friend (left) recently traveled abroad for a few months and started a blog to keep in touch with everyone during that time. She suggested I do the same. Right before leaving for Tokyo, I reunited with one of my best friends from college whom I hadn't talked to in about 4 years. You can see his stunning portrait to the right, partially covered by yet another person I have failed to see since college. My gross incompetence with keeping in touch can no longer be ignored. Therefore, I will create this blog, and possibly post to it every so often, with photos. My lazy, half-assed pseudo-solutions (e.g., 2.007) will have to be addressed at a later date. I can only do so much at once.


What, married? I was ranked close to last in my pledge class at LCA to get married. I can't say for sure what would have happened if I hadn't reconnected with Heather, but I think that ranking had some truth to it. But I did reconnect with Heather. Below is one-third of our wedding album (Betsy Phipps cameo). Seeing this picture, I think those who know me will not need much more explanation as to the strength of our compatibility.

This picture really does say 1000 words. In case those words aren't coming through clearly, we got married in Heather's apartment, worked out immediately afterwards, and then went to a nice dinner at Salts in Cambridge. I highly recommend it. Anyway, it was the perfect wedding day.

Our plan to get married was made in conjunction with our plan to move to Tokyo. Heather's company, Basis Technology, has an office there, so it was the perfect opportunity to experience a dramatically different culture and learn a new language, two of Heather's favorite things. It's unfair that we're moving to a place where she fits in, but not me. We'll have to move somewhere else after Tokyo that suits my bathing and eating habits, like possibly a zoo.