fuji-san: it's been a hard day's night

We couldn't live for a whole year in Japan and not climb Mt.  Fuji, right?

So we did.

And it was spectacular. 

Let me start from the beginning.

We had always intended on climbing Fuji-san, but couldn't really make any plans to do so until the official season opened in July and Jeff's paper was done and delivered.  Jeff delivered his paper Friday, July 2, and we immediately started scouting the weather report.  Originally, we planned to head for the mountain on Tuesday, but when the forecast started projecting hard rain, we pushed it up a day to Monday, set to be a clear night.

Yes, night.  As the view from the mountain tends to be clearest in the early morning, and watching the sunrise from the top is an experience not to be missed, we decided to follow the Japanese tradition of timing our climb to arrive at the summit just before sunrise. 

So we hopped in our rented Mazda Demio (known as the Mazda2 in America, and absolutely the smallest car we've driven) in Tokyo, and drove the three or so hours to the base of the mountain.  We loaded up on a bento dinner and started the ascent up the seasonal road to the trail head. 

Now, has anyone ever driven up the Whiteface Mountain road?  Steep, right?  Have you tried it in a Demio?  There were several moments when we really were not sure our poor little rental car was going to make it.  That little guy would not survive Upstate New York.  Or any area where one might encounter hills. 

We hung out in the car conserving our energy until 10 p.m. when we laced up our old running shoes (we're working with what we've got here, folks!) hoisted our loaded packs on our backs, and started up the mountain.  After taking a few "we're climbing Mt. Fuji!" photos, of course.

That's me behind the headlamp!  My legs (in black underarmor leggings) seem to have disappeared!

Jeff appears to be showing us how wide his steps are going to be going up the mountain.

We started our ascent from the so-called fifth station of the Subashiri Trail, originating at just below 2000 meters.  It should be noted that almost everyone starts from the fifth station of one of the several paths to the top, so really, they all should be called the first stations, not the fifth stations, but that is for another time. 

The books, blogs, and tourist information all told us it would take six or six and a half hours for the ascent, so we gave ourselves plenty of time to make it to the top by about 4:30.  Jeff was concerned about the altitude sickness that we'd read some people get from climbing too quickly, and we are never ones to miss our snacks, so we planned to stop at the stations along the way to acclimate and have a bite to eat. 

Here I am the the torii marking the sixth station - the first one we came to.  I look quite pleased with myself, don't I?

That's because we were still feeling warm and well rested and mistakenly thought getting to the sixth station meant we were somehow closer to our goal.  We had a lot to learn.

There was a nice young man on his way home to San Diego from Korea with a day and a half layover in Tokyo who we met on the trail.  I know, it's ridiculous, but let's move on.  The important part of telling you about him was because he took our picture.  It's all about us, remember. 

We walked with him for a while, chatted about how crazy he was, and stopped again for some much needed peanut butter nourishment. As we were moving upward, it was getting noticeably colder, so it was time to add some layers.  I would regret this choice about two minutes after we started moving again, due to the quick pace we were keeping (remember Jeff's aforementioned huge steps?).

I think our fast feet were a little too much for our new friend, as he politely declined to join us after the second stop.  We really didn't feel like we were moving all that quickly, though!

After the seventh station, we could feel the air getting thinner and much colder, which slowed us down a bit.  We were also getting a little tired, which makes perfect sense since it was about 1 am and we'd been walking for three hours already.  Oh, and there was this too:

See that stuff I'm walking on?  Looks like dirt, right?  Don't let that fool you!  It is actually something much closer to sand, and gave us quite the workout up the mountain!  And it may be difficult to tell, but to my right in the picture, just off the path, is snow!  Hard to believe we left sweltering Tokyo just a few hours before.

And here is my husband.  This picture doesn't illustrate anything important about the climb, and in fact, I don't even remember taking it.  But it is silly, and that's Jeff.  He was wearing a towel wrapped around his head.  This might seem totally weird in America, but in Japan, every other laborer and ramen shop dude has a towel wrapped on his head, so Jeff fit right in.  Except for the red beard of course.

Ok, just one more for good measure.  And cause he's cute.  Those lights up there were more people climbing.  Except for our crazy friend from San Diego, we only saw two other people before arriving at the big eighth station (where two trails converge, and people can sleep over on the mountain).  We were sure happy we chose one of the less popular routes when we saw the lines of people snaking up the mountain.  A quick stop at the less than comfortable "pay" toilet (there was a box where one was expected to place a ¥100 coin, about a dollar, for use of the facilities, though I doubt everyone - and by everyone I mean American tourists - is as honest as me) and we headed out to beat the crowd to the top. 

Jeff tried to get a good picture of the line of headlamps and brightly colored NorthFace/Patagonia/MontBell/Columnia-clad climbers, but this was the best we could do:

Each light is one person's headlamp as seen by us looking down the mountain.  I think it does give a sense of just how many people were charging up the mountain behind us.  No, charging is not the word for it.  How does one describe something that moves slowly?  Crawling, maybe, is a better word.  We left the station at the same time as this group.  In fact several members of this pack were in front of us and we passed them without any effort whatsoever.  I know not everyone is in a good shape as us Jeff, and you're supposed to climb slowly in order to avoid altitude sickness, but it was taking more effort to walk with these people than to just pass them!

Of course, Jeff couldn't just pass them and then ease back into the leisurely pace we had been enjoying before, he wanted to put some good distance in between us and the pack.  Hence, our picture of the pack from 200 meters away.  He insisted we get to the top and find a good spot to watch the sunrise.  Which turned out to be a very good decision.

Mind you, our hike was projected to take six and a half hours (six hours and twenty-five minutes, I believe, if we are to be precise) and at this point we'd only been walking for under four and a half hours.  We were on pace to make it to the top in less time than it takes to roast a turkey.

We made it to the top well before the large crowds, though there were already a dozen or so people up there, huddling wherever they could find some relief from the wind which was oppressive.  I am not a small person, and for a minute there, I was concerned I was going to be blown off the side of a rock wall.

At this point, we were getting colder and decided it was about time to get really bundled up.  We layered jeans over our running tights, added several layers of shirts and sweatshirts (actually, Jeff took off the two dry-fit running shirts he had been wearing and put on two new ones since he'd gotten sweaty climbing the mountain - at one point he was standing shirtless on the top of the mountain in sub-zero temperatures with the wind gusting around him), and snuggled together in a small corner huddled underneath our lifesaving ¥100 tarp.

We had come fully prepared with several warm and wind-breaking layers, but not having winter jackets and insulating pants, there was little we could do to actually get warm.  So we shivered together, using a free hand warmer Jeff got as swag from the marathon and a heated therapeutic back wrap meant for our long flight to try and warm ourselves (I was so cold I didn't think the back warmer was even working until we started our descent and I started warming up!).

We had arrived at the summit just before 3 a.m., less than 5 hours after we started our climb, so we snuggled under our tarp for quite some time as others filled in around us.  We had been fortunate to find a great place to wait out the sun.  Jeff had developed quite a headache and was feeling nauseous and generally crappy which he attributed to to altitude sickness, but I was feeling no nausea or headache which he attributed to my being able to endure other vomit-inducing activities like roller coasters and bungee jumping.  I was only feeling the cold - or not feeling as the situation progressed and my feet and hands started to numb.

But then about 4:15...

 And 4:30...

At this point it was getting lighter and it seemed at least to be getting a bit warmer (seemed being the operative word) so we decided to venture from the windbreak and explore the top of the mountain a bit.  It was quite windy still, and the fog from around the mountain and in the crater was bringing the sun in and out of sight every minute or so, but we still managed to snag some good views.  Here is the sunrise through the torri on the top of the mountain.   I think those are coins stuck in the wood, but I am not sure why.  Jeff?

I am also not sure why there is a hook hanging down from the top.

With the fog blowing from the volcano crater and over our heads, the sunrise was constantly becoming obscured, only to be unveiled a moment later when the fog would get pushed to the side. This video, taken with our Flip (thanks Michael!) shows the nature of our experience of the fleeting sunrise at Fuji.



Here are some pretty typical Japanese climbers:  Twenty-something, fancy (warm) hiking attire (though less colorful than most), nice hiking packs, telescoping hiking poles, taking pictures with cell phone camera.

There were in fact many, many very nice cameras, tripods, and lenses on the top of the mountain - much nicer than the one I was holding (the Japanese take their photography seriously - it is no accident that Canon, Olympus, Nikon, Pentax, and Sony are all Japanese companies).  There were also many, many people using their cell phones (rather than a point-and-shoot) to take pictures of the sunrise.  This was less crazy than the two American men we saw in shorts, so I can't be too hard on them.

This next picture illustrates several important things:

First, the fog.  This was a moment when it was fairly light.  The way the winds were up there, one moment it would be almost perfectly clear, another visibility would be about 30 feet.

Second, the colorful outfits of the climbers.  There are more North Face colors and patterns sold in Japan that America has ever dreamed of.  I guess it would be an advantage in a search-and-rescue operation, though?

Third, and most treacherous, the terrain.  There's some snow to the left, and you can see the rocks and sand vary in color between a deep red and black.  Also, the rocks are very light.  Instead of a deep clanking noise that rocks in the Adirondacks might make when kicked around, these rocks make a light clinking noise.


We walked for about an hour down to the eighth station (where many people turned off to the more popular trail, and we took the road less traveled) just like this.  waiting for the person in front of you to move so that you could.  In fact in some places it was even more crowded than this.  And there were at times people who had missed the sunrise still on their way up, making things more difficult. 

Here's another picture to get a sense of what kind of crowds we're talking about.  And this is before the peak season.


And here's Melissa looking like a turtle.





 Once we had passed the eighth station going down (the place where the paths diverge, and where most hikers would be heading to a different base station), we were free wheelin', with only a handful of other hikers to contend with rather than hundreds. From this point on, the descent took a separate but mostly parallel path from the ascent. The part of the trail is called Suna-bashiri, literally sand-run, and with each step, your foot slides and depresses several inches to make for a soft landing. Here is Jeff testing out the terrain.



The path is actually used by large tractors to haul provisions to the lodges scattered on the mountain, which allows their owners to jack up the rates of the meals exponentially with the elevation. Cup noodles, for example, fetched the equivalent of about $7. Being clever and un-dupe-able, we brought enough snacks to last the entire trip. Here we are again, punishing our legs on the sandy descent.



Still in good spirits there, but that would soon fade as the terrain continued on like that for nearly the entire way down. Despite the "soft landing" of the sandy trail, it forces your legs to overcompensate in an effort to stabilize your body, meaning that it takes quite a toll. On top of this, our low-top sneakers, not known for being sand-repellent, needed to be removed every ten minutes or so in order to dump out the part of the trail that was obviously trying to escape from the mountain with us.

We did take a fair share of breaks, careful not to repeat the altitude sickness of the ascent by going down too quickly. Also, we would have been remiss to make the entire descent without a celebration of a beloved pub in Penn Yan, New York with the vista, which only seemed to get better with time.

Nearing the end, we both had that feeling of hitting the wall. The last mile or so, though perhaps the most moderate part of the trail, seemed to take an eternity to finish, and we hoped to see the parking lot as we turned each bend.

We pulled in to the trail head just after 8 am, exactly ten hours after embarking, and with zero sleep. A woman greeted us with a salt-loaded tea to replenish what we had sweated out. Although it was welcome, they were clearly trying to lure us into the souvenir shop, which obviously worked, because we left with a few postcards. 

Back to the parking lot, we managed to squeak out a smile using the hill we had just conquered as a backdrop.

We hopped in the car, headed to Hakone with hopes that we'd hit an onsen for a long soak. We had also planned to capture an image of Fuji from a distance, but the overcast sky turned the mountain into a foggy gaze. Before we could even find an onsen, fatigue took over, and we decided it would be best to head home, which we did. We returned the car by one, took quick showers, grabbed lunch at our favorite daytime eatery, New Koenji India, and slept hard from 3pm until 8pm, then midnight until 10am the next day. That's about what you can expect when you forgo sleep to climb a nation's highest peak.

I think we're still recovering, and even writing this post was a challenge with so much to cover - it took both Jeff and Melissa to complete (Melissa wrote most of the beginning, Jeff most of the end).

Now, for one last adventure out of Tokyo, leaving bright and early tomorrow morning.

Mata ne,
Melissa (and Jeff!)

Special thanks go out to our parents for making this trip possible!!

kodachrome

Excuse me, dear readers.  I have nothing new for you today.

You see, I've been spending lots of time on this here computer in the last few days; beating the heat and humidity indoors (with the air conditioning on full blast) and preparing to leave our honeymoon home.  We've accumulated quite a bit of stuff in this tiny little apartment over the last nine months, and now it is time to purge.  Everything must go.  And rather than kick it to the curb, we're hoping to sell it to another cute honeymooning couple looking for a variety of household items of superior design and quality who aren't interested in making a trip all the way out to IKEA.

I've made a website, posted pictures, and even met someone in Shinjuku (in front of the Gap, it's the BEST place to meet someone outside one of the busiest train stations in the world) to sell our coffee maker.  But fear not, we still have the espresso maker! We've got A LOT more to get rid of, though, so anyone in need of a printer, rice cooker, cheap shelving, or a lamp, come to Tokyo and you can have it cheap!

When I haven't been working on ridding our home of the comforts of modern living, I've spent quite a bit of time biking around our little town capturing images of the scenes and locations we want to remember when we head back to the States.  It will be hard to leave the place we've spent our first year of marriage, so we want to remember every street, store, and restaurant that have been such a big part of our daily lives.

And Tokyo is constantly changing - a building may be torn down with a new one put up in it's place in a month's time! - so it would be fun to see how different things may look when we come back to visit in a few years. 

I've also gotten to play with my new camera a bit, and take pictures of the blooming flowers that, amazingly, can be seen all over the city.  Individual people take the time to cultivate them in public spaces.  And no one cuts them down or destroys them!  Hard for an American to believe.

I think this is a gardenia.  Anyone want to back me up here?

I could smell this thing about 10 feet away if that's any help. 

And, I think this is a hydrangea.  They were formed into almost perfect balls.

And in order to illustrate just how humid it has been here in Tokyo, there are water droplets on the leaves of these plants and it didn't rain today!  Ok, I grant that these flowers may have been watered recently, but I'm telling you, you don't know humidity until you've endured an east Asian rainy season.


Jeff's been a busy bee too.  He's finishing up a paper he will deliver tomorrow (nothing like the last minute, huh?) and has been furiously typing away and monopolizing the small table space we have all week.  I am so excited to go and watch him speak!  Of course, I say that now....  Don't worry, I'll have some coffee first!  There will be yummy Indian food after though, did I mention that :) ?

So that's all I have to report, not so exciting I know.  But we have something BIG in the works for next week, so stay tuned!

Mata ne,
Melissa

night on the banks of the kamogawa

(Continued from yesterday's post)

You see, it was my birthday, so we had to get a little celebration in.

Now, we had already celebrated a few days early with a lovely dinner at another local favorite, Las Meninas (You may remember it from our six month lunaversary celebration). Here we are walking down our street to the restaurant.  Have I mentioned how much we LOVE being able to walk everywhere?






Those of you who know us well may not be surprised to learn we like to take pictures of meals and celebrations before we start eating them, as we tend to get excited about the food in front of us and can't think about much else.





But back to the banks of the Kamogawa.  When the celebration in question is all about me, well, who am I to decline?

Roz and Dick were still recovering from the long flight to Japan, so they called it a night, but Jeff and I headed down to the sakura lined banks of the Kamogawa river to sip a chu-hi. Can you see us there? 

 There were actually hundreds of other people enjoying the cool breeze that evening on the river bank, but my husband artfully cropped them out.

Since it was still early when we finished our chu-hi, we decided to grab one more drink at a cute bar with outdoor seating (this time on a canal leading to the Kamogawa).

 Cheers to ME!

Mata ne,
Melissa

hanami at The Philosopher's Path

Our first beautiful day in Kyoto was the perfect day to really play with my new camera.  Meet the Nikon D5000.  She and the Philosopher's Path are now well acquainted.



The Philosoher's Path is a 2 km walkway from Ginkakuji, the disappointing (non)Silver Temple, past several temples and heading downtown.  As I mentioned we were in Kyoto during sakura season, when the cherry trees lining the path were in full bloom.  It is a particularly popular path for hanami, flower viewing, but we started from the less popular end and had quite a pleasant stroll. 

My Thinking Man on the Philosopher's Path

Was it pretty?  Yes.

Do I feel smarter?  No.

Should you check it out?  Absolutely.

Mata ne,
Melissa

karyn and steve take on japan: part 1

So now that my parents, the famous Karyn and Steve, have been gone for a few days and Jeff and I (and our apartment) have recovered from hosting duties, I guess it's about time to recap the visit.

We got off to a great start their first night here with my mom unpacking a suitcase full of American goodies.

The first day was a bit chilly but we ventured out to Shinjuku gyoen (park) anyways since we heard it was a great place to view the sakura.  My dad brought his camera and snapped a few pictures while we were there, including this sneak attack on Jeff and me. 

My mom thought the location was perfect and wanted to get in on the action.  

I'm pretty sure she stole that move from me. 

My dad also got some nice pictures of the blooms (though I'm sure there is a comment coming my way about this not being color-corrected in photoshop yet).

 He also captured Jeff "holding" my bag. Typical.

After the park, we headed over to Harajuku, but the only picture worth sharing is this gem clearly directed to the tourists who make up the majority of people walking around Harajuku on any given day.  

Our best guess is "tout" should read "touch," but we can't be certain. 





The next morning we were up and at 'em bright and early (thanks in part to the fact that my parents were still on east coast time) and headed out to enjoy a beautiful spring day in Tokyo.   We took the train with the commuters (an experience in itself) to the Imperial Palace gardens to get a view of the sakura in bloom.

In the palace grounds there are ponds filled with very well-fed koi, which my mother found quite amusing.  She might have taken a picture of each and every one had we not intervened.










My mom found a small waterfall which she insisted on getting as close as possible to, traversing a rock path through a stream while we all held our breaths waiting for her to fall in.  Much to my father's relief, she made it so I joined her for a photo op. 

I will spare you the zillions of self-portraits Jeff took of us and subject you to just one (today).

That's all for now.  I do owe my readers (all two of them, Karyn and Steve) the rest of the update, so there will be more. Eventually.

Mata ne,
Melissa

embarking on the journey

Aaaannnnnd we're back.

We had quite the time exploring Kyoto and western Japan on our trip.  Our trip involved lots of travel guides and confusing train schedules (in Japanese no less) and included several long days of walking all over various cities and two overnight trains, so I think you can imagine we've needed some time to recover. 

Of course, as you'd expect from us, we were quite the explorers.  We did all kinds of fun stuff and scouted out some great places to take both sets of parents who will be gracing the island with their presence(es?) in the next two months.  There is no possible way that I could go over all the fun stuff in one post, or even two.  So instead, I'm just going to post the exciting things individually.

I like to call it building suspense, not laziness.  Ok?


I'll whet your appetites with a picture of Jeff right before we embarked on our first overnight train.  That's why he still looks happy.

More to come!

Mata ne,
Melissa

Jeff protested that there was a picture of him but no picture of me, so for my adoring fans husband....

busy bee

I have been a terrible blog poster lately.  I've been distracted.  But I have an excuse.  Several actually:

One of Jeff's good friends from Cornell who was just offered a tenure-track teaching position was in town so we got together with a few fellow Asian studies scholars for a night of celebration. 

Also, I've been reading the Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald.  If you've had the pleasure, then you understand they're hard to put down.

I've taught a few English lessons this week, too. 

I also ran 10 miles this morning.

Ok, so none of those really warrant my extended absence. 

BUT what does make it all ok is that we've also been furiously planning my parents once-in-a-lifetime Japan experience, as they've both told me this will be the only one.  That's a lot of pressure to put on a girl's shoulders.  Even if she is an overachieving first-born.

Right now, the big decisions we're making are Kyoto vs. Iwate and trains (shinkansen) vs. rental car.  Feel free to weigh in. 

There's my sweet husband staying up late and calculating every permutation of the train/rental car and Kyoto/Iwate/Hakone/Takayama debates.  What a great son-in-law!

Tomorrow night we're going out of town for a few days, so I can't promise my posts will be any more frequent.  I can promise that we'll have some interesting things to talk about when we return.

Mata ne,
Melissa

Guest post: The Marathon by Jeff

On February 28th, I ran in the Tokyo Marathon with 31,999 other participants. 

I was determined to come in under 3 hours and, if all the stars were aligned, meet the NYC marathon automatic qualifier time of 2:55.

To begin with, winter marathon training in Tokyo is much easier than in Ithaca/Syracuse. No icicles dripping off my nose and chin, no skating across ice patches, no getting blown into the large snow banks on some of the more pernicious high-elevation plains. The worst weather here involves rain and occasional snow, but it usually melts within half a day. (Actually, the worst weather I think I've experienced in Tokyo happened for the first 20 miles of the marathon).

However, I do desperately miss being able to hop out of my front door and be surrounded by the trees and nature that I get back home. Here, I navigate narrow city streets on my way to some parks and rivers, which are actually quite nice, so I can't complain.  For my longer runs (20 mile range), I can hit some of the best places to run in Tokyo, including a loop around the Imperial Palace and the Outer Meiji Shrine park decicated the Japan's first modern emperor.

Anyway, on to the race. 

Grim weather forecasts sent me to the 100 yen shop (the dollar store, or with today's lousy exchange rate, the $1.11 shop) a couple days before the race to get a cheap poncho, hat and unflattering arm warmers. (see the pictures)

On race day, I arrived in Shinjuku at about 7:30am for a 9:10am start to find thousands of runners half naked in the station, changing out of the travel clothes and into race outfits and rain gear. The race starts west of the station, home to many of Tokyo's tallest skyscrapers (whose elevator buttons are smeared with our fingerprints).

I milled around in an attempt to stay warm, but after I took my post-race clothes to the drop-off point, I followed signs to the "B" waiting corral, which had started to fill up. Standing in one place in the chilly rain for 40 minutes didn't seem like the best pre-race warmup, but no one really had any options. I was cold, but so was everyone else.  Perhaps with the exception of the guy in front of me holding the umbrella, whose run-off gave everyone around him an extra dose of cold rain.

I could see the start line about 100 yards ahead, and felt close, but there were probably several thousand people ahead of me. I was desperate to get moving, and finally, after the opening ceremony, the wheel chair start and a bunch of group cheers, I shed my 100 yen shop purchases (except the hat), set my gps to get a satellite lock. Surprisingly, most of the others around me in ponchos and garbage bags kept them on.

After the gun went off, we commenced the slow shuffle towards the start line. I felt impatient for a split second, but quickly realized that I'm here to have fun and soak in the fact that I'm doing it with 32,000 other crazies who would be cruising on foot down Tokyo streets that close down to car traffic today and today only.

I hoped to go out at a 6:30min/mile pace (about 4:02min/kilometer), but when I hit the first kilometer in over 6 minutes, I started to panic, unsure of how long it had taken me to get to the start line. I weaved through the throng as quickly as I could, and before too long, the crowds thinned out and I felt comfortable to sit back and hold my pace.

I rounded the Imperial Palace at about the 10k point (42:52) and caught a glimpse of the Tokyo Tower, which I passed under a couple miles later and mused on how small I must look to the people standing at the observation deck, and damn them if they took the elevator rather than climbing the 600 steps to watch down on other people with sore legs. 

The 10k to 20k leg of the race is an out-and-back, which eventually let me see the lead runners flying by in the opposite direction. This gave me a jolt of excitement about my own race, and a feeling like I had pretty a decent spectator "seat" for watching their race. 

At the turn-around point of the out-and-back, I realized that the rain had been at my back for the last 5k or so, and now it was time to eat it. Rain turned to sleet, and it came pelting us in the face with a vengeance. My frozen fingers were practically useless for opening my gel nutrition packet, which I eventually succeeded in doing by clam-gripping the packet between thumb and hand, and tearing off the top tab with my teeth. Sweet sugar.

I hit the 20k point in 1:24:01, within a couple minutes of my target, and shortly thereafter heard Melissa screaming "Jeffrey, Gambare (work hard!)" She was a wonderful cheering squad of one, having coordinated where to be based my projected split times, and navigating Tokyo's confusing train stations and streets (race map here). I smiled at her and heard an "I LOVE YOU" as I rounded the corner.

The next 10k was another out-and-back towards Asakusa, where dancers performed in festival attire as the rest of us ran by. I popped a caffeine pill for an ergogenic aid, having weened myself off of my beloved coffee three weeks earlier in the hopes of it having the greatest effect.

I had been running right alongside a guy with a shirt that said "smile" (su-ma-i-ru) in Japanese script and shorts with a smiley face on the rear. Amid the poor visibility due to the rain/snow/sleet and my general haze, he was one of the few people I could consistently pick out of the moving crowd. He started pulling away at about the 25k point. However, as I neared 30k (2:05:44), I began to feel the effects of the caffeine kick in and give me a little boost, and I reeled him in and surged passed.

With just over 10k left, I felt like 90,000,000 yen (one million dollars). I ran one of my fastest miles at around 21 miles. In my last two marathons, I had started to slow a solid two miles earlier in the race, so holding the pace until now was a good sign. About on pace to hit 2:55, I begin to feel giddy. "I've got this in the bag," I kept on chanting to myself.

At the 35k point, however, I started to wear down and slow. The rain subsided, and my hands had thawed, so despite conditions finally turning around in my favor, my legs were beat. I slowed enough to realize by 40k (2:48:58) that my chances for breaking 2:55 were shot, but I knew that I could coast in under 3 hours.

The guy with the smiley-faced shorts passed me as we pulled into the finish area and I didn't care. Beyond the finish line were warm towels and food, and I cared deeply about them and nothing else.

I crossed the line at 2:59:03. I'm not quite sure what my chip time is yet, as I unwisely started my watch as the gun went off, so will have to wait for the Tokyo Marathon officials to send me my official finisher's certificate with net time on it. I'm guessing somewhere in the 2:57s. 

Next came the best organized finish I've ever experienced. I received my post-race gear quickly, changed into warm and dry clothes, and then rolled my jeans up to soak my sore feet in wooden hot tubs prepared by an onsen company. Bliss.

I was very pleased with my time, a personal best on a day in which the top runner came in nearly 5 minutes slower than the course record. And not coming in under the automatic NYC marathon qualifying time seems to be a good opportunity to take a break from marathons and focus on shorter distances, which I basically have ignored since high school x-country.

Waiting patiently for me in the "family meeting area" was Melissa, who yelled "I'm so proud of you" with teary eyes as she ran to give me a big hug. She's the best. She then treated me to an amazing falafel pita at a most improbable vegetarian food stand we spotted on our way to the station. Once arriving back in Koenji, we celebrated by having a large meal at New Koenji India, our favorite local eatery which deserves its own post some day. 

Jyanee (see ya),

Jeff 

For additional pictures, type in "2010" for the password, and my bib number "22494" here:
http://tm10eng.allsports.jp/event/00034096.html

For my 5k splits (relative to gun time), type in my bib number "22494" here:
http://p.tokyo42195.org/

For those interested in a good training plan, I followed this one with little variation: 
http://www.runnersworld.co.uk/racing/rws-garmin-ready-marathon-schedule-sub-300/2757.html