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

biting my tongue

Texas Conservatives Win Curriculum Change

Is it even possible to remove Thomas Jefferson (i.e. the writer of the Declaration of Independence) from the conversation on the writings that inspired revolutions in the late 18th and early 19th century??

Mata ne,
Melissa

"after life"

When you die, if you had to choose just one memory to take with you for eternity, what would you choose?

This is the question posed by the movie we watched a few days ago.  It is one of Jeff's all time favorite movies, called Wandafuru Raifu.  That's a Japanese pronunciation of "wonderful life" for those keeping score, but that is actually how it is listed in English characters.  It is however known as After Life in English speaking countries, due in part to the original title's similarity to the well-loved Christmas movie.

Anyways...  It is a really good movie, and you all should watch it.  Yes, it does have subtitles, but I don't want to hear about not wanting to read while you're watching a movie.  That's ridiculous.

Also, there are no "action" scenes, nothing gets blown up, and for a movie about dead people, it is not in the least bit scary.  It is instead an interesting take on the omnipresent question of what happens after one dies, and begs the question: how do you distill a life down to just one memory? And it has some cute old people telling real stories from their lives in addition to the actors reading lines.  

I expect to hear of a run on Blockbuster/Netflix.  Let me know what you think.

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

with the wind blows the ginkgo

A while back (when Michael and Sara were here visiting) we went to Kamakura and did some seeing of the sights.  While we were there, we noticed this huge tree just to the side of the steps up to the big temple.  The reason we took note was because it looked completely dead and yet sported the ropes and white papers containing prayers indicating its import.  I wondered to Jeff why they didn't get rid of it, as it seemed to be dangerous and likely to fall down any moment - the area around it was even cordoned off (which you can sort of see with the red barriers at the bottom of the tree). 

(The aforementioned ginkgo is the large brown, leafless one on the left of the picture.)

Fast forward to yesterday, when that tree did, in fact, fall over.  And who knew, by the way, that said giant ginko tree was one thousand years old.  Yeah.  Kind of a big deal.  It is apparently very closely connected with the history of the shrine.  The chief priest was, I quote the Mainichi newspaper, "too shocked to comment on the matter."

Here is a picture of the aftermath:

[Go ahead and blame the poor quality on the Mainichi - I took the picture from them.] 

This is sort of like when the Old Man of the Mountain fell down in New Hampsire. 

And so it goes....

Mata ne,
Melissa