Thanksgiving, Racing, Trains, and Tokyo

This has been a busy two weeks for us. We had a 4 day weekend here -- one weekend before the traditional American Thanksgiving. Part of this was arificial -- the Canadian Academy had off on Friday for teacher conferences after report cards. Matt took the day off of work so Megan and Matt could go to the conferences (conveniently, all 3 were scheduled consecutively -- but this is Japan, so conenience isn't just a good idea, it's the law). After that, what better way to spend a non-Japanese holiday weekday off than a family trip to Cosco? We finished up our Thanksgiving shopping with relative ease.

Saturday was the start of the official Japanese 3 day holiday weekend. We went to Arashiyama which was the subject of the last post, so I'll skip right to Sunday.

We have one the largest appartments among our local group of ex-pats -- at least among the "playground mafia" (that's the families with kids of the ages who hang out at the playground at the foot of our building everday after school. We had 9 other couples and us in the apartment for Thanksgiving on Sunday (the start of the week before the acutal Thanksgiving). Everyones' kids were in two other apartments with babysitters, so it was just the adults. We prepared a decent frozen turkey from Cosco and another couple brought a second turkey. Everyone else brough the remainder of the meal. All that was missing was the artichokes, really.

In keeping with tradition, I raced on Sunday morining. Thankgiving morning is about the best day of the year for a road race. Garden City, New York has a long running 5 mile Turkey Trot which first got me into this practice. Cincinnati, being the unknown big-time running town it is, has a 10k Thankgiving race which is 100 years old this year -- the longest running Thankgiving roadrace in the U.S. In Kobe, Japan I had to settle for the Kobe All Women's Marathon. It wasn't as bad as it sounds in 2 key respects. It wasn't actually a marathon. In Japan, there is a tendency to call any road race a "marathon." This particular event was actually a half-marathon or 21.098 km (13.1 miles). Perhaps more importantly, the "all women" part was also not an exact translation. Rather than a ridiculous starting line picutre of a big white Gai-Jin with a several thousand Japanese women, the race was actually rather typical with mostly men. The elite field (competing for prize money) was all women, and the open women's division got to start before the men, but other than that, it was a rather typical race.



Some of the P&G group warming up in the staging area. The guy on the right also lives on Rokko Island and is sporting our team T-shirt. He also is the only other person I ran during training with who speaks mostly English. Unfortunately, his race was ended at 18km for not keeping up with the trafic opening cut-off -- it was a reasonably strict rolling 2:15 pace you needed to maintain.

I finished what was my fourth half-marathon in 1:31:28, which is my second best time, and very good considering my currently level of fitness. I'll post a picuture when I can figure out how to get it off of the website which is all in Japanese.

To get to the start of the race, I had to take a very local train line we normally don't use. This is not the first time I've taken a train to the start of a road race -- I took the subway to the Chicago Marathon start from my hotel. This was a bit different, though, in two respects. Firstly, while the train had plenty of racers on it -- like most train rides it was simply crowded in general. More amusing was the platform. On the main train line we take, there is a high-tech cell phone ring tone like sound that plays when the trains are approaching. On this local line, there is also an "alert tone" but it is a sythethized diddy of "I've been working on the railroad" -- I assume the copyright licensing fees have been taken care of.

Thanksgiving was great with our new ex-pat friends and we had even more food leftover than we've ever had back in Ohio.

Matt and Megan in the kitchen trying to find where we put all the stuff we were pretty sure we shipped.



Everyone getting food on our crowded counter.



The Thanksgiving toast.






The big group shot.










And of course, the mandatory shot of one of the turkeys.







TOKYO

On Wednesday, I had my first business trip to Tokyo. I took the Shinkansen (bullet train) which is very cool. We had taken a short ride on the Shinkansen from Kyoto, but this was my first "real" trip in one of the resrved cars. This is one of the highest speed, most technically advanced train rides in the world. I waited on the platform at my designated space for my car expecting a very futuristic expeperience. Much to my surprise, the warning tone for the bullet train to Tokyo was the tune of the "Pufferbilly Song."

The Shinkansen whizzing past. Does this conjure up "Pufferbilly Song" to you?

Unfortunately, it was a cloudy day, so I could not really see Fuji-san (Mt. Fuji) as the train went past Yokahama.

I have been to several world capital cities including London, Paris, Beijing, Rome, and Seoul. In some ways they are starting to blend together quite a bit. All of them remind me more of New York than of Washington. Tokyo is certainly big and crowded (although I was able to avoid crowds as I was mostly outside mid-day and mid-week). The high end shopping is mostly "world brands" -- Tiffany, Gucci, Coach, various French, Italian, and American luxury brands. The Sushi in Tokyo is better than the Osaka area, but the overall resteraunt scene really isn't. It's a pretty cool and exciting city, and I didn't really get a chance to explore too much, but I'm looking forward to coming back for several days for the marathon in February. The view out of my hotel room overlooking the main Koyen (park) in Tokyo.
One of the busy areas of Tokyo at night. The pictures taken out of windows of moving taxis just don't come out that great.




Tokyo actually has a few major intersections each of which is as brightly lit and as crowded as Times Square. In fact, 2 of them are also called ____ (name of some Japanese media company) Times Square.


Here is the Takahashi Times Square building. A big plate of peppers at an Indian resteraunt in Tokyo.

Tokyo has more Christmas decorations than Kobe -- which is hard to imagine. Overall, Christmas here is treated about the same way Cinco de Mayo is treated in the USA -- it's all about having a party, doing something different with no clue or care what the orignal point might have been. In fact, there is quite a bit of mixing of Cupid and Valentine's imagry with the Christmas. One thing we are beginning to realize again, for the first time, is how powerful American culture is, and how much the rest of the world really does look up to America even as it also acts resentful and petulant some of the time.

This last one is the hotel lobby.


This actually is in Kobe, but it does show the interesting mixing of Christmas and Cupid imagry.



The Shinkansen back was smooth and enjoyable. It was a more clear day, so I could see Fuji-san pretty well. Unfortunately, I was on the wrong side of the train, so I had no opportunity for pictures. Interestingly, Kyoto was packed with hundreds of thousands of Japanese crowding to take picutres of single trees with turning leaves. The train must of had nothing but hard-boiled Tokyo businessmen because no one gave much of a passing glance to the much more impressive view of Mt. Fuji out the window. Of course, back in Kobe the first thing everyone asked me was "how was the view of Mt. Fuji?"
It's not very mature, but headlines like this still make me giggle. It's much easier to find the Financial Times than the Wall Street Journal in most newstands.