Photos from Matsuzaki

Our weekend in Matsuzaki was simply perfect. The weather was beautiful, and the scenery alluring for the quiet two-hour drive (by car). Our reception at the Toyosaki Hotel was delightful, and the room, food, and bath as awesome as we remembered from last year.

We arrived in Matsuzaki at about 3 p.m., and had a chu-hi and a beer before walking around the town to enjoy the views and atmosphere.

Matsuzaki is a really nice fishing town, and with the sun low in the sky, we got some good light conditions for photos. I played with these in Photoshop a bit:

Getting back to the hotel with time to spare for dinner, we took a pre-dinner bath in the shared outdoor tub on the roof.



We took a very slow, scenic drive home in the rain on Sunday. Despite the rain, the views were lovely, and the weather mild. The perfect wind-down before getting wound up again for a new week!

Matsuzaki

While these hectic weeks and weekends have been keeping us busy, by Tuesday this week I had pretty much reached my limit! I decided then that this weekend I'd have to get away, even if only for a night. So this that's what we're doing this weekend.

I thought about Matsuzuki, a small fishing town on the west coast of the Izu peninsula. It's a quaint, quiet little place, not too far from home, and we've both been there several times. Our favourite place to stay is the Toyosaki, a Japanese style hotel, who's fish-market restaurant had some of the best fried fish I've ever eaten.

At less than 7,000 yen per person, the Toyosaki, is great value, and of course is usually packed full and nearly impossible to get a room on short notice; however, when I called on Tuesday night, there was, indeed, a room available. I eagerly booked us in for one night (tonight), and now we're getting ready to sit in the sun before driving to the coast!

http://www.toyosaki-hotel.jp/

Relaxation by Cataloguing

My totally awesome friend, Van, who has been in Japan as long as I have, is finally repatriating to the States. I will miss her terribly - I already realize there is no replacement for her; when I feel like not talking, it's great, 'cause she does all the work. She's a super-friendly Texan who is super-easy to be with.

In fact, she is such a good friend, that I agreed (blindly) to take all her books and try to sell them for her. Now, Van is a ...collector. Perhaps even a pack-rat. A decade in Japan means much accumulation...

Today, I went through about five boxes of books, and catalogued (or inventoried) exactly 168 books (mostly Nora Roberts and J.D. Robb - who are the same person. When anyone can be that prolific, I have to admit, I'm a bit sceptical of the quality of writing!).

Anyway - actually, the highly detailed, yet intellectually un-demanding task, was oddly relaxing for me.

I entered the titles and authors in Excel, then sorted to alphabetize by author, then, finally, sent the list to Infinity Books Japan, who buys used books, by distance. I've used these guys before, and they're great - just submit a list of the books you have, and wait for an estimate. But it had been a while, so when I cruised over to their website, and saw that they asked for our lists to include the ISBN, I thought, "WHAT??!!".

Well, I sent the list anyway, sans ISBN. If they really do want it, I'll just have to go through all the boxes again, and sort the actual books by author, then note the numbers. The up-side of this means that the books will be re-packed by author, which, I suppose, I ought to have done anyway!

Photos of our Motorcycles

As I mentioned, we've already selected and purchased our new motorcycles. One Sunday afternoon, I surfed the Goo Bike website, where I could compare bikes from different shops online. After selecting a few that we were interested in, I requested an estimate of actual cost (including repairs, paperwork, delivery, etc). The best (and one of the quickest) responses we had was from the small T-Rex chain based in Tokyo, and after a follow-up phone call from a woman working at the shop, we decided to buy both bikes, sight unseen, from T-Rex.

We are not even going to the shop to pick up the bikes; not wanting to drive unfamiliar bikes through the labyrinthine streets of Tokyo, we requested that they be delivered to our door, and we will probably receive them by July 4th.

Though the process got started quickly, the paperwork, parts-ordering, and delivery takes time. Takeuchi-san, our contact at T-Rex, has been great at keeping in touch with us at every step of the process, sending photos and letting us know at which stage each bike is at. This is great, and though I'm still driven by immediate gratification, I'll consider this "practice" for becoming a bit more patient!

Though the bikes are old, and we haven't seen them in person, we are confident that they'll be beautiful. Here are the photos on which we based our bike-buying decisions:

Brian's Honda VRX:

My Kawasaki Estrella:

P.S. See - I'm already fulfilling my promise of more blogging!

Why Blog

We haven't been blogging as frequently as perhaps we should. My mother certainly noticed the lack of updates! I figured that, since I haven't been doing anything exciting, and don't have any commentary about Japan or biking, I just had nothing to say.

However, I realized yesterday that we rely on our own blog as a sort of journal (a web log, if you will :-) ), to which we can refer to refresh our memories, and to see how we spent various past holidays and occasions.

So, though we may not always have too much to say, we will certainly try to blog more!

A Sunday Run

Yesterday, despite pouring rain, we went for a longish run. Actually, it was only about 11km, but that's long for us! The rain, rather than being a dissuasion, kept us cool at the same time as keeping other folks off the road!

After a quick search, I found a site that lets you map your run; not surprisingly, the name of the website is Map My Run .com (http://www.mapmyrun.com). I quickly mapped out our run, so here it is:

Create Routes or find more routes in Miura from millions at MapMyRun

Oh - I named this run "To the Pigs!" because the end of our route takes us to a semi-dead end, where, if you hike for five seconds off the road, you can find some caged boars behind a small house. The guy living there probably traps the boars, then keeps them on standby for dinner:-(

Just Some Updates

The whirlwind weeks have not passed; even as we move into Rainy Season (????Tsuyu), work and play feel more like typhoon season!

But somewhere in there, I managed to find two decent (if old) motorcycles online. I chose a classic-looking Kawasaki Estrella, while Brian went for a Honda VRX. We hope to get the bikes by July.

I'm back to working out at Curves with my friend, Van...however, she has decided to return to her native home in the States next month. I'll have to enjoy her company as much as I can while I can.

So - I'm going out for dinner with her tonight.

Brian and I went out last night for dinner at our favourite local yaki-tori shop - they have the best kimchi I've ever tasted, and also some of the best chu-hai (great alcoholic beverage)!

Ah, and of course...the Japanese Test (level 2) is just around the corner. All those months ago, when I said I'd start studying for the test...Well, I didn't start studying, and I'm just now going over some of the kanji. The test is in two weeks, on July 5th. I don't think I'll be passing this year, but will sit it again in December!

Green Tea Coke

Coke is more popular (and more prevalent) here than Pepsi - but both soft drink makers come out with some interesting ideas for marketing their product.

This time, it's Coke, which is selling a green tea flavour, non-calorie, and with added catechins version of their trademark beverage. I just happened to see it at a local convenience store yesterday on the way to a friend's place:

Edit: The Taste - This coke tasted very much like any generic diet cola, not green tea flavoury at all:-(

Japanese Motorcycle Licence

For a couple of years now we have both been thinking about (finally) getting our Japanese motorcycle licence - especially after our varied experience renting bikes every time we travel in other parts of South East Asia.

After some research (and some impetus from a friend), we decided to get our licence the Japanese way - by going to school! Because we already have a Japanese driver's licence, getting the motorcycle licence did not require too much extra effort. We basically had to do seventeen hours of training, of which about three hours was on a simulator, and one hour was a lecture on road safety - fairly standard requirements in Japan.

We entered a school just here in Susono, and got a good great private lessons, and a dose of Japanese practise along with the riding practise!

We were both really enjoying the lessons, although it took me longer (several extra hours of lessons) to master the Honda CB400, but when I did, it was awesome. Brian passed his test more than a week ago (ahead of me), but finally came time for me to take my test on Saturday. Though I felt nervous, one of my most awesome instructors told me not to worry at all, that I would pass. And I did pass! It was especially helpful that the test was at the school, doing the same course I'd been practising, and on the very same bike on which I'd been practising, for the past month. Getting on that bike for my final test was like meeting up with an old friend.

So, today I took my "Graduation Certificate" from the school to our nearest Licencing Centre. There, I wait in line a little, wait in a classroom a little, and wait a little more, but soon I had my official Japanese Motorcycle Licence.

Below is my licence. Circled is the classification "futsu jidou nirin" - usual (up to 400cc)* motorcycle!

I really, really liked the Susono Chuo driving school - private one-one instruction, friendly (and super awesome) instructors, with a solid program.

Next step? This school will begin offering "oo-gata" bike licences (bikes bigger than 400cc) from the end of July...

*In Japan, motorbike licences come in several classes: 50 -124cc, 125-399cc, and then 400cc and up.

Yamanakako Road Race

After successfully running the 13.6 km around Lake Yamanaka, we have recovered some and even begun light training again. Although we three each brought cameras on raceday, we had no real chance to get a picture of us all together... We are currently recruiting another friend to be our team photographer for future events. Luckily there were pros shooting that race, and we could find one picture that shows the three of us. Here we are, early in the race, beaming with confidence:

By the end, we surely looked much more focused (and sweaty)!

Sound of spring

As is common in japan, the land used for agriculture and residences is shared, so our apartment too faces some fields. A few produce vegetables all year, but the largest one is a rice paddy. This one was (intentionally!) flooded this week for this year's crop. From the first day of flooding, the dark hours host a chorus of frog calls, or "kaeru nakigoe". The culprit is the (hundreds?  thousands? millions? of)  "nihon amagaeru":

The calls at night are probably mating calls, but with the misty, rainy days becoming more frequent, daytime calls will increase, too. (These daytime calls in rainy season are called "amenaki", ???).

I recorded a few minutes of the night chorus from my front balcony the other night, at about 1:30 am... Inside the apartment it is loud, but outside it is deafening! Here is a sample:


I recorded this with the voice recorder function of my .mp3 player, and edited it slightly with Audacity audio editor program... It might make nice spring evening listening for folks living far from the fields. Give it a try!

??????Rhabdophis tigrinus

I had to take some time off work the other day, and so had some rare daylight time for myself. I went for a walk in the mountains to enjoy the spring sunshine and cooler air. While I wasn't looking for snakes, I knew the conditions would be good for them, too, so I brought a camera.

Recently I had been talking about eyesight, Lasik and the overwhelming greenness of spring colors around here (so much that I am going to lower the camera's saturation from the winter settings). An article that I found recently discusses the evolution of primates' eyesight considering our forested origins, and how we may owe our visual acuity to evolving in proximity to snakes. Hmmm.

During my walk I noticed the scent of a snake, quite strong, so I looked around and found this one:

Although well camouflaged, it was very easy to pick him out in the brush... now we might know why!

Practicing on a Dragstar

Brian did it - he successfully completed the motorcycle course, took (and passed) the test, and then went to the license bureau to get his license. He said it was not so difficult, but really the biggest test was patience, as both the test day, and license day, required a lot of sitting and waiting!

I have been taking extra lessons as it was taking me longer to master the basics of tight-turns and emergency breaking. However, after my lesson on Monday, my instructor said that the next step was to take the test. I should be happy, but I wish I had another lesson to take - so I could take a lesson on Friday night and do the test on Saturday morning, hopefully having remembered everything! Anyway, I'm still going to do the test on Saturday, and, if I don't pass, I'll just sign up to take it again the following week.

At least, we have a friend here who got his license, and a Yamaha Dragstar bike, a few months ago, and, good friend that he is, he agreed to meet me at 5 a.m. this morning so I could practice on his bike in a big, empty parking lot.

Some shots from our pre-work ride:

In Full Reglia:

Me getting down to business:

Our Race Results

We're home from the Yamanakako race!

We had a great evening last night at the Kaede - very hospitable and quiet, perfect before our race day. We had a great breakfast (including the ubiquitous, and oddly good, natto), which was served at 6:00 a.m. instead of the usual 8:00 because all the guests were going to be running. Compared to previous years, this was a far more relaxed, less-hectic way to get to race day!

The weather was okay - chilly at first, but once it came time to run, we were quite warm, and even hot; so when it started to rain, I think every runner was thankful!

Anyway, this is such a huge race (16,000 people this year, I heard) that we don't receive our certificates on the spot, but rather have them mailed to us later, so we can't be certain of our finish times. However, I checked Runnet.com and found our listed times, which are:

Brian 1:29:03
Jenny 1:29:02
Me 1:26:50

I kept a pace that was comfortable for me, and pulled ahead of Brian and Jenny slightly on an up-slope - but they were obviously never far behind. This was their first race, and I think they will now take to this sport with relish.