Playing Catch Up

Have you ever noticed that when you come back from vacation, you feel like you need a vacation?

Seriously, while my jet lag going to North America was, as always, worse than on my return to Japan, I was still desperately pleased that I built in three extra days off after my return, since Monday through Wednesday were all national holidays, and I had taken a personal day for Thursday as well.

When landed on Monday afternoon and got home on Monday night after a very long flight, and lots of waiting at the train stations, I was even more thankful that I could sleep in a little on  before going for a training run with Brian. We then got on our motorcycles for a short ride to a nearby onsen.

Brian had changed my saddle while I was away; it looks way cooler (pics to come in a later post), and puts me lower so that now I can almost get both feet flat on the ground. However, it changes the ergonomics of the handle bars, so the short ride was a good way to get reacquainted with the bike and get used to the new set up. And of course, that our destination was an onsen didn't hurt, either - I had been looking forward to just such a deep, hot bath.

Then on Wednesday, we and a motor-biking friend went out for the day on the bikes, up to Yamanashi around Motosuko, a beautiful lake. We also rode past (and stopped to hike a little) in the Aokigahara Jukai, a.k.a. the Suicide Forest. This is a dense forest of trees which is well known for the number of suicides committed there. Every year in the spring, law officials and volunteers organize a search of the forest, and invariably find bodies of recent (and not so recent) suicides.

That morbidity aside, the forest is actually in a very beautiful location, and does have lovely (and well-marked) hiking trails leading to the Ice Caves and to the lakes in the area. Brian and I even consider it one of our favourite places for Single-Speeding on our mountain bikes (bicycles).

Finally, yesterday, Brian had to return to the office, but I selfishly hid away for one more day, and I think it was a productive day at that. I took all the recycling to the recycle station since I'd missed the bi-monthly pickup; washed my car; did some groceries; did some banking; replaced the ink in the printer; and read nearly half of my new Inspector Frost novel. Not a bad day's work, all in all!

Today I was back to work, with plenty of work stuff to catch up on.

Thank God it's Friday - haha :-)