よし！

Well I did it! I successfully completed the 10K. I came in 125th place out of around 190 boys. Or at least the boy who I raced the final 50 meters or so to the finish line came in 125th place. I wasn't given an actual number. I don't know my exact time yet. I'll find that out tomorrow at school when we get a packet with everybody's times. I'll look up #125 and count that as my time since we finished at almost exactly the same time. But I added up the minutes and seconds of the songs I listened to while I ran and came up with something around 45 minutes! Which is unbelievable! I guess my natural pace is much faster than the 11kph I run on the treadmill at the gym.

So needless to say I was very pleased. And I'm very tired. The unexpected hills really took it out of me. I took the rest of the day off and came home (making a stop to eat a huge lunch at Katsu-ya on the way.) One very bad thing about having this postponed from Friday to today is we have school tomorrow. I even have a 1st period class. So I'm going to rest up for the rest of the day.

Emily took some pictures of me while I ran that I'll post as soon as she sends them to me.

おつかれさまです！

Let's try this again

So as of now, everything is a go for tomorrow. We're going to try this one again, drier but much colder. Here is a picture from my Accuweather app to show you exactly what the weather might be like when I'm running tomorrow.



Or for those metrically challenged...



I've come to like Celsius because it makes things look more exciting. So I'll probably be running sometime around 11. I'll be wearing shorts although Kelly keeps telling me I shouldn't, but I always run in shorts so that's what I'm comfortable in. I probably will forgo a t-shirt however for something with long sleeves. We'll see.

iPod is charged and ready. Here's hoping this thing happens this time!

Another chapter in a long book of February blah

Well Marathon Day got cancelled today. I was just getting up to get ready when I got a phone call saying that it was cancelled because of rain and that I should come to school because we would be having a regular class day today. So after weeks of looking forward to and preparing for this day, I'm feeling pretty let down and unhappy. It hasn't been cancelled completely, only postponed until next Wednesday. Next Wednesday will be the last chance to do it. Unfortunately the weather report I looked at this morning predicts rain on Wednesday too, so it's likely that it'll be cancelled altogether. I guess I have to keep my hopes up though.

Have I mentioned lately how much I despise the month of February? It seems like February is always full of bad things. There have been a few decent ones mixed in, but for the most part, I have been having bad Februarys for as long as I can remember. And this day and this weather just add to the long list of things I can't stand about this month. Sometimes I wish I was a bear so I could hibernate through February. Just go to sleep on the night of January 31 and wake up on the morning of March 1. Oh well.

Sorry to be a downer this morning. I'm just going to have to go to the gym after school today and run another 9K and keep my preparation going. Hopefully that'll make me feel better.

The clock is ticking...

Well tomorrow is the day. It's currently pouring down rain in Fuji and has been all day, but if the rain stops during the night as it's supposed to, 200 high school boys and I will be running a 10K tomorrow. I know it seems silly to be getting all worked up about 10K. It's not like it's a real marathon or anything. But considering that I have never done anything like this before, it'll be a big accomplishment if I complete it. And if I start, believe me, I will complete it.

I'll also be making good on the promise I made to some students last year.

Well today was a holiday, National Foundation Day. No idea what it celebrates. We spent the entire day indoors, Kelly reading her book, me playing Playstation, while it rained outside. You can't do much more with a Thursday holiday anyway.

Wish me luck tomorrow! If I survive, I'll tell you all about it!

Thinking about the old days...

Exciting day here at school today. Today was the last day of exams for our third year students, so they officially have the time from now until graduation (March 1) off. The time in between is used for students to make up classes or tests that they need to graduate. So today there were about 250 giddy third year students cleaning out their homerooms for the last time and packing up their stuff. They were very excited.

It reminded me of when I graduated from high school coming up on 12 years ago. I remember the day pretty clearly. It was a Friday. I had been exempt from all of my exams except one which I requested to take on that day during 7th period so I wouldn't have to come back the next week and take it. I took the exam, which I bombed (don't tell my dad,) and when I finished, my teacher let me leave. I remember walking down almost every hallway relishing the fact that I was finished. I knew I would likely never see those hallways again (which would have been true no matter what since the school has been completely remodeled.) Then I made the way out to my car and headed home. It's hard to believe that I have not entered the main part of that school building, old or remodeled, since that day. I think the last time I went on campus at all was about 8 years ago right after I graduated from college when I went up to give Mrs. Childress her Tommy Act II score back. She was retiring and had just left for the last time so I missed her. A bit anticlimactic I guess.

Well enough reminiscing. I had my last classes with the few third year students that I teach last week. I handled myself pretty well although I think if I had said any more I might have choked up a bit. I don't think I'll handle myself quite as well when I'm leaving in July. These students that are graduating have been a great class, but I don't have quite as strong a connection with them as with many of the students who I will be leaving behind when I go. It's going to be tough. But no thinking about that now.

Well as you may have heard, Kelly and I both passed our JLPT. For those who are unaware, that's the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. There are currently 4 levels and we passed level 4 which is the beginner level. But that by no means takes away from the accomplishment. It was tough. Surprisingly, I had my highest percentage on the listening section which is what I was most worried about going in. My lowest was grammar - no surprise. I plan to keep studying even after we leave, and depending on where we end up I may consider trying for level 3 next year. We'll see.

Well, one week until the 10K. I'm getting nervous, but I'm ready to get it overwith. I'm shooting for a time somewhere from 56 minutes to 1 hour. The pace I usually run at puts me in that range, but I usually run on a treadmill that sets the pace for me. It's going to be much different running on my own. I'm hoping the gameday adrenaline kicks in though. I've said from the very beginning that I absolutely do not want to finish last. Last year, the last student finished at about 1 hour and 5 minutes, so I think shooting for 56-60 minutes should be okay. I saw some students doing running practice in P.E. today and I think I can take 'em. Today after school I'm going to the gym to do my last long distance practice run. I'll do a couple of shorter ones next week. Today I plan to run 9km. So by the time most of you read this, my legs will be jello.

Kelly just put up some pictures on Flickr. Some old, some new. Go check 'em out!

First blog of the new year...my bad

Well I got fussed at by my mother this morning about my lack of blogging. We can't have that, right? So here we go.

I'm at work now killing time until my next class. Right now I'm teaching a lesson to my ichi-nensei on "How to Do Things." I'm not actually teaching them how to do things. The lesson is on how to tell someone how to do things. So I'm teaching use of things like first, second, then, next, after that, finally, etc. I have an activity at the end where each student has one step of a task and they have to find the other three classmates who have the other three steps to that task and then put them in the correct order. When they're finished they read the steps out loud for the class using those sequence words. I've taught it once and it went well. Hoping it goes well for my classes today.

This is the third week back from the break and I'm finally starting to feel normal again. The first week and a half I was still in post-vacation mode and had no motivation to do anything. I wasn't looking forward to my classes and didn't want to plan lessons. But now that things are back into a real routine, I'm feeling good. The weekend comes much faster the busier you keep yourself. That's a lesson I wish I had learned a long time ago.

I've started a new workout routine these past few weeks. It's not a New Year's resolution thing because I was going regularly before. I've just started working out harder and longer. No more taking it easy on myself. I'm really enjoying it so far. I'm trainging for two major things. I'm planning to do my school's 10km marathon next month. I'm nervous about it, but I think it'll be really good for me to do. Also I'm taking part in a 100km hike in April for charity. It's the Oxfam Trailwalker where you work in teams of four and together complete a 100km hike in 48 hours or less. I'll write more about that later. It's a very big deal and I'm really excited about it.

Finally, as many may have seen on my Twitter or Facebook, we have officially told our schools that we will not be recontracting for a third year. So what this means is that we will be heading back to the States at the end of July. It's bittersweet because we really like living in Japan, but we think it's time to move on. As of now, we're not sure exactly where we'll end up, but we know we'll be flying into Houston sometime at the end of July.

Well, gotta go to class!

Random thoughts

Whoa! I forgot I changed my blog layout. I went to the blog and was quite surprised by the color scheme. What do you think?

Just a few things today. I took Caspian on a walk earlier. He's developed a bit of a hacking, choking kind of cough lately that we were afraid was due to his collar choking him on walks so we got him one that hopefully will be better. He seems to like it. Here's a picture of it in action.



Here is another picture from the walk. I'm glad that after all this time I still love to just gaze at Mt. Fuji. It's better to do this when I'm walking Caspian than when I'm riding my bike home because of safety reasons. Unfortunately that limits my lighting. This picture is actually lighter than real life. It was pretty dark when I took this. It was 4:55pm. Such is the life of living in a country with no daylight savings time.



Speaking of this great country we live in, we recently got into a discussion of how great the train system is here. Especially the Shinkansen system. Did you know that people are looking into the idea of building a high-speed train line in Texas. It would connect Houston to Dallas, Houston to Austin, Houston to San Antonio, Dallas to Austin, and Austin to San Antonio. They're calling it the Texas T-Bone. Check out the website! I think this would be a great idea for many reasons. High speed public transportation is a great thing and very convenient. Plus, this system would create a lot of jobs for people to build it, run it and maintain it and jobs are we need right now. In addition to that, it would jump-start the economy in Texas by greatly increasing tourism. Just think how much more often people in Houston would visit Dallas and vice-versa if there was a convenient way to get there that would save them money on gasoline. They go to these other cities, spend money at stores, restaurants, bars, etc. and then see the prices at their own stores, restaurants, and bars drop because people from other cities are doing the same. If train lines like that could be built all over the country, the US could save extreme amounts of money on oil and usage of oil would slowly but surely be decreased assuring that we could have enough for the future and decreasing our dependency on oil from the Middle East. Plus tourist money would be spent all over improving our own economy. The public transportation industry needs to be improved in the US. We cannot keep depending solely on cars and airplanes to get us where we need to go. Trains are the answer. Sometimes to move forward, you need to look back and see what worked in the past. That's my opinion.

Finally for today, here is a picture of some coloring I did while I was bored at work today. It is a family tradition of my family to color Christmas pictures and then write the date, time and temperature. I don't have any coloring books so I printed off something from online and colored it. I think it was actually colder than what this picture says but this is what my Accuweather iPhone app said so that's what I went with. Enjoy!