Yatta! I just received an email letting me know that I was selected in the lottery for the Tokyo Marathon, meaning I am eligible to run 42k with a bunch of crazy athletes on February 17th of 2008. This is awesome news for me, and means I better start getting ready now. I hope Mike got similar news.
So the day after the Typhoon (Fri, Sept 7) brought with it something I had failed to see since landing 2 nights earlier, the sun. This was a double-edged sword however as it was insanely hot and humid, which is basically par for the course in Japan. I’ve been to Florida before and was amazed with the humidity there, but it’s on another level here. I literally walk 20 feet and I’m sweating my arse off, it’s crazy. So anyway, I decided to start my day by taking a jog through the neighborhood. What an experience. The main drag of my town is rather modern, with a lot of new buildings and all of that jazz. But as I made my way into the older part of Town, it was like entering a completely different world. The streets, if you can call them that, are all single lane and about as skinny as the width of a car. The homes and shops that line the streets combine to create a 20 foot wall, and make you feel like a mouse in a maze. Every single corner is a blind corner, and if you’re lucky there will be a nifty mirror to show you the cross traffic of cars and bikes. Unfortunately many don’t have this feature, so you need to stop and peak around the bend to avoid any collisions. If it weren’t for the Daiei store that is close to my apartment showing itself above the craziness, I would have never found my way back. All in all though, it was pretty awesome and something I will need to share with all of you via video at some point.
After jogging I decided to get some errands done and went to the grocery store. Who knew buying food could be such an intimidating experience, heh. I can read some Japanese, but trying to figure out what I was looking at in the store was near impossible. I finally managed to pick-up some neccessities, and even managed to pay for it all without incident. One thing that made me smile was finding the liquor section, and seeing a certain liquor from a certain movie; picture below. The rest of the day I pretty much just unpacked and got settled into the apartment. That night I met another one of Mike’s friends, Satomi, and along with Eric we just chilled and threw back some brewskies. All in all a pretty good day.
Here are a couple night shots from the balcony on Saturday the 8th.
