Half Marathon Drug Shocker!!

 Reuters: Last week's Date Half Marathon was rocked, I say rocked, by an unprecedented athlete doping scandal. Organizers had braced themselves for a potential terrorist attack but instead the bombshell exploded from within! A still unnamed Irish athlete is at the centre of a furious controversy having allegedly used performance enhancing drugs, specifically Yotsuba 100% full-fat milk. There are also unconfirmed reports that he 'indulged in a spot of dwarf tossing' prior to the start of the race.
In the days leading up to the race the 'athlete' in question had repeatedly played down his prospects, claiming amongst other things to be "too old for this shit", "only three days away from retirement", "suffering from food poisoning, insomnia, baldness, impotency, and a liking for early eighties Duran Duran". Yet, on Sunday he ran a new personal best of 1:41 for the race some ten, yes ten! freaking minutes faster than last year.
At a hastily convened post race press conference, the spectacularly hirsute athlete vehemently denied the allegations, terming those making claims "small minded" and "small bodied too". Asked to explain the traces of full-fat milk in his blood, he claimed to be 'lactating'.
His repeated denials only inflamed passions further with some of the hobbits, sorry, other competitors present angrily denouncing him for "cheating, and lying about it". They further denounced the lanky representative of the race of men for "taking our jobs, bedding our women, and throwing us into bushes".
Race organizers plan to behead him, sorry, question him further, but only if he lies down so they can look him in the eye.

"No, really, they all only come up to my chest"

The doper contends he was only "lactating" whilst beside him a clearly infuriated Coach Cian loses his temper with the media. Note subtle product placement.

The 2013 Date Half Marathon

As Paddy Power's newly appointed representative for Japan, Sanae 'The Turfmeister' Takahashi is offering the following odds on tomorrow's Date Half Marathon.
3-1 Daddy not to finish the race but to succumb to vicious stomach cramps somewhere around the 16km mark. Background: Yours truly was biologically blindsided by some food poisoning on Wednesday evening, or what the doctor said was "a touch of d'auld ebola virus". Thursday and Friday were two long days of emptying my stomach contents from both ends of my body. Today things have calmed down a bit but I am close to a kilo and a half off my preferred starting weight and not really in the mood for some intensive pasta-and-potatoes carbohydrate loading this evening.
5-1 Daddy to get detained by the Date police as a possible terrorist suspect. Background: After the terrible events in Boston last weekend the Date Five-O announced heighten security at tomorrow's event. Why? Because as any Al Queda operative worth his jihad salt instinctively knows, a strike at the heart of Hokkaido's strawberry growing capital will surely bring the Japanese infidel to his knees. And as the only foreigner who ever takes part in the race, I am, naturally, suspect number one.
10-1 Daddy not to finish the race due to, well, not being able to, basically. Background: too much criss-crossing the Pacific Ocean eating stodgy airplane food and not enough hard winter running means that my curtailed training has left me fit enough to run about 5km and after that, well, maybe it would be better if I got detained by the police before the race.
20-1 Daddy to get ambushed by a joint band of hobbits and dwarves somewhere around the notorious Kaminagawa Tunnel. Background: After last year's blog the guttural, rough-hewn word from the mines amidst the Toya hills is that the small bearded ones are gunning for me, or rather, axing for me and have teamed up with Sanae's brethern to get their revenge. Could get messy.
50-1 Daddy to go surfing instead. Background: tomorrow is supposed to be a bright sunny day, with an offshore breeze and and a gentle one metre swell. And I am less likely to be set upon by enraged hordes of the vertically challenged. Tempting.
1000-1 Daddy to finish under two hours. Background: none. There's not a feckin chance of that happening. Not unless I figure out the secret to time travel somewhere around the 14km mark. Or they preemptively end the race at the 14km mark.

Cian's start at Elementary School

 
Although Cian started school last Monday week, in the Gaynor-Takahashi family and Turf Appreciation Society gambling takes precedence over all else, so you are only reading about this now.
And at 26 to 1, rightfully too.
As with Cian's 'graduation ceremony' so it was with his 'entrance ceremony'; lots of 'be good students' speeches, technical issues with these newfangled things called 'school bags', and of course, wonderfully outré fashion choices.
What was thought provoking about all of this was the realization that upon starting school, or more pointedly, starting in a Japanese school, Cian is not merely learning various universal academic subjects; he is also being educated and socialized in how to be a Japanese person. It is a necessary form of acculturation but decidedly different from his father's culture.
This process goes considerably deeper than merely liking rice instead of potatoes, and bowing instead of shaking hands; culture is what we use to interpret the world and our place in it. That act of interpretation is not innate but learned, and much of that learning takes place at school. And this may well prove to be contentious in the future for, as Sanae will readily testify, there are aspects of Japanese culture I do not accept, particularly its conservative, parochial view of the wider world, and its reflexive, uncritical submission to tradition. That Cian may well be inculcated with such an outlook is something I, as his father, as his non-Japanese father, am not completely comfortable with.
So send the parcels full of Tayto crisps, Barry's teabags, Jacobs fig rolls, smarties,  GAA county jerseys, Peig Sayers' autoboigraphy, Reeling in the Years DVDs and Christy Moore CDs. With your help we can make Cian, if not 100%, at least 50% guaranteed Irish.

Blackstairmountain Part 2

The Nakayama Grand Jump is the richest steeplechase horse race in the world. The winner takes home 65 million yen, roughly 550,000 euro (though given how the yen is plummeting in value by the hour, you could knock a couple of thousand off that by the time you read this).
Three weeks ago we went along to our local Japanese Racing Association (JRA) off-track betting facility to watch Blackstairmountain's Japanese debut in the Pegasus Stakes..
And we all know how that went.
We wailed, we gnashed our teeth, we pulled our hair (or at least Sanae and Cian did. I can't afford to do that with what little I have left); we lamented the loss of three thousand of the Gaynor-Takahashi family's hard earned yen.
But then Barry, this blog's resident expert in all things equine, weighed in with his considered opinion. The 'Keane Eye' as Ennis' resident turf oracle is known, assured us that Blackstairmountain could and would do better next time out.
Hmmmm.
Well 'next time out' arrived today. Cian, having been bitterly disappointed the previous time opted to stay at home digging a stream with his friends in front of our house. So Sanae and me drove down to the JRA with me sternly warning her that we were not going to bet another three thousand yen on a horse that seemed to be in Japan solely in order to hide out from Tesco's meat suppliers.
She nodded, agreed, and then did what she always does; ignored me and put a four thousand yen each-way bet on the horse. And picked two other horses for a place bet as well, horses I'd like to point out, she had never seen nor heard of until, and I am not making this up, she glanced up at a monitor as she was placing the bet and picked them based on their odds.
And nothing else.
That my friends, is gambling.
That, my God, is my wife.
And as for the race? Well you can enjoy it in full HERE, along with my helpful commentary. Please forgive the shaky camera work as things became a tad 'exciting' towards the end.
Those of you who suffer from visual vertigo can watch the actual broadcast here, unfortunately in Japanese, along with a post race interview with Ruby Walsh.

Sotsuen-shiki

There were a couple of things I didn't get around to writing about last month - my trip to Dallas and Sanae's sudden enrollment in Gamblers Anonymous delayed things. One of these neglected events was Cian's 'graduation' from nursery school.
In Japan they like to mark the various educational milestones with 'graduation' ceremonies as opposed to say, achievement tests. 'Completion' ceremonies would be more apt as the term 'graduation' usually implies a sense of academic achievement, which would be a tad implausible for a 6 year old boy - though Cian would very much justify a combined honours degree in 'messing' and 'annoying his Daddy'.
Japan likes these ceremonies; Monday will see Cian participate in his primary school 'entrance ceremony', and subsequently there will be an ongoing combination of entrance and graduation ceremonies as he moves from one level of the educational system to the next, right up to the end of university.
Coming from Ireland where 'ceremony' tends to be most associated with weddings and funerals, I find this all a bit bemusing, unlike Sanae who (so far) finds them deeply moving. Nor is she alone. Cian's graduation ceremony was marked by some fantastically left-field fashion displays from the kids (and don't get me started on Cian's Little Lord Fauntleroy look. I disown it completely - planned, sought, and bought while I was in Dallas); and floods of tears from the parents. There's a lot of emotional button-pushing at these occasions; the kids make emotionally fraught speeches about nursery school being the best days of their little lives so far, how they'll never forget it, their friends, teachers, school lunches, earthquake drills, etc. Then each of the children individually presents their mothers with a small bunch of flowers and thanks her for 'making delicious rice lunches', or 'taking them to school', or 'making them wear shorts and girly knee socks'. There's a lot of gender stereotyping going on here with only the mothers being thanked. The fathers, it seems, are presumed to have been too busy working to have much part in their child's upbringing. Which in the case of the Gaynor-Takahashi family at least, is completely the opposite case.
And yes, I am bitter about that.
So when Cian got up on the dais and embarrassedly thanked Mammy for "making him delicious rice", I'd like to think his chagrin arose from knowing that what he was saying wasn't honest, that in fact he was engaging in a ritual designed to reinforce traditional Japanese gender roles rather than convey the emotional truth.

Then again maybe he was just embarrassed by those girly knee socks.