The Date Marathon Part II

So, there we were, all four thousand of us, huddled in a shivering group behind the Culture Center while a vicious, icy wind whipped in off Funka Bay and shredded through our 'Just Do It' day-glo running gear.

Me, I had gloves on. That and I had positioned myself near the end so that all those in front of me acted as a shivering windbreak. That's some of the 'age old wisdom' I have recently taken to distilling as 'youthful exuberance' no longer applies.
Bang! And we're off! And it was with a bang as they sent up a couple of fireworks to mark the start of the race. That or to scare off the crows that were beginning to circle over the vest-and-shorts wearing extremists who were already in the first stages of hypothermia.
Kilometres 1 to 3:
Anyway we're off in a sort of slow, slow shuffle as the initial 300 metres or so are along an access lane at the back of the Center. Eventually we reach the road and the shuffle turns into a faltering trot before finally settling down into a steady jog. Though I seem to be going backwards as everybody gallops past me. Maybe they're aiming the fireworks at us stragglers just to move things along.

Kilometres 3 to 10

This is where I begin to overtake the Coca Cola runners, those who shot off at the start but are now rapidly running out of fizz. They're wheezing, tongues lolling and wondering what the good feck they were thinking when they signed up for this. And 'this' has another 16 kms to go.

We are all jogging along an elevated three metre wide bicycle lane with a sharp drop to rice-paddies either side of us, so overtaking isn't really an option. So I resign myself to plodding behind the guy with the 'Chitose Track and Field Athletics Runners Pride - Never stop believing' jersey for the next while.

Kilometres 10 to 12.5

Finally we get off the bicycle lane and onto a road. I am keeping a wary eye out for small folk, armed and angry, but it is hard to see much in the wind ragged fog. There is a tunnel ahead, 800 metres or so long and I reckon that's where they will make their move.

Nope, nothing happens beyond me having a helmeted man with a whistle and a flashing red baton gesticulate wildly at me as I had inadvertently jogged over the white line when I was overtaking the elderly members of 'Team Toto'. I hum a few bars of 'Africa' but they don't hear me over the incessant peep! peep! peep! coming from apoplexy man.

Turns out that the dwarves up Mt. Yotei way have gotten themselves broadband and read my previous blog. So they stayed at home and watched the baseball.

Kilometres 12.5 to 21.071

This is pretty much a long, gentle descent back into Date city. Having started close to the back I pass a fair few runners/plodders. Most of them are a foot shorter than me and twenty years older, but I don't let that dilute my competitive spirit and make loud overtaking 'vroooomm' noises as I cruise past them. I even pat some of the more knackered ones on the head.

The Finish

The assembled spectators erupt in a frenzy of hysterical cheering worthy of a North Korean missile launch. I can hardly see for the blizzard of ticker tape and the bouquets of flowers being thrown in my direction. I spot Sanae and Cian weeping uncontrollably with joy and pride; without breaking stride I sweep them both up in my arms and we cross the finishing line together....

Cian, clearly bursting with pride at what his father is about to do.

An intimate, behind the scenes look at the innate glamour of long distance running.

Ahh, yes my time, I hear you ask. Well, ahem, it was 1:51 which is, ahem, 6 minutes slower than last year.

Now this can be accounted for by the record number of participants, the narrowness of the bicycle lane for the first 10km, the chilly weather and my evolved hirsute hairiness which increased my drag co-efficient and made complete shite of my aerodynamics.

It had nothing to do whatsoever with all those chocolate chip muffins I ate over the winter.

Put it this way, for the first half of the run it took me 1:06, and for the second half, 45 minutes.

Yeah, I know, whose eating humble pie down Ennis way now, eh? I'll see you in London, Mr. Keane.

The Date Half Marathon - Part 1

Tomorrow is the start of the running season for me with the spring half marathon in Date, the next town over. There are a record 4,000 entrants lined up for this year, consisting of I, of the race of men, and approximately 3,999 hobbits. The word out of the wizard's circle is that the hobbits have banded with the dwarves from the mines of Mt. Yotei to ambush me somewhere around the 11km mark. Apparently the halflings have long memories are still incensed about some comments I made in my blog about last year's event.
But I fear them not, for I am a true descendent of the MacFhionnbhairs, legendary celtic warriors of old. The 'Great Comb Overs' as we are also known, recognizable by our gleaming crowns and banner like hair that unfurls and flaps majestically in the brisk spring breeze blowing the blood stirring scent of the Atlantic all the way from Ballyheigue.
Tracing our venerable lineage back to the original guardians of North Kerry hurling, we MacFhionnbhairs have over the course of history vanquished the vikings, drove the darkness from the west and introduced advanced market gardening techniques to the Causeway hinterland.
We are not to be trifled with.
So I fear no ambush; I shall meet the hobbits and dwarves at the 11km mark and they shall know the clash of my iron clad hurley, and quail beneath the fierce fury of the MacFhionnbhairs. And henceforth their sons, and their sons after them, shall cower with stumpy fear at the very mention of the 'Battle of the 11km mark"!
Unfortunately, for matters athletic the prognosis is not so good. This particular MacFhionnbhair has grown, ahem, somewhat 'swarthy' over the long winter and seems to have over-girded both loins and his waist.
In response to the bitter cold we endured this year, my body has necessarily, and I'd like to stress that 'necessarily', evolved a layer of protective fat around the greater abdominal region. There's a lot of important organs down there around the abdominal region that need protecting from the cold.
So...
So, I just want to preempt some of the frenzied media chatter that has built up over the past week about my participation in tomorrow's half marathon, qualifying times, and the London Olympics.
Honestly people, like the Irish rugby team last autumn, your just setting yourselves up for a return visit to the Heartbreak Hotel. And yis only have yourselves and de meeja to blame.
No, tomorrow will be a training run as (a) there are 4,000 of us and for the first 10km or so, we all have to run along a 3 metre wide cycle lane like so many sweaty sardines; (b) the temperature is forecast to be sunny with a high of 12 degrees and I have been basically training in snow and subzero temperatures for the past month, so I am most likely to succumb to heat exhaustion; and (c) I have to clatter through all those runty feckers out at the 11km mark.
All this is not to say that I have given up on being on the marathon starting line (and subsequently the victor's podium) in London in early August, but I am leaving the qualifying for that to the Yakumo Healthy Milk Run in early June.
Then you will see greatness. Tomorrow you will just see grim-faced endurance and slaughtered hobbits.

Me, coming up to the 11km mark. Note comb-over.

And their off....

And so the new term begins. From last Monday classes have commenced and like a punch drunk, prize-weight fighter I have rumbled back in to the classroom to restore honour and glory to the battered world of ELT.

With the first years fear is the key. I come across as a Irish version of Gunnery Sergeant O'Hartman from Full Metal Jacket, telling, nay, yelling at my new recruits "THIS IS A GODDAMN ENGLISH CLASS AND I WILL NOT STAND FOR ANY OF THAT NIHONGO BULLSHIT FROM ANY OF YOU BROWN-EYED RICE MUNCHERS! NOW, DECLINE THE VERB 'TO BE' AS IN 'MY BOOT TO BE UP YOUR ASS IF YOU DON'T DO AS I GODDAMN SAY'! GODDAMN"!!

With the third years its all world weary cynicism; these guys are vets, they've already pulled two tours of duty in the university and yelling at them isn't going to get you anywhere. So instead I double up the cynicism and add sarcasm to the ante. So initial contact tends to be during roll call:

"Satoshi Sashimi?"

"Here"

"You think, huh? Not to me you ain't"

"Eh?"

"I don't like what that implies. Consider yourself failed".

Finally, I have the post graduates. They tend to be eager enough so I generally leave them alone but every once in a while I toss out a 'Today would be a good day to die' just to make sure they don't get too complacent.

Saturday night at the movies

It's Saturday night and as I write this Sanae is watching 'Emma' with Mrs.-Lead-Singer-of-Coldplay and a lot of period furniture. I'm supposed to be watching it with her, but I have managed to convince her that being in the same room, albeit using a computer and occasionally glancing at the TV, does in fact technically constitute 'watching'.

There is no escape from this remorseless sort of matrimonial blackmail - "you don't watch movies with me anymore", is enough to browbeat this ardent cinephile into spending close on 2 hours (there are extras on the DVD) glancing at, sorry, 'watching' what is essentially an extended advert for England's National Trust.

And, I must confess dear reader, I have seen the movie before.

I was young, living in Shibestsu, it was winter - it was pretty much always winter in that part of Hokkaido, and it was either that or drop in on my neighbour Yoshi, and spend the night getting drunk and watching bootleg 'Queen Live in Concert' videos while trying vainly to translate Freddie Mercury's stage patter "Konnichi wa Munich! Mina wa subarashi! Rock shimasho ka?!", etc., etc.

And it's not that I am short of things to watch. Thanks to my good friend Dave's advice I now have the subtitles to go with 'A Separation', 'The Prophet', 'Once upon a time in Anatolia', 'How I ended this summer', but as none of them feature regency houses, candlelit ballrooms, horse drawn carriages, or a disconcertingly long haired Ewan McGregor, they remain banned from the Tenjin-cho big screen.

And so for the purpose of matrimonial movie harmony, I forego, well, pretty much everything beyond the 'romantic comedy' section of my local Tsutaya rental store. As Ms. Austen herself wrote, "Husbands and wives generally understand when opposition will be in vain".

The Titanic Museum

The newly opened Titanic Museum in Belfast has been getting a lot of coverage here in Japan. NHK's morning news carried an extended report on the opening and the Hokkaido Shimbun published a fairly comprehensive piece on it too. I'm sure there were features in other newspapers as well, but as we are fierce Ezo separatists here in Muroran, we don't bother with the national papers. There all about government and business and industry and arts and other big city shite, with absolutely nothing about bare-handed salmon fishing at dawn on the Shibetsu river, or the earthy joys of forest clearing deep in the Hidaka mountains.

Anyway, it would be worth the museum's while to cash in on this free publicity and attract some of that auld Yen. Though the expectation from this side is that Leonardo Di Caprio would be on hand to personally greet each of the Japanese visitors. And that there would be a karaoke bar on the premises where they could all belt out endless renditions of 'My heart will go on'.

Here's to you Robinson-san...

Last Friday was graduation day here in our little piece of snowbound academia. I didn't attend as these displays of alleged educational accomplishment tend to be long on speeches and short on anything that could be termed cognitive sentience. Nor were there any singing-and-dancing vegetables.

For shame.

Plus, my involvement with the students tends to be minimal. Unlike their teachers in the engineering faculty, we forlorn outcasts in the English department don't have much to do with the students beyond our allotted teaching hours. Whereas, for instance, the professors in the School of Electrical Engineering will be expected to do everything for their students over their four years of attendance from initial university orientation to rewriting their final dissertations (true); we get them for maybe one 15 week term and then subsequently, academically speaking, never encounter them again.

Given that we are teaching English this is probably the way both sides prefer it, but occasionally you come across the motivated star, shining all that brighter for the otherwise indifferent gloom from whence she or he emerges.

This past Friday saw me say farewell to two such stars, Kazuma and Hironaru. Both surprised me by coming to my office (separately) to wish me farewell and thank me, yes, thank me for teaching them English. Not that they needed much teaching. Most of their English study they did in their own time - my class hours wouldn't account for their fluency. But I was gratified nevertheless, and proud of them in a way too. Kazuma has secured a job with Sumitomo Industries, one of Japan's largest industrial conglomerates, while Hironaru is off to join Toshiba's international division. Both of them stressed the importance of English in securing these jobs (both of them, as it turned out, had to take English tests and do job interviews in English).

If only I had more students like them, I would (a) perhaps stop my steady slide into jaded cynicism about my chosen, ahem, profession; and (b) be able to kick this bottle-of-Bushmills-a-day habit I have developed.

An Inconvenient Truth

Yesterday we woke up to this:


And this morning we woke up to this:


Sweet Jesus, Mother Nature, just what the good feck is going on?! It's now the end of March which should, by any seasonal measure, be showing some tentative, green-shooted signs of spring. Instead we are still shoveling a foot of snow and cranking the radiators up to eleven.
I mean, where the hot hell is this global warning everyone keeps bleating on about? Melting icecaps, higher sea-levels, warmer winters, hotter summers, increased C02, drowned polar bears, shrinking ozone layer - God, yes please, bring it on I say, bring it on.
Well, okay, maybe not the polar bears, but all the rest, definitely.
According to the Hokkaido Shimbun, we've had the coldest winter in a generation with many places breaking records for the total amount of snowfall. Nor is winter finished with us yet. This evening NHK Hokkaido's somewhat spaced-out weather forecaster (unlike the genial assurances of Gerry Fleming, Ebina-san tends to give the impression that he's been partaking of Abashiri's finest, wildest medicinal herbs immediately prior to coming on air), told us we'd have snow for the rest of the week. Over the weekend we should have a temporary reprieve before another cold spell moves down from Siberia for the first week in April.
So, yeah, Al Gore, you're full of shit. And Russia, goddamn hate the proximity of your frozen landmass.