Family photos

It was a cold, grey wintery day here in Muroran and there wasn't much impetus for venturing outside.
What is depressing is that this is a sentence I could basically write for any day over the next three months.
Sigh.
Prolonged sigh.
To cheer ourselves up, we took some family snaps.

A Belated Happy New Year

To one and all. No real reason for not writing sooner. We disappeared for a week down to the wilds of central Hokkaido to spend New Year's at Sanae's mother's house. No internet in that part of the world and it was touch and go there for a couple of days with the telephone too. What we did have in abundance was cold, bitter cold. During the day it was fecking freezing, and at night it was unbelievably fecking freezing. Respectively, -4 and -20. I made the mistake of going for a jog one morning, not too early, around 9:00am. As I passed the JA center the big green digital thermometer told me it was still -13. I don't think I have ever run in conditions as cold. The winter air in Tokachi is so dry that I did manage to work up a sweat even in those conditions but as the sweat made its way through  my hat, gloves and scarf, it froze. By the time I got back to the house it looked I had a particularly rampant case of dandruff with all these small, white balls of frozen sweat littering my hat and shoulders.
Still, it had to be done. A new year, a new season of mid life crises / endurance races to be run in a futile attempt to grimly hang on to the younger man I once was but never will be again. And in a spirit of open armed inclusion to my fellow over 40s, I will provide a month-by-month 2015 preview to see if anyone can be enticed in joining me tilting at aging windmills.
And improving my metaphors.
January: Nothing. Too busy clearing snow. And skiing with Cian. I don't particularly like skiing and would prefer if the boy went on his own, but he claims he can't drive and so I have to take him to the ski field. So on top of my mid-life crisis, I also have the incessant demands of fatherhood in a cold climate.
February: There is a nordic ski marathon in Otake, about an hour's drive from Muroran, but as I can't nordic ski I won't be entering that. Though I would like to. Of all the winter sports you can do, (skiing, snowboarding, ice-skating, bobsleighing, luging, strip poker), this one would appeal to me the most as it actually involves self exercise as opposed to gravity doing all the work. Oh, and I would also like to try that one with the rifles because, c'mon, shooting things always feels good.
March: Still snow. But beginning to melt. Hopefully.
April: The Date Half Marathon - the gold standard of long distance running. Could be joined this year by 'Gebrselassie' Cian and 'Clydesdale' Mammy.
May: The Northern Horse Farm Marathon - the silver standard of long distance running. Hoping to see a couple of more Kerry jerseys out on the course.
June: Not sure. There is a two day endurance race across the 2000m+ Daisetsuzan mountain range in the centre of Hokkaido which I have always hankered to do but (a) my left knee can't hanker any more let alone take those stumbling descents; and (b) the water is finally warm and the waves are rolling in down at Itanki beach.
July: The Niseko Challenge. Given the age profile of the majority of the competitors this is an event that makes me feel young(ish). It also makes me feel highly embarrassed as I pathetically pedal in a good hour after they have all finished.
August: Well, if it's August, it's Ireland and it's the Cavan Kayakrun followed a week later by Gaelforce West. No pressure people, but no excuses either.
September: The Forest Kozan Green Race. Because 10th place is mine.
October: New for this year is the inagural Hiroo-cho half marathon. What is sure to be a 21km exercise in tearful nostalgia.
November/December: Not sure. Last year I gave up jogging for November and December to see if I could do anything to alleviate the pain brought on by a combination of achilles tendinitis, plantar fascitis, and a degenerating knee meniscus. The break helped, a little, but the lack of post-run endorphins also made me into a moody, irritable, hard-to-live-with grouchy bastard. So I'm not sure. Mind you a winter trip to Singapore would go a long way towards alleviating those symptoms.

Cavan Kayakrun - can you spot your humble blogger

Gaelforce West, before Croagh Patrick (or "that motherf***ing mountain" as us competitors refer to it). Hence the smile

Forest Kozan Green Race - pursuing bear just out of shot

The Gambler

Sanae was at it again, throwing bad money after worse. Today was the 59th running of the Arima Kinen (the Arima Memorial Stakes for all you monolinguals - shame on you), and Mammy snuck off down to the local Rice-Paddy Powers for a bit of 'an auld flutter'.
And true to form, she lost.
Sigh.

The Festive Season

There is not much to do in Muroran over Christams. Yes, I know, a rather controversial statement to make but, hey, that's us here at Teach Gaynor-Takahashi, always pushing the media envelope. Unlike back home where the festive season is replete with horse racing (hello Mother and Barry), Christmas swims (hello Uncle Willy), frenzied sale shopping (hello my sisters), inter-provincial rugby (hello Uncle Anthony), things are decidedly muted in this part of the world. Part of this is due to the climate of course - there's not an awful lot you can do when the mercury is resolutely in the minus and it's blizzarding. Shovel snow of course, twice in the same day (as we did yesterday), though that doesn't exactly fill you brimful of joie de vivre. Geography plays a part too for if we were living in Tokyo there would a multitude of cultural events across a multitude of museums, galleries, and concert halls to attend. Here in Muroran we have Sky movies. Mind you in Memuro, where Sanae's mother lives and where we are due to spend the next week, we don't even have that. Nor the internet. There is electricity though, and running water, so by 19th century standards we are larging it.
All this is a long preamble to the long walk myself and Cian took yesterday for the lack of anything better to do. There's only so many times you can re-watch 'Arthur's Christmas' before the suspense wears off (Will Santa get the present to Gwen's house before she wakes up on Christmas morning? He will. Each and every time). So off we went, out into the great white yonder, for a stroll/tramp around the extended neighborhood.
It was cold.
Well, it was cold for me, it was fine for Cian as we were moving at his pace. This is a considerably slower land speed than what Daddy is used to. You would think I would have adapted having been married to a hobbit for a close on a decade now, but no, I feckin froze. Matters weren't helped by all the enforced stops we had to make as 'old man Cian' kept needing a 'break' every few minutes. What normally takes me a brisk 40 minutes took close on 2 hours and by the end of it I knew how Aspley Cherry-Garrad must have felt.

The rest of the day

Well, that was a jolly start to the festive season, I think you will agree. A photograph to send terror into the tiny, terrified hearts of nephews and nieces everywhere: "If you don't go to bed right this moment, we'll call Uncle Brian..." Then just watch those little feet pitter panic patter to bed.
There was a distinctly militaristic feel to the rest of the day. Cian got his wished for aircraft carrier and immediately upon taking it out of the box declared the house was now at 'Code Orange'. He then pointed the ship in the general direction of China/North Korea/Russia and got his fighter jets to fly a succession of 'sorties' throughout the morning. The aim, he announced at a terse 10:00a.m. press briefing, was to give tactical air support to Santa (codename "the Big Red One") as he flew over some of the world's less Christian countries. It was only when Google Earth had confirmed that Santa, sorry, 'the Big Red One', had successfully arrived over Poland and thus entered NATO's airspace, that we were all permitted to "stand down".
Sanae's presents, yes presents plural, had been arriving in the weeks prior to Christmas (a down jacket and the Japanese version of Lord of the Rings books), so there was nothing for her to take out from under the Christmas tree besides Cian's wrapping paper. To cheer her up I got her the complete Japanese horse racing guide to 2015 and gosh, but you should have seen the way her eyes lit up. Like Las Vegas on a Friday night. Or Macao on any night of the year.
Daddy got a long hard look at his own mortality, and an assortment of calendars.
Then it was off to work/school for everyone as this is Japan and, despite the best efforts of Muroran's resident pair of young blue-eyed Mormons (soon to be the subject of another blog), the goat-sacrificing, witch-burning, whale-eating heathens of this country remains resolutely non-Christian.

"It's not the years, honey...

it's the mileage".

Thursday, December 25th, 6:07a.m. 45 years gone.

Twas the night before Christmas....

And all was quiet in the Teach Gaynor-Takahashi. As I write this we are down to "T minus three hours and counting", though I am not too sure what the 'T' stands for. Mind you it won't be quiet for long as there is a desperate need for some wrapping to be done, but a certain somebody has yet to be taken by the "soft embalmer of the still midnight". To help things along I tried reading Keats' poem to him repeatedly but it seemed to make the boy irritated rather than drowsy. Now the problem is that both Mammy and Daddy are all too ready to be embalmed, long before midnight (we both had work today and more tomorrow), but placing presents under the tree still 'wrapped' in their Amazon boxes isn't really keeping with the Christmas spirit. So it is a shared can of Red Bull and iPods on - 'One Republic' for her, 'Vampire Weekend' for me and many more (metaphorical) miles to go before we sleep.