From Pennies To Yennies

Dan and I were go-go-go all weekend. We have mixed feelings about weekends like the last- on the one hand, we both are firm believers that no one remembers a relaxing evening at home, so we might as well make the most of our lives. On the other, by the time Sunday evening rolls around and we’re preparing for the new week, there’s always a little sadness where we wished we chalked in some time to just do nothing.

But I’ll start with Friday! Dan was in charge of laying the trail for our running group, and for once we decided to make it close to our apartment. Because we’re on the fringes of the city, we usually have about a 30-50 minute commute to running club. It’s not so bad for Dan who is already at work downtown, but yeah. It can be a pain. So this past Friday, we made it within walking distance of our apartment, which was awesome!

After everyone ran and had some drinks and chatted, a bunch of people randomly came home with us to continue chatting and enjoy some snacks. I’m always so impressed at how many people we can fit into our tiny apartment!
Some of us- Clockwise from the back of Yukie’s head, Mika, Aldo, Rachel, CC, me, Tsutomu and Kouichi

Saturday we went to the Samurai hash and it was a great trail run.
Tell me this isn’t a gorgeous place to run!

Unlike last time we went to Samurai a few weeks ago, their haberdasher was there, so Dan and I got some sweet visors to rock for summer runs.

Since Saturday runs are outside the city in Kanagawa, we trained home and didn’t even have time to shower before we headed out to Ebisu to watch my friend Madeleine’s boyfriend sing in his band! It seems like the only times Dan and I leave the house is for running club, work, or food/ shopping, so it was nice to get out and do something new.
Jon’s band!

The venue was a cool little bar with upstairs seating near a pitched roof. We sat and enjoyed a drink and chatted and bopped our heads to the fun 90’s songs they covered. So much fun!

Jon was such a good singer/ rapper! He had us rocking and laughing. The floor was packed with dancers. I would have loved to dance, but I was still exhausted from my run that day!

Sadly we had to leave early to catch our last train home. But hopefully we can do it again sometime!

Sunday (wow, we’re only at Sunday?!) brought my daily triple- I’d felt like I was slacking a bit fitness-wise last week, so I decided to 1- run 2 miles as hard as I could (19 minutes!), do a weight training session, and go to hot yoga.
I basically looked like this all day: sweaty!

That night after hot yoga, Dan and I had no idea what to do for dinner. We wanted to be healthy-ish since we’d just exercised all day, but didn’t feel like cooking. So we grabbed a cab and went out for sushi. It was amazing and I waddled out supper happy 😉 To save money coming home we took the bus, which dumps us in Sengawa, about 2 train stops from our house. As we were walking to the train station, we passed an arcade and decided to go in and play around a bit.

Let me just say- Japan arcades are hands-down cooler than US arcades. They don’t just have rows of shooter and rock band-type games. They have photo booths, music games, dance games and our favorite, crane games. These ones are way better than in the states though. Instead of winning a cheap doll or stale piece of candy, you can win actual cool stuff. Dan got addicted to trying to win a Mickey Mouse pocket watch. To win it he had to poke a metal spur through a hole on a plastic strap atop the watch box. Way too much money later, he won!

I got stuck trying to flip a juice glass and glass pitcher set off a shelf that had a rim made of hot glue. So the box wasn’t glued down, but the dried glue gave it enough traction to not slip off the shelf. But eventually I won too! It has Rilakkuma all over, a cute popular bear here. I collect pitchers so I’m excited to add this one to my collection. All the rest are currently boxed up, so I don’t even remember which ones I have. I’m telling you, moving home and unpacking in a couple years will truly be like Christmas!

That was our busy weekend! Hope everyone is having a good week!