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A Disney Day!

The week I had a cold, Dan and I had planned for a fun day at Tokyo Disneyland. He has been working so much, we were both looking forward to it! But thanks to my darn cold, I took a pass on the day. Luckily he was able to get enough work done that weekend that we went the following week when I felt better!

I love getting over a cold, when I don’t feel like a drippy sweaty mess on the couch anymore. Instead of painting my nails, I tried a nail kit called Sally Hansen Salon Effects. It’s basically a “sticker” of nail polish you press on and shape to your nail with a file. It wasn’t very hard to do, and with a topcoat it lasted the past 2 weeks!
Pretty fishnet nails!
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We trained out to Maihama and entered the park. It was all decorated for the 30th anniversary!
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We walked around a bit, just enjoying the park and decorations. I think that’s the thing people find most strange about Dan and I- we don’t beeline to e-ticket attractions. We really just love the atmosphere, seeing happy people, and taking it all in.

We did, however get a fastpass for the new Star Tours! Fastpass acquired at 10am, return time: 7pm!

As usual, typical Tokyo Disneyland patrons. All dressed up for a day out!
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We rode some rides, and then indulged in one of our favorite junk foods- pizza flavored spring rolls from Toon Town!
They taste just like a giant Pizza Roll!
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More wandering led to Fantasyland, where Dan was a good sport and rode It’s a Small World with me. I recently read the book It’s Kind of a Cute Story by Rolly Crump, an imagineer/ artist for Disney from way-back-when, and he did a lot of work for this ride. It was wonderful to see all his personal touches!
And let’s face it, I’m a sucker for a sassy pink camel tapping his toes!
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We had lunch at the bakery, where they always have these cute Mike Wazowski melon bread buns!
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Time out for a picture! Tried to get us and the castle in!
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We really had a great day. It was sunny but not hot (but we both came home with a little color!), we didn’t stand in lines all day or feel pressured by time.

The second longest line we waited in was Pooh’s Hunny Hunt. It was about 25 minutes.
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We kept checking in on Splash Mountain, one of my faves, but the wait was always 90 or 100 minutes. This duck kept an eye on riders!
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At some point we picked up a fastpass for Big Thunder, which is always fun πŸ™‚
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My favorite part of Big Thunder- the goat! He even has a Twitter account!
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Eventually the sun set, and Disney took on a new beauty
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We swung past Splash Mountain one more time, and saw the wait was 45 minutes. Since we were already satisfied with our day, we decided to go for it!
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How to end such a perfect day? A Mickey waffle!
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Weekend Trip to Atami

Oh, it’s been a while! I’ll start with my first weekend not being sick- Dan and I went to the cute seaside city known as Atami!

We went as part of a hashing overnight trip. The plan was to arrive in Atami Saturday morning, run a trail, and then enjoy the evening before running a morning trail Sunday and heading back to Tokyo.

As people arrived we threw our stuff into the hash van. Unlike Tokyo hashes, the vast majority of Samurai hashes are A to B, not A to A, so they load up our gear and take it to the finish site.
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We also got Samurai flip flops, which I thought was a neat souvenir! I didn’t get a picture of them, but they say Samurai HHH on the side of them.

All of us just before the run started. I’m in the front row, next to Dan in his orange shirt (picture “borrowed” from the Samurai HHH website!)
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This was definitely one of the hardest trails I’ve ever run. It was predominantly steep uphill or downhill, there was rarely any flat running except the last mile.
Beautiful views though!
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To begin, we ran up and down a ridiculously steep, curvy hill. Once at the bottom, we then had to climb 396 stairs. Dan was ahead of me, and to be funny he wrote “nap time” at the top of the steps. A nap sounded like a good idea at this point, and I wasn’t even a mile into the run yet!
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On and on we went. It was SO much uphill. At one point, I saw Dan left a message for me, and learned he was only 5 minutes ahead of me! This trail was wearing everyone out!
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Up the stairs and down the stairs
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When a hash trail is nearing the end, the hare (trail maker) will write “BEER NEAR” in chalk to let everyone know the end is in sight. But we kept running up hills and we never saw a beer near! It made one particular runner very angry…
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But alas, we finally had a lovely beach front finish!
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Lots of singing and celebrations, just like all other hashes. But it was fun being somewhere new!
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We had our usual circle, where we sing traditional songs and have some rituals, and I got to be a part of it today. it was my 6th run with Samurai, so I had a naming ceremony!
Being asked a lot of embarrassing, ridiculous questions (photo from Samurai HHH website)
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After much questioning, and being led away so the group can vote on names, I was made an official Samurai hasher with the name of Bloody Peacock! (photo from Samurai HHH website)
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I will use that name whenever I run the Samurai hash, but will probably always be known as Froggy Style. It was my first hash name, and it was given to me by my home hash, so it’s a little more special than being named by some drunk runners on the beach! πŸ˜‰

After ample time socializing on the beach, we checked into our hotel rooms. To my delight, it was my first ryokan (Japanese) style hotel room! Tatami mats for beds, minimal furniture, paper walls. I prefer the comfort of a regular hotel room, but it was cool to try once!
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My friend Saori was my next door neighbor!
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We also had a traditional Japanese dinner that included some sashimi and shabu shabu
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There was an onsen (hot spring) at the hotel so it was nice to enjoy that. In the evening we all just socialized on the beach, and headed out the next morning! All in all a good overnighter and I can’t wait to do another! Preferably with fewer hills! πŸ˜‰

Sick Days

I was sick all last week. It was only a cold, But all week I didn’t run, lift weights, or even leave the house! There was a lot of book reading and movie watching.

This was a common sighting in our apartment:
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Oh, memories
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I indulged in some of my childhood favorites of the 90’s. This includes, but is not limited to:
The Client
The Sandlot
A League of Their Own
My Girl
My Girl 2
Kindergarten Cop (ok, 80s on that one)

The one time I did leave the house was a major disappointment! I was craving clam chowder, and hemming and hawing over eating the heavy, creamy soup. I wasn’t burning any calories, but since I had zero appetite I decided it was fine.
On our way to the store
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I bought my imported can of Cambell’s Chunky Clam Chowder from the overpriced international market and went home and started to make it right away. But something was weird. It smelled fine, but I couldn’t get it out of the can. It was ridiculously thick and chunky. I showed Dan and he was weirded out, but thought maybe the microwave would “normalize” it. It did not. It looked disgusting. I would have taken a picture, but I didn’t want to subject you all to that. So sadly, I ended up throwing away my $7 can of soup.

By Friday I was feeling a little better, but I still skipped our running club. It’s the first time this year I have missed it! I was really sad, but we were going out of town the next day and I wanted to be as rested and well as possible.

So that’s what I’ve been up to the past week. Misery! All better now though!

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
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Saturday we went to the Samurai hash and it was a great trail run.
Tell me this isn’t a gorgeous place to run!
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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.
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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!
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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!
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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!
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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!
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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 πŸ˜‰ 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!
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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!
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That was our busy weekend! Hope everyone is having a good week!

Summer is Coming!

Yes! It’s true. Things are already heating up here which is good and bad. Good because, while on the humid side, it’s still nice to have reliably good weather for runs, bike rides, etc. Bad, because we don’t really have air conditioning (a small unit over the couch), so our room is hot at night, which makes it tough for me to fall asleep.

I try to combat my desire for a mid day nap by staying active all day. So far it’s working! But i have to be honest: sometimes blogging is a drag. I’ll spend a whole train ride home form my running group trying to think of something interesting to talk about. Sometimes I post entries I don’t love because I was in a hurry, or didn’t have time to include pictures, or just didn’t have anything to say.

I have to hand it to bloggers who blog daily, especially while working full time or parenting. It takes a while to write, edit, upload photos, etc. It takes a lot of dedication to be a daily blogger. and an interesting one at that! So I decided to not blog daily. With the weather nice, I wanna be out enjoying it, not stressing over what to write and if it’s interesting. I still plan to blog at least one a week, but for the time being, no more entries on lazy days, or getting housework done. My next entry will probably be only a couple days away- Dan and I are going to Disneyland, and you know I always take lots of pictures!

In the meantime, I encourage you to log off and go enjoy some sunshine!

When Bad Days Happen

I know I’m often ridiculously perky. At least, people tell me so all the time! But in a moment of complete honesty, things make me tick, I get mad at myself, and I have flat-out bad days.

And today was one of them!

I was just behind schedule all day. After a terrible night’s sleep (it’s getting hot here!) I napped for too long. I only got one load of laundry done. I didn’t get any house work done today. I was just off balance all day. I did get in a weight training session. I kept checking the clock and couldn’t keep up!

The day flew by and before I knew it, it was time go to run with my running group. It was going to be a special night. Our friend JJ retired from the air force, and this was his “retirement run”. He will soon be moving to Daytona Beach, Florida, and we may visit, but we won’t be running with him weekly (or, the weeks he wasn’t in Afghanistan). So tonight was going to be a big send-off party with swag, lots of friends and delicious Okinawan food.

As I was actively running down the stairs to the train platform, the train took off. Without me! Which left me waiting 11 minutes for the next one. Hmph. By missing that first train I was cutting it close to being late, so I looked up a faster route. It was one I wasn’t familiar with, but hey I’ve officially be a resident of Tokyo for 26 months now, I got this.

I didn’t “got” this.

At the transfer spot, I got on the train going the wrong direction. But in my defense, it’s confusing! I wanted the Odawara train, but not the Odawara train heading for Odawara! Sigh. So I got off the train, and officially late, got myself turned around.

By the time I got to the restaurant, paid my club dues, and dropped off my stuff, I didn’t even feel like running, and was 30 minutes late. The humidity is really picking up here. But off I went through the streets of Harajuku, by myself instead of my pack of running friends.

Things were fine til I got to Yoyogi park, which was pitch black. I got completely turned around, tripped at one point and couldn’t see any trail markings, so I high-tailed it out of there and ran along the berm of the park where the sidewalks were lit. I was so not in the spirit of running and fun when I arrived and now I was just feeling pretty crummy. By the time I was a little over halfway done, everyone else was finished running and settling into the restaurant.

I finished and put on a big happy face, but I was so mad at myself for being late, getting lost on trail, etc. I didn’t stay for the dinner and my friend who was leaving was SO swamped with people giving hugs and well wishes, Dan and I just faded out of the restaurant and back to the streets. He biked from work, so I took the train home alone. As my bad mood melted I felt bad for not saying bye to my friend, but it sounds like this was his formal going-away party, and he’ll still be around for a few more weeks.

I have to say I’m pleased though. I really didn’t have a great day, but still got in a weight lifting session and ran 4 miles. At least I have my priorities right!

Summer Reading

I have a best friend, and her name is Kelsey Johnson.
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Kelsey and I on our first Disney trip together in March 2010

While she’s still in Seattle and I’m here in Tokyo, I could rattle off a million reasons why I’m sad we’re not near each other. Coffee dates, shopping, baking, movies, non-stop chit chat. One of the things we both love though is reading. When we first met, before tablets and Kindles and all those reading devices were popular (aka back in the OLD days, circa 2009-2010), we would go to Barnes & Noble together, armed with peppermint mochas and our rewards cards, and buy insane amounts of books. We even bought matching book shelves at Ikea for our libraries.

And then we’d read. At the Starbucks in Barnes & Noble. On the couch at home. In bed. On vacation together. In Seattle coffee shops. It was such an awesome way to enjoy each others’ company. Even better, she’s a quick reader and gives me the inside scoop on novels and series she thinks I might like.

Kelsey and I bought books faster than we could read them. We loved stocking our bookshelves at home. But then I moved to Portland, and my books had to get packed away. My epic, unread book collection sits in Dan’s mom’s garage, where whenever I visit, I pull a handful out and bring to Japan. Now that eBooks have taken off, I do most my reading on my iPad Mini.

But Summer is coming! And though I don’t have any vacations planned til August I just can’t resist a lazy, fluffy read.
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This is my summer reading lineup! Some of these books I don’t even remember buying!
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris– it’s David Sedaris. I’m guaranteed some dark laughs w his dry humor
Weekend in Paris, Robyn Sisman– girl goes to Paris, falls in love. Or something. Good for a beach or plane
Marshmallows for Breakfast, Dorothy Koomson I don’t remember buying this, but it does have a “buy 3, get the 4th book free!” sticker on its cover. So I think that pretty much answers my question.
Walt Disney; An American Original, Bob Thomas I actually bought this book at Disney World a couple trips ago. I love reading my Disney books before a Disney trip!
Bringing Home the Birkin, Michael Tonello I’m currently reading this, it’s a fun read about a guy who sells the famed Hermès Birkin handbag on eBay. Interesting learning about the top tier of the fashion world
Realityland, David Koenig Because one Disney read is never enough!
NASM- The Essential of Personal Fitness Training Oh, the joys of having to read a textbook…

What are your fave genres/ series/ books?

A Visit to Ibaraki

I hope everyone had a good weekend. We did!

One of the best parts about hashing is the variety of kennels, or chapters. Our kennel is a Friday night one in Tokyo, and most the time we stick to the Tokyo kennels. It’s really fun to check out other kennels though, see how they’re run, what’s similar and what’s different. So this Saturday Dan and I took a day trip to Ibaraki for a day with the Ibaraki Hash House Harriers (IH3).

I was glad we were going because a fellow hasher friend of ours was moving back to the UK, and this run was doubling as a farewell BBQ. We caught the Tsukuba Express from Akihabara, making total transit time just shy of 2 hours. Though all the locals know where the usual meet-up spot is, our friend was nice enough to run the 10 minutes out to the train station and chalked some arrows so we wouldn’t get lost!
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We arrived to the meet up with no problem and got to know everyone. It wasn’t long til we were off! The first thing I realized is how hot it was. Dan and I normally run at night, so running on a warm day under the sun was a little rough.

About 2.5-3 miles in, the hare (the guy who laid the trail for us to run) set up a funny little drink stop for us runners.
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Dan and I aren’t big drinkers in the first place, and especially when I’m dieting, but it was so hot that we split a cold one, and it felt amazing. We hung out and chatting with everyone in the shade for maybe 20 minutes, then got back on trail.

The beer gave me a bit of a sloshy belly, and paired with the beating sun, I wasn’t feeling like a picture-perfect athlete. Luckily a decent amount of the remainder of the run was through “shiggy”, or forested areas. Some of it was tough, but pretty!
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Ran around lots of rice paddies. You don’t see that in Tokyo!
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Dan making his way down a little hill
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About 5.6 miles later (but who’s counting?) we finished and were rewarded with an awesome BBQ and mingled with new running friends. The party was still going when we left, but sadly we had to catch our train back to Tokyo.

Our group post run
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We officially have a new Sunday tradition: hot yoga! Before class Dan and I went for a 3 mile run, then made our way to the gym. It was a good class, my only gripe was all the ballet-esque poses we did. Didn’t seem very yoga-like. Oh well.
The camera didn’t really capture it, but we were actively dripping with sweat!
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That was our weekend! How was yours?

Oh, City Living…

Bam!
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That would be the line for cabs at Shinjuku Station on a Friday night when the Keio train line is down.

Dan and I had a fun night because it was our running club night! He was also haring (leading the trail) so it was fun to “host” the runners, provide snacks and drinks, etc. After, we spent a long time chatting with people in the park, one of those moments where you start to say, “well, I best be heading out” 3 or 4 times only to get roped into a new topic. Eventually we headed out and decided to go to one of our favorite sushi restaurants, only to discover it was closed (!), and then on to another of our choice restaurants.

We hurried out because we didn’t want to miss last train. We trained to Shinjuku and I knew it before I saw the marquee. There were people standing around, sitting around, passed out everywhere. Now, I know this is the WORLD’S busiest train station, but this wasn’t the norm. And then we rounded the corner, and our train was down. It happens once in a blue moon, but when it does, what a pain! The craziest part was we later learned the halting was caused by a major accident at OUR home train stop! Our stop is pretty small and doesn’t get a lot of traffic, so that’s crazy to think all the ruckus was just outside our apartment.

Cabbing home from Shinjuku would be about $50, so we opted to take another train line that would at least get us to our side of town, then walk. Well, a few hundred of our closest friends had the same idea, and we were packed into the train cars truly like sardines. No one was happy. 15 minutes later we gladly got off, and ran into a friend of ours from running! It’s rare you run into someone you know in Tokyo, so that was exciting.

Dan and I walked home from there, which was only about 3 km. The weather was nice and we chatted. Now we’re home and off to sleep! Here’s to a great weekend and much more entertaining blog posts next week! Tomorrow: we’re off to Ibaraki for the day!

It’s Thursday! As usual I have no idea what I did with my week and it’s almost over!

Today’s exercising was just a run. Let’s be honest, I’m not a fast runner. On top of that I’ve lost some steam since taking a month or two off for my torn achilles tendon. So I decided to do some research on speedwork and see if I can get back to where I was pace-wise with my running. Or faster!

A large part of speed training is interval work. I went back to what Dan and I now call “Nostalgia Loop”, the .2 mile loop around an apartment building where we first began this crazy running journey. My plan was simple: jog a lap, sprint a lap, until I hit 2 miles. I actually thought this would be easy. I’m either jogging and enjoying it, or sprinting and it’s hard, but over fast!

It really didn’t work out that way. I’d sprint, and then need that entire next loop of jogging to recover. After 2 miles I was more than spent! Was going to do a weight training activity but decided to just rest my legs for the rest of the day.

Since I love talking about the Hash House Harriers so much, I thought I’d tell you a bit more about what I do for them.

I’m a haberdasher, which pretty much just means I’m in charge of designing, producing and selling swag that has our chapter on it, F3H3. Does it pay? No! Does it come with respect?! Nope, I can’t get merch out fast enough! But do I love it? YES.

I was inspired to become the haberdasher when I noticed the other Tokyo hash chapters had all sorts of swag. Why did Friday hardly have any? I set out on my first project- fleece jackets for everyone:
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The great part is that it was simple, and everyone loved having a jacket with their special hash name on it.

After the success of the jackets, I had Dan’s birthday run coming up. I decided to surprise him and make shirts for the group. Since he was turning 31, I decided to do an ice cream party, and theme it the colors of 31 flavors. I got partnered with a fabulous graphic designer who is now somewhat of a presence in our group. I don’t have a picture of the front of the shirt, but I used our hare mascot and our designer put him in some birthday attire:
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These days, I have creative control on what gets made into shirts, bags, hats etc. It’s become a lot of fun to work with our designer and play with our hare and give him new outfits!

A kimono?
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Perhaps a ninja?
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Sine Dan and I fund all of these projects ourselves, we can only do a couple at a time, which is too bad. We make it back as we sell them, and don’t take a profit. For now, I’m working on a logo for my birthday run next month! Dan helped with this one and I love it!

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I’d love to turn these into running shirt designs for everyone, or even patches, but that would set us back about $8/ person for shirts, or $2/person for patches, so I’ll probably settle on buttons or zipper pulls. Normally it’s not such a bad expense, but with our other projects in the works it adds up!

So that’s a little bit more about what I do for our running club chapter. Have you all Googled your nearest hash kennel to go for a run with? I’m sure you have… I really hope it’s something everyone can try at least once!

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