Whole roast chicken

Tori no maruyaki

We had our Christmas dinner on the 23^rd because it was a holiday (I went to work on the 24^th and 25^th, like most of the general population). We ordered a roast chicken from KFC. It was very good. I made a mushroom stuffing to serve on the side, and we also got a big cake from the local pastry shop and shrimp cocktail from Costco. Add a salad and some steamed vegetables, and you’ve got a low-stress, delicious Christmas spread!

I still have to work on Monday. I also signed on for a half-day on Tuesday. I’m wondering how well I’m going to do with my running/ reading/ sewing over the holidays. My New Year Holiday reading plans were momentarily hampered by the two YA books I wanted to read being backordered. Then I got an e-mail this morning from Amazon saying that the books will probably arrive on the 28^th. So, yay! Somehow I lost the link to the other book I wanted to read, but I’m sure I’ll find something else to read.

The minivan now has winter tires. This means that it won’t snow this winter. After that crazy snowstorm 2 years ago, I’m sure everyone living in this part of the country is singing my praises far and wide. If not, they should be…

I’m trying to figure out what I want to cook, if at all, for New Year’s Day. The Pumpkin Daddy already pre-ordered stuff from 7-eleven. He’s done the same thing for about the past three years, and it’s been pretty good every year.

As for the computer…I upgraded my MacBook Air to the new OS and it’s running reasonably well, except the autocorrect on MS word is a little wonky at times. For example, it won’t let me type the word “dinner” without a fight (it keeps making me type “diner.”) I’m pretty sure it’s the new OS because it never happened until now. I was going to install a new battery, and bought one on Amazon, but I dropped the external HD while I was trying to back up my files and destroyed it, so that process has been on hold until I got a new HD.

Hope everyone is having a happy and safe holiday so far!

The time has come

Toki kitaru

Rowing Ruminations, Part Seven

(No book spoilers, some rowing)

The rowing event for our league my first year was held in a rather rural area. This was the only time we took our boats to a race that year. We didn’t have a rowing trailer, or a truck, so we hired a trailer truck and driver (you need a special license to drive anything with a trailer in Japan) and loaded all our boats on that. The riggers (removed from the boats) were wrapped with old blankets and tape and loaded on the trailer. The knuckles (there were three that year) were loaded flat on the boat, upside down, with the riggers removed. The coxed four was longer than the trailer, and the truck driver attached a red flag to the bow ball and stern, like traffic regulations required overhanging objects to have.

It took about four or five hours to get to the little village where the race venue was. We always travelled on our own cars. The rule of thumb was that the coxswains would drive, but I managed to get out of that one the whole time I was in crew. Maybe they saw my coxing and decided they didn’t want to deal with my driving. We’d strap the oars to the ski carriers using old bicycle inner tubes. The upperclassmen explained to me how tightly to pull and how to tie the knots that were most secure. I understood all of it in theory and probably could teach someone how to do it, but I couldn’t actually do it myself because my arms and the rest of me were too short and I didn’t have enough upper body strength.

We stayed in a place overlooking the river that week. The nearest train station was a few miles away. There was no escape. The rowers were getting more and more stressed. The coxswains were still cutting weight (other than yours truly. To this day, I do not get the whole coxswain cutting weight thing. Seriously. If the lightest cox is the best cox, they should have thrown me in that first varsity seat every single year). The rule was that we couldn’t use the AC (the theory was that it would get us used to the summer temperatures and humidity) but some of them would slip into their cars, crank up (or would that be crank down?) the AC, and get their nicotine fix.

We were the first school to arrive, but gradually the other schools appeared with their boats. I was impressed with how many people were rowing. I was also impressed that the local high schools had crew programs as well. The high school students were so cute and disciplined and showed us respect, (seniority and all that), but on the water they were really really fast.

One hot day, the guys on my boat took their shirts off halfway through practice. I didn’t think much of it but suddenly we heard over the loudspeakers “knuckle four with red blades! Knuckle four with red blades! Please put your shirts on!” After we docked, we were told that we were supposed to set a good example for the high school students and shirts should be kept on at all times. Four college guys were shamed for rowing without their shirts on a hot summer day. It’s a Japan thing, I guess.

(Now, if it had been yours truly rowing topless, on the other hand…)

Getting ahead

Mae ni deru

Since my friend Annie pointed out that my “to do” list for the New Year holiday was rather ambitious, I went out and pulled all the dead/ half dead plants from the flower bed and mixed in some lime. I’ll wait until it rains at least once to do the fertilizer.

The Pumpkin Daddy ran his first full marathon last month, and since then, hasn’t been running as much. Probably from mental and physical fatigue. He thinks it’s funny that I’m running more than he is, but that’s only because he’s running so little. I’m averaging two 6k runs per week for the past month, which is nothing spectacular by any means. I’ve decided that Uniqlo Heat Tech, which I wear every day to work, is good enough for now, and have put my cold weather running gear upgrade plan on hiatus. What I do want is a smartphone so that I can use all those cool GPS enabled apps to track my running. (They don’t even call them “smartphones” anymore, do they? Just “phones.”)

I ordered a new battery for my MacBook Air. A co-worker said he’d install it for me if I brought it to work. If you don’t hear from me for a while, it’ll be because that didn’t go quite as planned :P

(It's) tipped.

Katamuite iru.

Rowing Ruminations Part Six

That year, we had six boats. We started out with two coxed fours, a varsity “knuckle,” a novice “knuckle” and two singles. For our league, that was a pretty big squad. Mid-season, the second varsity coxed four decided they wanted to compete as a knuckle because it was going to be their stroke’s last year rowing and they’d have a better chance of winning a gold medal that way.

The league our school was in had about a dozen or so schools competing in crew, but we also raced outside of our league sometimes. One such race was the National Sports Festival qualifiers. This was the first time I fully understood the interesting position I was in. In the US and UK, a woman coxing a men’s collegiate team was (and is) business as usual. By the time I started coxing, both Sue Brown (first woman to cox for Oxford and win The Boat Race against Cambridge, in 1981 and 1982. Also competed in the 1980 Olympics) and Devin Mahony (first woman to cox the Harvard Heavyweight varsity eight) had completed their respective undergraduate programs. (Sue Brown taught English in Japan for a while! How cool is that?) (BTW girlfriends be crazy steering under bridges on snaking rivers, I can barely pull a straight line) In Japan, ours was one of the few leagues that allowed women to cox men’s boats. The National Sports Festival did not. In fact, the National Sports Festival specifically forbade senior level boats consisting entirely of a single school or club (junior events could have athletes all from a single school). One person in the boat had to be from a different school or club. The coxswain was the most frequently exchanged.

The National Sports Festival rowing events were 1000 meter races, just like our league’s races and high school races. You never took your own boat to the race. The venue would have a fleet of standard boats called “kikakutei (規格艇).” (Around when I started rowing, most standard boats were wood. Around when I finished rowing, most standard boats were carbon fiber.) The premise of the National Sports Festival (and high school rowing) was that all Japanese citizens should participate in sports, regardless of gender or socioeconomic status (this logic is flawed, but discussing this is beyond the scope of a blog about Japanese phrases). The ability to own, maintain and transport an Empacher would depend on socioeconomic status, so they did away with that advantage by requiring everyone to compete on a standard boat. The teams would show up with just their oars and toolboxes, draw lots for lane and boat assignments, have a set amount of time for rigging the boats, get on the water, warm up and race. (Junior high and high school races are held on standard boats as well, for the same reason.)

Senior men’s knuckle wasn't  an event at the National Sports Festival. We got to row our 1000 meters as an exhibition event. The qualifies race was held on a river, and it was a popular jet skiing spot. There was a strong current, the jet skis caused wakes, I got stressed and distracted, and I lost count of strokes during the start. My stroke started counting strokes for me, a loser moment if there ever was one. 

Still, we were better off than the first varsity boat. They were actually in a proper qualifier event as a four, and were eligible to go to the National Sports Festival if they won. They couldn’t find an experienced mercenary coxswain, so they decided to go with a club alumnus. The man was a former middle pair rower (the biggest, strongest rowers are put in the middle to give the boat power and stability) who’d quit rowing but kept his rower eating habits (rowers consume around 4000 calories a day).

That was the closest I’d ever seen the waterline get to the gunwales of the coxswain seat, before, or since.

He apparently didn’t have very much experience in steering either.

I want to make something

Nanika tsukuritai

I haven't done much sewing lately. I bought a new pair of trousers in my utility color of army green (I think that's like the fifth pair of pants in that color that I've bought in the past five years) and they fit reasonably well at the waist. This is good because I don't actually enjoy doing alterations, I only enjoy not having to hike them up every 30 seconds even when I'm not wearing a belt. (I'm supposed to look better when I don't wear stuff belted at the waist, according to internet fashion blog posts about figure types.) But this might be bad because it might mean my waistline is expanding. Metabolic syndrome and all that.

The only sewing that I have done in the past month is not very blog-worthy. I was cleaning out one of the kitchen drawers and found a few cartoon character cloth table napkins. I cut up one of them and hand-stitched it into a bag and stuffed it full of expired tea leaves, stitched it closed, and put that in a pretty ethnic pattern bag that one of the non-Japanese youngsters at the workplace gifted me a while back. I hung the bag in my locker at work. My locker now smells like Ceylon Tea instead of…middle aged academic wannabe. Which is a good thing, I'm sure.

The New Year Holiday this year/ next year is only six days. I'm trying to think of what I want to do. My sister is supposed to come visit on the 3rd with her fiancee, and my brother might come too. Kind of meh about it. Explaining the meh probably warrants a blog post all its own that's depressing for me to write and strangers to read (part of the reason it's depressing is because a good deal of it is First World Problems). During the other five days, I'd like to:

Pull out my disaster of a flower bed and maybe throw in some fertilizer and tulip bulbs, if the ground isn't frozen

Get about 3 runs in, an hour each

Seeing if I can alter 5 year-old off-white boot cut trousers and/ or 15 year-old gray blazer into something that I can wear to work

Read the rest of the adorable Japanese YA fiction series about a high school rower I found a few weeks ago (Japan can't send an eight to the Olympics, but we've got more/ better upbeat YA rowing themed fiction! Not yet translated to English, unfortunately), and maybe some British rowing fiction as well

Read some work stuff

So, we'll see how that goes. This list is subject to change over the next two weeks, of course!

I wore black shoes.

Kuroi kutsu wo hakimashita.

Rowing Ruminations Part 5

(No spoilers for any book, rowing or otherwise!)

(In fact, this post contains absolutely nothing about rowing!)

There was an event in our school where all the freshmen athletes from all the clubs were expected to do some kind of performance. Some of the clubs just did a song and dance, but others, including crew, did lewd skits. Ours that year involved me wearing a black miniskirt (borrowed from classmate) and a bustier (actually it was a black trash bag wrapped around and tucked into a strapless bra) and black high heels (Annie Cat, they were my speech outfit high heels), wielding a black leather whip (one of the upperclassmen brought it home from India, long story). The other freshman, who were covered with strategically placed plastic beverage bottles painted an opaque flesh color and nothing else, were forced by yours truly and her whip to go under a limbo bar that was also strategically placed on a freshman who’d lost a very important game of rock, paper and scissors. No one wanted to do it, but we all did. It was just what you did back then when the upperclassmen told you to.

Just before we got on the stage was the first time most of our team saw us. Most of them thought it was hysterical, but the crew captain took one look at me and freaked out. (Interestingly enough, he didn’t freak out at how the other freshmen were dressed, or rather, undressed.) He told me to put on my jacket before I got up on the makeshift stage in the student cafeteria, so I pulled on the navy blue nylon windbreaker I always wore to practice. The other upperclassmen booed and yelled at me to take the jacket off, so I did. I didn’t think how I was dressed was that big a deal because they weren’t seeing anything they wouldn’t have seen if I’d been on swim team (the women’s swimming club had done a cute, tasteful dance…in their Speedo racerbacks), and the guys were obviously much worse off. The skit was lewd, and that was probably the bigger problem than what we were (or weren’t) wearing, but that was just what you did back then. I hope college kids nowdays have better taste, but somehow I doubt it. This probably wasn’t a thing just in our school, because in the reception after the Three Schools Race, the other schools had skits that were similarly (dis)tasteful.

And then there was that one year when, one of the other schools, in their skit, one guy held the other down and opened his mouth and…never mind.

Seriously, I think no one in the Three Schools noticed I was there until like my third or fourth year (except when we were doing our awful skit). One thing I didn’t get that much of during those early years was attention that was, if you will, gender based, from my own squad or from any of the other schools. I don’t know if the upperclassmen were watching out for me or if no one was interested in me because I was so plain. I got standard issue teasing (especially about the lewd skit, because we performed it at every race reception) but nothing beyond that. They’d say lewd (rude? I’m Japanese, I can’t tell the difference :P) things to each other and occasionally discuss conquests and plans while I was within earshot, but since none of it involved me or any girl I knew personally, both sides were happy to let well enough alone.

I want to buy it in a store.

Mise de kaitai.

Weekends have been pretty hectic lately. I wanted to go to the sporting goods store and buy cold weather running gear, but that hasn't happened. I've been winging it with black or dark gray Uniqlo heat tech long johns and long sleeved tees that I wear under my street clothes in winter, and so far it's been OK. The coldest it's been so far is about 5 degrees (Celsius! That's Celsius! I'm in Japan!) so once I get moving, I'm usually fine.

I could just buy stuff online, but there's that distinct feel of going to the sporting goods store and seeing athletic types browsing the aisles and kind of being one of those athletic people, or at least being closer to them than you were before you started running on a regular basis…am I making sense?