Warmth

Nukumori 









(Hat and scarf designed and crocheted by Tiny Storm Trooper and Pumpkinmommy)

First wind of spring

Haru ichiban

Trying to get back into the swing of running regularly after slacking off the last two weeks of January. I ran 6k yesterday morning, and my body does not hate me for having done so. That’s progress.

It’s gradually getting warmer, so I’ll be able to go out pretty soon in my summer running gear if I wear long Uniqlo Heat Tech leggings and long sleeves under it. Today, haru ichiban blew through this part of the country. This strong south wind is supposed to mean spring is well on its way. The warmer weather will also mean cedar pollen season. I’m trying to remember how I worked through that. Did I wear a mask, or did I just kind of sniffle and tissue as well as I could? Then again, I was doing week 6 of Couch to 5k, so I wasn’t outside that long.

I’ve found that many people around me run. Of course they do. Compared to going to the gym, it’s simple and it’s cheap(er...cute gear and gadgets with new functions are traps, I am telling you), and there are many 5ks and 10ks and half marathons and full marathons to choose from. I’m not ready to “come out” to them yet, though...

Making your body stronger

Karada wo kitaeru

Rowing Ruminations Part 16

One year, the captain decided to recruit women from a different department on the same campus. The people he recruited were a couple years younger than me, and didn’t understand that we meant to take rowing as seriously (well, seriously as was possible as novices on a knuckle). There’s a lot of stuff from that year that I’ve consciously and unconsciously blocked out of my working memory. It’s best summarized at around 1:33 in this video:

Which isn’t very uplifting. 

Especially since I was bow seat, not the cox. 

And they were with people from other boats. 

Including people I’d coxed previous years.

Uplifting or not, my rower season confirmed what I’d figured out during previous seasons: rowing in anything other than a single means that you can’t row unless the others row, and you cannot stop unless the others stop. If you are not there, the boat doesn’t launch. When you have a seat on a boat, your body ceases to become just your own. If you hurt it or get sick in some way, or just don’t show up, this affects not only you but also the rest of the boat. Guys, and women who do not conceive: rowing (outside singles) is about as close to pregnancy as you’re going to get (but will any men read this?) And no matter how exhausted you are, you don’t. stop. rowing. until. cox. calls. easy. oars.

(Or, weigh-nuff, depending on where you’re rowing, of course.)

This was the first time I was seriously training to make my body do more than it could do before. Yes, I’d done the running and the circuits and the weights with the rest of the team, but that was because it was the thing to do, not because I actually wanted to get stronger. This season, I was actually training to move the boat faster.

A couple months into the season, my body began to really change. I made it a point not to have body image issues, and my friends were supportive of that. I admit that I also loved being able to eat whatever I wanted because I’d burn it all off at practice.

One day, I noticed I actually had honest to goodness muscles. I was really pleased with them (even more than I was with my blisters. Because blisters from sports are cool. As long as they’re on your hands, that is), and during break between classes I called out to my best friend.

“Look! Look! I have quads!”

My friend, ever so supportive of everything I did, touched my thigh and said, “Wow, cool!”

(A cute 21 year-old woman feeling another 21 year-old woman’s thighs. Might be the opening of a kinky video…)

“And see, I have biceps, too!” I flexed my arm.

“Wow, c….”

The button of my short sleeve cuff went flying across the room.

I wore the cuffs of my short-sleeved blouses and dresses unbuttoned after that.

Our boat did poorly. After that season, the four other girls left, two of them committing crewcest as they did.

(But wait, since, unlike me, they’d never row with or against the guys they dated, it's not crewcest, is it?)

It means (I) like (you)

Suki to iu imi desu.







Some of the limited edition Pocky are less...hazardous than others.

"Suki" means like or love, Tiny Vader...

Age appropriate

Toshi souou

The snow has melted almost entirely, but I’m still slacking with the running. I’ve only been out twice so far this February. I have the motivation, so I’ll go to bed with the alarm set for 5:15 and the alarm will go off and I’ll wake, but then since I have no discipline, I’ll scroll around on social media until it’s 5:30 and then decide it’s too late to go out, and continue to fool around on the internet. So I’ll end up sleep deprived with nothing to show for it. Today I went out for 6k and...I’m exhausted. I want to nap for the rest of the day. I want my money sleep time internet time back.

(ETA: about 7 hours after I wrote that and 16 hours after the run, my body hates me. I keep telling it that it will thank me later, but it keeps screaming at me.)

Maybe I’d feel more encouraged about the running if I were less frugal about new gear...but it’ll be spring soon, so there’s a good chance I won’t get any cold weather gear this season. I did some closet decluttering and I found a pair of Uniqlo fleece lined nylon pants that I bought four years ago to take the Pumpkin Princess ice skating. The other day, I went out with the rescued pants and a fleece turtleneck under the usual windbreaker and a knit beanie, and I got so hot I ended up taking the beanie and windbreaker off halfway through. I found a reflective sash at the local 100 yen store. It’s a cheap, simple solution for how my dark gray windbreaker set isn’t visible in the pre-sunrise darkness.

In other daily life...this afternoon, I went to the drugstore and bought cosmetics and dental fluoride. The cashier threw in samples for skin lotion and moisturizer, and I thought, hey, cool, until I took a good look at it:

 

“After age 55, it’s all about glow! Lotion and moisturizer for glow”

I was going to FB or tweet this, but I didn’t want my friends/ followers thinking “wait, if I ‘like’ this, will Ayako think I think she looks 55? Then again, the years are kind of catching up with her, and she usually dresses like someone’s grandmother. Should I be breaking it to her gently? Or should I just kind of pretend I didn’t see the post in the first place?”

*scroll*

So I decided to post about it here, where you can just read it and don’t have to like it, and you can comment about running or running gear or Tiny Vader or not post a comment at all.

(If you’re a cashier/ sales person, please be careful of what makeup samples you give your customers!)

Not quitting

Yamenai

Rowing Ruminations Part 15

I remember my first two years of rowing most fondly. For all the ranting I’ve done about being yelled at (instead of doing all of the yelling myself as the cox) and the physical exhaustion and the sleep deprivation and the misogyny, I loved the sense of…community? Togetherness? Camaraderie? that I felt when I was with the other rowers. It wasn’t love, not in the romantic sense, anyway. It wasn’t friendship, because friendship isn't what you call your relationship when you’re in different years of university in Japan. “Belonging” is the best I can come up with. A cox, especially a girl cox of a guys’ boat, is a part of the boat, but different from the rowers. And that was my position, my seat,  where I belonged, four mornings a week, and every Saturday afternoon during the spring and summer. 

(My mother says I majored in rowing in university. She is only half joking when she says that.)

When we started out, there were five other people from my class on the squad. Of the five, I was closest to the other cox. He and I were the ones in our year most likely to head to class (instead of Denny’s for breakfast) after practice, and least likely to drink voluntarily. He was kind of short but really muscular, and had a lot of trouble getting down to 50 kg (110 pounds, the minimum weight for men’s coxswains at the time). He wanted to go back to the sport he was in during high school. It was clear he’d do better in his old sport than coxing. The other two left for financial and social reasons. So it was just me and two other guys after the third year.

I knew I didn’t want to be the third girl to quit the boat club. I wanted to be the first girl to stay. The first of many. I stuck it out until graduation because I thought if I left, there would never be any more women on the squad, which would mean the demise of the rowing club what with the increasing number of women admitted to our school. Then we went the way of the dinosaur anyway. That was over 15 years ago, and I’m still not sure how I feel about this. 

But I see people from our boat club every so often at work functions. When we notice each other, they smile and nod at me, and I am sure that the smile would not be so warm and the nod would not be as sure if I’d been the third girl to quit.

Thank you for everything

Itsumo Arigatou

I fell in love with you the first time I saw you.

You belonged to someone else.

I tried to find happiness with another, but I couldn't forget you.

You are the one I always wanted.

I'm sorry it took so long for me to figure out something so simple.

So now, we shall make up for lost time.

My darling, your squee-worthiness is beyond any words I can imagine.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tiny Storm Trooper.



Pocky (what's in a name?) has a couple Valentine's Day versions out. This one is called "Thanky."

It's extra thin Pocky, which, I think, means a higher chocolate-to-cracker ratio. More chocolate is always a good thing, don't you think?



Tiny Vader and Tiny Storm Trooper would like to Thank-y...ou for reading the blog!