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Dougu ni suite

Rowing Ruminations Part 12

(No book spoilers, just a lot of details about stuff that happened in the 20th century)

The four we used that year was a wood kikakutei (規格艇), or standard boat. The other two coxed fours in our boathouse were made-to-order carbon fiber boats (I think they were Kuwano boats, but I’m not sure). They were both sternloaders, that is, yours truly sitting in the back of the boat, facing the four rowers. Bowloader fours, as in, the coxswain lying down at the front of the boat, facing away from the rowers, had yet to become a thing. Plus, we never could afford new boats anyway. Bowloaders had the advantage of increased stability (the cox lies down, lowering the center of gravity) and decreased wind resistance. They were also a new development, which meant if you saw one in the mid 90s it was lighter and sturdier due to innovations in construction. We drooled when one of the three schools got one from Filippi. Rumor had it they’d sold their blood.

The first varsity four was your garden variety late 80’s carbon fiber sternloader coxed four. There were probably minor adjustments in seat rail length and cox seat size, but they were well within what would be considered realistic in Japan. The second varsity four was an interesting creature. For starters, it was built for a coxswain that was about 5’11”. I coxed in it a few times in fall when we did mixed lineups, and I’d slosh around in the seat at anything above 24 strokes per minute because my legs were too short to brace against anything. I am not sure that is the reason I never coxed the second varsity boat for a full season. Another thing about that boat was that it was very flexible. If the boat weren’t set (moving nicely balanced without tipping to one side or the other), which happened quite frequently in fall, you could actually tell that the boat was twisting.

The two varsity fours and the varsity knuckle had carbon fiber Concept tulip blade oars. (Tulip blade: oars with blades shaped like, well, what you think of when you think of an oar: symmetric, spoon shaped, like a tulip petal. Modern competitive rowing oars have blades shaped like hatchets. Cue “10 miles in the snow barefoot, uphill both ways” jokes.) The novices used wood tulip blades. We’d switch to hatchet blades within the next couple of years. When we got new oars, we’d file down the handles until they were narrow enough for our rowers to get their hands around them.

One tool we had that was a sign of the times was what we called “バック台 (bakkudai).” This translates into “back boards.” I’ve never seen any reference to them in English rowing web pages, but they figure in the rowing themed novel that best reflects my rowing experience, 頑張っていきまっしょい　(Ganbatte ikimassyoi. Never translated to English, but it should be! There was also a movie and a TV series. Cutest girl stroke ever, both versions! In the movie, the actresses had zero rowing experience, which means the rowing scenes are actual novice rowers on knuckles handling wood tulip blades, so it’s dually realistic.)

(The girls’ school uniforms look a little like the ones for my HS in Japan. They are so unflattering, but Stroke looks cute in hers. The only thing wrong with the movie is that Stroke is Just. So. Cute. In the book, she’s minimal crewcest risk.)

“Bakkudai” were a staple of Japanese rowing until at least the early ‘90s. They were seat rails and foot stretchers fixed to a wooden frame, with a sliding seat. It was basically an erg without the resistance. You held a stick about the width of an oar handle in your hands, and went through the motions of a rowing stroke. Sometimes you’d line up with the rest of your boat, and try to get the motions to match. The trouble was that there was no resistance, so it didn’t really simulate the work involved in rowing. The other problem was that unlike ergs, back boards were light, and if you kicked at the foot stretchers with any sort of force, the whole board would start sliding back and forth. We partially solved this problem by having someone else step on one end of it, but if the rower was tall and/ or had a really good forward reach, they’d whack you in the knee, boy/ girl parts, or (in my case) face. (We had ergs, but we kept them in the campus gym for afternoon practice.)

It has continued for a year!

Ichinen tsuduite iru!

According to my calendar, it’s been a whole year since I started running. Actually, I’m not sure I can call what I did back then “running.” I did Couch to 5k, except I did it with time and not distance, so it was probably more like Couch to 3k. Still, it got me started, and I’ve been running fairly consistently (about 6k twice a week or thereabouts) for a whole year.

I started doing this because (confession mode) last year, for the first time in my life, I gained holiday pounds. Well, I’m in Japan, so holiday kilos. One kilo, to be precise. I’ve run for a whole year, and that kilo is still there, but I guess I could argue that there’d be more than that amount if I hadn’t been running. I don’t think my body has changed very much visibly, either. I fantasized that I’d have to re-alter my pants, but that hasn’t been necessary. I measure my waist fairly regularly, and the number is the same.

But there are other benefits. Moving around has become easier. I can climb the stairs to the 5^th floor without much trouble. I feel really confident that I’m more fit than most of my co-workers in my age group. When I run, I feel like I’m putting my time to good use, as opposed to just fooling around on social media.

Right now, I’m running in a windproof jacket and pants that I bought at a Nike outlet about 10 years ago, with Uniqlo Heat Tech underneath. I thought I’d get new cold weather running gear over the holidays, but that didn’t happen. The jacket and pants set are a medium gray color, which probably isn’t very visible in the morning darkness. I was wearing my summer running hat because it was white and it had a little bit of reflective material, but lately that’s much too cold, so I’m wearing a Uniqlo knit cap I found in my closet. I think I bought it something like six years ago to take with me to Chicago. (Then, I didn’t take it to Chicago so I wrapped a scarf around my head while I was there. I have a hysterically funny but fortunately fuzzy picture of me in that state.) It’s dark purple, so, again, it’s not very visible in the semi-darkness. And it’s really dark out there this time of year. When I left this morning, the sky was full of stars. I got back at around 6:20 this morning, and the eastern sky was only starting to turn orange.

So. Anyway. I’ve been at it for a whole year, so I think this makes me a runner (albeit a low-level one). So I should get new running gear!

Proper and traditional

Seitouha

In Japan, New Year decorations are traditionally burned in a ritual bonfire. It’s called Dondoyaki. Burning is a sign of respect, because smoke goes to the heavens. 

The smoke is supposed to have cleansing and protective properties, so you cook food over the flames 

when the fire has settled.

(I've written about Dondoyaki before.)

Cooking mochi (rice cakes) here is traditional. Cooking dried squid here is traditional. Cooking marshmallows here is NOT traditional. 

Cooking marshmallows isn’t traditional, period, but we’ve done it here the past couple of years because marshmallows are easier to stab on the tree branches.

So of course if we roast marshmallows, we must have s’mores. But to have s’mores, we must have graham crackers. And they are hard to come by in backwoods Japan. I expect they are available in upscale grocery stores near the US Embassy in Tokyo. I found them on Amazon, but they were 5,680 yen (plus 500 yen for shipping) for four boxes.

We made do with thin cookies I got from the local grocery store. Add chocolate and freshly toasted marshmallows, and you can’t go wrong…

but it wasn’t the same.

The Pumpkin Princess and I gave them out to anyone who looked interested, including her friends from school and their grandparents. Most people loved them. But I still felt like someone who was serving pizza with mayonnaise or sushi with soggy rice. This was their first encounter with s'mores, and I wanted it to be right for them. 

Does this make me one of these people?

They're wet!

Nureteiru!

Rowing Ruminations Part 11

(Contains insignificant reference to the book “Flat Water Tuesday”)

In my second year, I was on a varsity knuckle again, but with an almost completely different lineup. My old number two seat was now my stroke. I was finally on a boat with someone in my year. One extra cool thing was that the first varsity cox from the year before decided he wanted to row again, and he was on our boat. Any time I needed to know something, I could ask him. I think having him on my boat for a season is the reason I’m not afraid of stake boat starts.

(Stake boat starts: A race official sitting in a fixed boat holds your stern until the start. The race official might be an older friend of a local chapter chairman of the Japan Rowing Association who rowed when he was in college, or a first year high school student who didn’t make the third boat this year. Pro: you don’t drift away from the start line even if there’s a current. Con: you have to back the boat into the official’s hands. Keep in mind your boat is about 12 meters long and your steering mechanism is a rudder the size of a credit card. Solution? Use your rowers. Tell them to row harder or lighter depending on which way you want to go. And never use more than one rower on each side.)

We held a boat meeting immediately after the lineup for the season was announced, and the ex-cox, our de facto boat captain, suggested we practice on a shell until around June. No one protested. Like I said before, a four is much more technically demanding than a knuckle, and we were up for the challenge. It was also lighter to carry from the boathouse.

Launches presented a new problem, but only for me. When we launched knuckles, we set it down on the beach, with the stern sticking out into the water. We didn’t worry about scratching or putting a foot through the hull, because it was quite sturdy. I just stepped into it from the beach, walked to the coxswain’s seat, then stroke, three and two followed with their oars while I put the rudder in its place. Then bow pushed the boat all the way into the water and climbed in, I’d make the call for stroke pair to back row, and we’d be on our way.

The shell reminded me I had short legs every time we launched (as if I didn’t know already). We didn’t have a dock, so every day was a beach launch, which was a lot of fun because to get the boat far enough out into the water not to scratch the hull, the water had to be deeper than (my) mid-thigh level. I’d roll my pant legs as far up my thighs as I could, but it was a good day when I got into that coxswain’s seat with dry pants. It didn’t help that my thighs were (are) heavy and I couldn’t get the cuffs all the way up my thighs the way the others could.

The other day, I watched YouTube video of a beach launch. If you watch the video, at around 0:25 or thereabouts, one of the rowers picks up the cox and carries her to her seat.

I was almost as shocked as when I realized Ruth Anderson in the book Flat Water Tuesday used a microphone to cox a sternloader four. Almost. Wusses. Here, take my wet pants. Don’t worry, it’s just lake water. On second thought, I need them back. I’m not wearing (knee-length) leggings underneath today.

Holiday until today!

Yasumi ha kyou made!

Last day of my winter holiday! I have managed to:

Garden. I worked in lime into the flower bed on the weekend before the winter holiday, and threw in fertilizer yesterday, and then I realized the tulip bulbs had either been eaten by bugs or decomposed because of poor storage. I’ll look for something else to plant later. I have a three-day weekend coming up.

Run three times (5k, 6k, 6k). No hour-long runs. I never managed to get up that early. But I’m proud of having run three times in six days.

Alter my off-white pants.

The pants were wide in the legs, and had decorative buttons on the pockets, and I wasn’t wearing them as much as I used to because of this. I think they were trying to be sailor pants. They are Eddie Bauer, but they fit at the waist, and the fabric was still in pretty good condition, so I thought they were worth salvaging.

I removed the topstitching on both the side seams and the inside seams. Then I realized I could get away with doing all the narrowing on the inside seam only…which meant that I didn’t need to rip out the topstitching on the side seams. Oh well.

This alteration will give the pants another season or two of use.

(I’ve done this alteration before .) 

Read cute YA rowing fiction. Final two books in a series of three (one for each year of high school in Japan). Oh, it’s just too cute! She dumps a guy because crew is more important than a relationship that doesn’t make you a better rower! She gets to row her final year with a boat exclusively made up of third year students! Her friend’s younger sister has a crush on her! Her dad comes to her final race! I read the two books standing up while cooking dinner.

I also re-read The Boys in the Boat, and re-noticed a sentence about the Japanese eight. They weighed in at an average of 145 pounds, and did the best they could do competing against rowers much taller and stronger than them, which was a fly-and-die at 50 strokes per minute (par is in the mid 30’s).

The other books I wanted to read didn’t arrive. I’m waiting on a book one of my imaginary friends wrote. It’s probably not my cup of tea (looks like chick lit), but she’s a funny person so I think the book will be fun. More on this one when I finish it.

Did not read work stuff, but this day still has a few hours left!

Visit by out-of-town family was uneventful and the food was good.

Trying to get into the mindset that I have to get up and get dressed and go to work tomorrow. At least the traffic will probably be less painful than usual.