Eclipse 2012, a set on Flickr.
Monday, 21 May 2012
Sunday, 13 May 2012
This is not a photoblog
It’s a blog with photos on it. OK, I know that from recent
posts you might think that it’s a photoblog, but that is more down to laziness
in not posting anything than a conscious decision (I guess it’s therefore been
an unconscious decision).
Running again
Anyway, what has been going on? Well, I ran another
half-marathon back on March 11th (time 1h 46m 01s, so 4 minutes
faster than the first try). This was, as date-noticers have no doubt noticed,
the 1st anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, so what
better way to commemorate that to run 21 kilometres with 15,000 other people?
No, I couldn’t think of a better way either.
Marcus and the Guru could not come with me on this jaunt,
closer to home though it was from the last time, as the Guru was feeling most
leer, indeed I had been worried that she may pass the lurgy to me prior to the
race, thereby ruling me out of the contest, but luckily I escaped its wrath
(not so Marcus, who was struck down later in the week). So I was solo for this,
but as it was in-and-around Saitama Shintoshin, an area I know reasonably well,
and it seemed better organised than the Ageo race in November, it was easy to
navigate. The course itself started of twisty and turn-y, then was essentially
a big rectangle and a last twisty-turn-y bit at the end.
All in all it was a good race and though 4 minutes quicker
it was not, for some reason, as enjoyable as the first one. And it made my left
calf hurt afterwards and, for that matter, the front of both ankles, which may
have been to do with the camber of the road. So anyway, running done for this
season as I don’t really like running in hot weather, now it will be evening
runs and weekend bike rides until the summer holiday when I’ll be able to ride
into work, which is a pretty good workout as it’s 18km each way with a few
hills along the way.
Firestarter
On to more recent events, last weekend I was encouraged to
go to a park and play with fire – talk about reliving one’s youth…
It was the last Sunday of the golden week holiday and the
good people of Kita-ku, next door to our Itabashi-ku (a ‘ku’, if you don’t
recall, is the equivalent of a London borough) had decided to arrange some
out-doorsy stuff in one of their parks – so off we trooped to Jūjo and thence
to the park which was, interestingly enough, right next to a bid Ground Self
Defense Force logistics base.
To be honest, when we arrived, it looked just like a park,
but in the corner a few things were set up by, at first appearances, a hippy
colony. However it was slightly better than that, a volunteer group had a
couple of storage containers with stuff for games, ropes, bbq things and other
stuff within. The first order of the day seemed to be stilts (harder than you might
remember) and digging stuff, which was fun and got the kids muddy. Then one of
the volunteers (who were all female), surrounded by kids, started trying to
light a fire in one of the 2 fixed barbeques. As a man and former connoisseur
of incendiary devices, it pained me to watch these attempts.
Firstly her kindling was all wrong, too compacted, and she
was encouraging the kids to throw green leaves on the pile. Then she was giving
the matches to the children to and getting them to try and light the fire – now
I’m all for giving kids opportunities when supervised, but you’ve got to show
them how to do it first! It was a windy day and the kids were all standing up
in the wind, holding the match right at the very end (so no purchase on the
lighting strip) and as soon as the match lit they panicked a dropped it vaguely
near the paper.
After about 5 minutes (and ¾’s of a wasted box of matches) I
could stand it no more…
So, we ‘fluffed’ up the paper, got rid of the leaves, broke
up the large sheets of plywood board into small chunks with lots of feathered
edges and finally I sent the kids off to find lots of small, dry twigs. Then we
made our little piles and, with yours truly fully in command, used but one
match to get things going. “Oooh “ went the kids as within about one minute we
had a nice little fire going – at which point they all tried to dump huge bits
of wood, charcoal and handfuls of leaves, small animals, siblings and napalm on
said small fire. However I was now ‘the fire master’ so with a stern look in my
eye I quelled the attempts and set about organising the kids.
So we had fans and these little bamboo tubes that you could
blow into the fire without burning your nose – I got the kids fanning and
blowing and then getting pieces of charcoal one at a time. In the end we got
about 3 good fires going, one in the bbq thing and 2 in sort of traditional
Japanese portable bbq pots and truly I was acclaimed as ‘my dad knows how to
start fires’ (and hopefully so do a few kids now, which I’m not sure is a good
thing, but children need skills).
Later a bunch of junior high school girls arrived and tried
to start a fire in one of the pots – they did exactly the same as the volunteer
lady had done earlier, again under her benevolent eye. Again I watched
painfully for a few minutes before heading over to help. After a couple of
minutes of faffing and undoing what they had already tried to do, I fetched a
big, red-glowing lump of charcoal from one of the other fires and used this to
start theirs – ‘ooh,’ they said, ‘what a good idea, who’d have thought…?’. What
do they teach children these days? Not how to start fires, obviously – I think
I will start a campaign to get Bear Grylls DVDs into all schools in Japan.
One of the things that was arranged for this bbq-ing
pyromania was and introduction to tooth-decay. Apparently traditional, what you
do is get a sort of ladle, fill it with water and then add some sugar. Then you
put the ladle onto the fire and stir with a chopstick – water boils, evaporates
and you are left with a sticky sugar which the kids can then paint their teeth
with and, hey presto, more work for dentists; at least that’s what I think the
outcome was meant to be. Anyway, the image I got from it was not of small
children having fun but of small children practicing the best method to cook up
heroin before it is injected – start with ladles and move onto teaspoons when
you get the knack. Wonder if they had syringes in those storage containers…
Veg
And have now decided to start growing vegetables on the
balcony – well, tomatoes anyway as they always seem expensive in the
supermarkets these days and we seem to eat a lot of them. 2 small plants bought
this afternoon, more updates as events warrant…
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