Fire alarm practice

I was expecting this to be a BIG thing with sirens, smoke, firefighters and etc. as the posters announcing it appeared in elevator 2 months ago. But no.

The noon was the start for this and my heart was beating a bit faster at 11:58 -soon there will be some action in this peacefull day. No alarm went off, no smoke, no firefighters rushing to save us...hehe, why would they bother. We took an elevator to first floor, walked out of the front door, dropped our "safety cards" in to an basket and were back to our work in few minutes later.

Cranes

Japanese style of construction site. Wonder how big the new building will be..? At least it took ages to smash the old buildings from that spot.

Bath in Yoyogi park

These strange fellows like to take the bath in the park where I do taichi. (^_^)

demonstration!?

Few weeks ago saw first demonstration in 2 years. Started to think that they were forbidden in this strange island nation or everything is so good here that no need. Or they do it always at time which bothers other people the smallest possible amount. Apparently not. This was on Sunday afternoon in Shibuya which is packed of people.

The push up test

Last Friday it was finally time to do the 100 push up test. A week of practice behind and I let it roll (started straight from the 6th week of 6 week program). After breathing like steam engine, super heavy sweating, trembling body and absolutely dead arms I did it. The end result, after consulting video refries, 101 consecutive push ups. Finally my arms are recovered enough to able to write here... ;P

100 PUSH UPS

Do you have courage to take the challenge?

100 push ups program

I started it last week...

42 nights before Christmas

...and one night less left for me here in Japan. Ready or not I'll fly on 23th of December back to Finland.

Yesterday temperature dropped here around +10 degrees and with chilly wind blowing outside it perfectly reminded me how is winter in Tokyo. It is FREEZING. Good to return home soon. Sure, temperatures in Finland are way below Tokyo at OUTSIDE but there is a tiny difference at temperatures INSIDE the houses (and buildings overall). In Finland you go in and temperatures are above +20 degrees 24h/7days a week/365 days a year. Here you go in and only difference is that wind stops blowing because of the walls. If breath was visible outside it'll be same inside - reminding you to keep hat and gloves still on.

I have lots of pictures in my laptop at home but no time do anything for them (like posting here). Actually even the time for downloading pictures from camera to my mac has stretched somewhere between 1-2 months. Lately has been doing so much "office" work here at the lab that home I only sleep, train and perhaps read a bit. Oh, and cook. :)

About the training I do now. Taichi continues as before 4 times a week, power training at the gym is somehow less and lighter as it has been substituted a bit with running. The goal for running was to be able to run 3x20km as regular basis every week. I started somewhere in August when I got green light from my doctor for running. First week was 15 min. light running every morning. Every week I added 5 min. more for morning runs up to 40 min. After that it started to take a bit too much time to do it every morning (read: had to wake up 5am on taichi mornings) and I changed it for 1.5h running (16km) 3 times a week. This took also quite a bit time with taking shower and eating breakfast at the morning before heading to university...and I should have even increase the time of running. 3 weeks ago I made an invention. I could save some time by running to the university. The train is anyway at least 40 minutes from door to door. My bicycling route here is 23km. That's close enough to my 20km aim. This is perfect! Now I run here 2 times a week and planning to increase it to 3. Then I could rest on Weekend (now running also either on Sat or Sun).

That's all folks! No big news under the rising sun.