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.