Run, Tokyo, Run!

I wrote a post for Japan Pulse about running in Japan and the tech stuff runners are using. Apologies for cramming it with running puns.

Tokyo Double Bridge Run

Today is the Tokyo Marathon. We watched the start on TV. We heard the starting gun go off on TV and then live a few seconds later, which seems hard to believe. Could that be right, that the TV broadcast signal is faster than the speed of sound? I will ponder that over more coffee. Jim applied for the marathon but didn't get in. (He'll be running the LA marathon next month instead.) For training, he's been running rings around the Imperial Palace (shown in the Pulse post) and crisscrossing Tokyo. His favorite is a bridge run he's mapped out that goes over Rainbow Bridge to Odaiba and then across the brand new Tokyo Gate Bridge. Here are the details of the Tokyo Double Bridge run. It's supposed to be a good one, if you like that kind of thing.

Our friend Joseph Tame is broadcasting his marathon run today from the helmet camera on his "iRun" rig. Check him out!

What's so great?

The Old 97s anticipated this UK tourism campaign years ago. (The video is jumpy but the sound is good. And the questions are just as hard-hitting as ever. What is so great about the barrier reef?)

Stuffed animals lashed to a trash truck in the rain

A meal fit for a monk

Kakusho Shojin Ryori, a set on Flickr.

A really fancy monk. We went to a 250-year old restaurant in Hida Takayama last weekend. It was an exquisite experience. I was surprised that each course was placed on the floor in front of our cushions on the tatami floor. You could make a lifetime study out of this kind of vegetarian cuisine, which is traditionally temple food. It's cliched (and inadequate) to say everything is prepared with utmost attention to detail. But that will have to do for now. Have a click through the pictures and see what I mean.
The place is called Kakusyo. The way it's written is the equivalent of a ranch being called, say, Circle R. The symbol on the sweet in the first picture is the whole name: the kanji "sho" in a square, or "kaku."