Run and Write

17 miles and a paper left to start holiday...

50 mi more

LONG LONG LONG time no see and happy holidays! I'm OK and just hope you are, my fellow Americans. Last post was in June and today is the end of November, to my surprise. There are only three months and half to stay in the US and my home university has sent a bunch of emails about the lectures I'll teach in next academic year (In Japan, academic year starts in April, the season of cherry blossoms). Yeah, time flies, especially the time for sabbatical. The presidential campaign had started at that time when I arrived here in last August and lasted till this November. During this period, two Japanese prime ministers resigned, to my surprise again. I bet you don't know them. As I wrote last year, the first resignation wasn't reported by the US media because of Britney Spears' awesome/awful performance at the MTV Music Award, and the second one wasn't either due to the unexpected appearance of Sarah Palin (by the way, most talented person I found in this campaign is not Barack Obama, but Tina Fay). I just hope the incumbent guy, Taro "Rosen" Aso, will not resign until next March. Anyway, I should be more productive than I was.

Another concern is a weight control. The problem is American food. At first, I thought how big the portion of meal here and how salty they are, and how sweet sweets here are. But now, my taste became Americanized. My stomach accept any kind of food and I really like American sweets. So, it's quite natural that I gained my weight and couldn't wear clothes I brought from Japan. And the bad thing is my wife, now living in Berkeley, California, lost weight surprisingly because she uses a bicycle to go to and from her office. And the worst thing is she often boasts how much she lost like "I wanna have a new belt because it's too long." Hey, we didn't talk about your stupidly long belt at that time and it was totally out of the context. And to my surprise again and again, she said she started jogging. That lighted me fire. To beat the woman, who now pretends to be a health conscious Californian, I also started jogging from August with the aid of Nike+.

Here is the result. Year, I ran one hundred miles so far and lost ten pounds from August. Now I recover the weight I had when I entered this county. But, as people here did in Thanksgiving, I had too much meal, so I'm afraid that I gained weight again. So, I promise you to run fifty miles in December. It's a challenging goal, but by this declaration, I want to show my commitment.

However, I want to emphasize at the same time that I won't sacrifice the joy of eating for the sake of diet. The well known belief that American food are not delicious and bad for health aren't necessarily true. If you carefully choose what you intake, you can enjoy the diversity of wonderful foods here and will not gain weight. You cannot enjoy so many kinds of sandwiches in Japan. You cannot enjoy such interesting sauce like mango dressing for sea bass in Japan. You cannot enjoy authentic Hong Kong style dim sum, Mexican fresh salsa, cram chowder both in Boston and New York, crab cake in Baltimore, and Californian fusion cuisine, in Japan.

Anyway, give me your loud cheer to accomplish fifty miles run!

Every Barber Knows That

How to order a haircut? I believe it’s very important issue for people living in foreign countries. Since I came to the US, I've got haircuts for three times so far. The first two experiences in barbers were just disaster. Guess whom I found in the mirror in front of me just after the barber handed me my glasses at my first visit to a barber’s. Answer: Asian Mr. Spock with glasses. Certainly, some male here don’t have their sideburns, but it’s not common in Japan. My basic principle to live in the US is “When in Rome, do as the Romans do,” but I just cannot accept this American way of sideburns. The problem is that I cannot see the process of haircut because I have to take off my glasses during the haircut. My friend, who listened to my compliment, told me that when I make an order, I should put both index fingers on my sideburns and clearly ask the barber to keep them.

So, at the next time, I visited a different barber’s on the same street and made an order as my friend instructed. I also asked the barber to show me hair sample photos and selected one of them to make sure my order. Guess whom I found in the mirror in front of me just after she handed me my glasses. Answer: Asian Mr. Spock with glasses and sideburns. I was so surprised to see slightly upgraded Mr. Spock again in a different barber's that I lost my words to claim her that mine was totally different from the sample. Instead, I was impressed by the fact that American barber industry shares such a standardized technique to cut front hair so shortly and neatly to make the bizarre horizontal border line between front hair and forehead.

Finally I got an important lesson: I should not use barbers because for them sideburns and long and unordered front hair are the deadly enemies to be eliminated from this earth. So at the third time, I visited a hair salon in a shopping mall. The price was higher, but I was satisfied with the result. Actually, more important is that I was prepared because I checked the vocabulary for haircut order through the Internet like this: “Today, I just want you to trim and thin out my hair because it’s too thick. Please cut my side and back hair a little bit, but don’t cut the front hair. Also, I don’t want to clean up my sideburns, OK?”

Today I’m going to cut my hair for the first time after two months. I’ll visit a hair salon again instead of a barber’s just because I’m not sure a barber will listen to my request. I just hope this time will be successful. If you know the better way to order, just tell me immediately.