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This past Sunday I ran my first 10k! It was also my first race in Japan.

I ran in the Jubilo Iwata Marathon. The word "marathon" here is used loosely. It basically means any long distance race. The Jubilo Iwata Marathon had a 3k, 5k, 10k, and half marathon. So despite the name, there wasn't even a full marathon.

Jubilo is the name of Iwata's soccer team. Jubilo means "joy" in both Portuguese and Spanish. Thank you, Wikipedia. 

I had to get up at 6:30 so that I could meet up with Jonathan at the station around 7:40 and take a bus to Yamaha Stadium. The line for the bus was super long and wrapped around the block, but luckily the line moved pretty quickly because buses came often. I think we got on a bus around 8:00.

When we arrived at the stadium we walked a bit to find the place to turn in our bags. We attached our numbers to our shirts, our time chips to our shoes, and checked in our bags. A few weeks ago we had received packages in the mail with our numbers, safety pins, time chips, luggage tags, and t-shirt tickets. It was a really nice, organized system.

The 10k started at 9:40. It was very crowded at first and a little hard to get around people, but it thinned out pretty soon for me because I'm slow. Jonathan had a hard time during most of the race though.

 I felt good for the first 5k. I started getting some side cramps around 5k (and was also a bit hot and was wishing I had worn short sleeves) which is kind of opposite of how it usually is when I've been running. Usually I have problems with the first few kilometers but once I get past about four I'm fine. Every time I went downhill (they were hardly even hills) they got a lot worse. So on one downhill section around 8k I walked for about 15 seconds. Just that tiny bit of walking helped and after that I felt a lot better.

I really enjoyed the course because there was quite a bit of variety. When we first started out we were on main roads with stores and restaurants and stuff. Near the beginning there were also several different groups playing music including a taiko (Japanese drum) group and a junior high school band. There was a group of little cheerleaders (like kingergarten and early elementary girls) that were soooooo adorable! There were also plenty of random people on the sidelines cheering all around. It was a very festive atmosphere!

After a few kilometers we were in a more residential area and then eventually we ran past a lot of rice fields. The weather was really nice and clear and I could see Mt. Fuji! So pretty! Even in the more rural area there were still plenty of people, mostly old people, cheering "Fighto!" and "Ganbare!" (Do your best!)

I think a lot of people watch the race because it's almost like a parade with many interesting costumes. During most of the first 5k I was behind a girl dressed as a skunk. Then during the 2nd half I was behind 3 guys dressed as beer, a hot dog, and squid. They were crazy and loved giving high fives to people and just being crazy, haha. Also for a while I was near a couple and the girl was dressed as Mario (it was actually really cute!) and some kids yelled, "It's Mario!" and the guy yelled at the kids saying, "Not just Mario! SUPER Mario!" Haha.

As I neared the finish line (only a couple hundred meters left) a group of my students saw me and started cheering, well screaming really, for me. They were so into it! It was really cute and made me happy. :)

After crossing the finish line I was handed some sort of lemon drink that was super delicious. I forget what it was called, but if I see it stores I will definitely buy it again! Then someone cut the time chip off of my shoe. Next, someone typed my number into a computer and a certificate was printed out right there. It's really cool that they did that! No waiting for my results to be posted on the internet! They're still also posted online.



I crossed the finish line at 1:12:26, but since I was toward the back when the race started so I didn't cross the start line for a while so my actual time was 1:07:43 (the time chips are awesome!). My goal had been 1:10:00, so I beat my goal! My original goal had been to just finish within 1:30 and walk a couple kilometers, so I definitely beat my original goal! Oh, and when training, the furthest I had ever run was 9k so it was also the furthest I had ever run.



Looking at the results online (which only have the time crossing the finish line, and not the time from crossing the start line) Jonathan ran the race in 55:49, but it was really several minutes quicker than that.



Haha, that guy has beautiful pants. And a nice hat. He's definitely not the craziest costume I saw though. I saw one guy dressed as a female ballerina. He had sunglasses and a crazy curly wig too. I also saw a lot of men in super super short shorts. One man's butt cheeks were hanging out, ew.

I found a picture online of some of the costume winners! Lol...

After picking up our bags we got our t-shirts. Yay!



Hahaha... I love it!

We took the bus back to the station and then went out to eat for lunch. We went to Kagetsu Arashi, a ramen place near my apartment. We both had the golden miso ramen (which looks very red in this picture for some reason). So delicious! :)

Then we went shopping at Cainz Home and Super Drug Store, mostly just for Jonathan. I saw some super hideous shoes at Cainz Home. 


No... just no...

I felt really tired the rest of the day and went to bed earlier than usual. It wore me out a lot more than running usually does! I don't really know why except maybe because it was in the morning. I usually run in the evenings. Anyways, it was a really fun experience and I hope to do it again next year! :)

The weekend before last was a three day weekend so I took advantage of that and went to Tokyo. I did a lot of Christmas shopping. I could have easily found Christmas presents in Iwata and Hamamatsu, but Tokyo is even more awesome.

I left a little before 8:30 on Saturday so I arrived in Ikebukuro, where my hotel was, a little before 1:00. As I got close to Tokyo some guy walked into the train car I was in, listening to his ipod and singing along really loudly. He walked through the car singing and dancing. Some high school kids got up and started dancing, too. It was hilarious.

After dropping my luggage off at the hotel I ate a quick lunch at Becker's near the station. I read the menu and saw a meat and egg croissant. So I thought it would be ham and egg. It turns out that I didn't read the full name and it was a meat sauce and egg croissant, which meant that it was like spaghetti meat sauce, lol. It was a kind of weird combination. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't something I would get again. I also got barbeque and bacon fries which were tasty, but didn't have enough cheese. Probably healthier that way though, lol.


My first shopping destination was Sunshine City in Ikebukuro. In the center of the mall there was a dance performance going on. It was pretty!


There was also a rose display thing. These were a little old looking, but the color was sooooooo pretty!



Later there was a woman in a really pretty dress playing the flute. 



My first purchase of the trip was a bottle of nail polish from Its'demo (no clue what that name means), which is a cute cosmetics store.


They have a collection of polishes there with really cute glitter! They have several different combinations of hearts and Mickey and Minnie and crown shaped glitter. I got one with pink and lavender hearts and silver Mickey and Minnie glitter. I used it the next day. I had some trouble with the Mickey and Minnie glitter pieces not laying flat. But on the last nail I did I pressed it down with my fingers and then used topcoat to cover up my fingerprints. That worked pretty well. It didn't stand out a whole lot over the gold polish I used first, but I think it will be super cute over some other colors!


At Sunshine City I also bought some lotion (White Musk Smoky Rose scent) from the Body Shop. It's a really nice perfumey scent and lasts a long time too. I've been looking for a good scent for winter and this is really nice. All the Japanese lotions I've seen in stores are almost all floral scented and don't last long at all. So yay!

I also bought a cute light blue sweater that is a little bit sparkly and has pearls on the front. I kept thinking about buying it and went in that store like four times before I ended up just buying it. Oh, and I bought a new pair of boots, too. The pair of shoes I was wearing were kind of falling apart and I had forgotten to bring other shoes. I had also forgotten clothes for Monday (so the sweater purchase was actually necessary). I guess forgetting stuff ended up not being so bad, haha.

Here are a couple pictures I took in Ikebukuro on my way to the station.



Next I went to Shibuya. I first looked around 109 for a while and then went to Ichiran ramen for dinner. Yum! 




After spending some time looking at CDs in Tower Records I headed back to Ikebukuro. As I was looking at the map to check the price of the ticket I needed to buy, a man came over and asked me where I was going. I understood what he said, but I just told him that I didn't understand and walked up to the ticket machine. He then started pointing frantically at the English sign and was like, "There's English over here." I then told him I could read kanji (Well, some...) I put my money into the machine as he ran back over to me and hovered over it and pointed to where the ticket would come out. I was afraid he was going to try to steal my ticket or my change. It wouldn't be a big deal since it was only 160 yen and I was only getting 40 yen in change, but still. He grabbed the ticket but then handed it to me. I then quickly headed towards the gate. As I got close to the gate he grabbed my arm and said (this time in English), "Now help me. Give me 300 yen." I quickly ran through the gate. Well, that was weird. His scam wasn't very well thought out. He spoke to me in Japanese most of the time and if I was able to understand him I probably didn't need his help anyways. The next day when I went back to Shibuya he was at the station again just standing around and I avoided him.

When I arrived in Ikebukuro there was some guy at the station doing a puppet performance. He was playing classical music and making the puppet play the violin along with the music. It was so unimpressive, lol.




Outside of the station they were decorating for Christmas. Normally I would be annoyed with Christmas stuff so early, but I was Christmas shopping so it was actually nice.

I headed back to the Sunshine City area to go to Bookoff. On the way there I saw a crowd gathered and wondered what it was. A bunch of people were surrounding a TV outside of a store watching some baseball game. I guess something special was going on? I don't know, haha.


I spent a while at Bookoff and then went back to my hotel. The next day I did more shopping... of course! I wore my dress from Axes Femme and my new boots. Yay! 


I first visited Harajuku. There was a candy store called Candy a Go Go. The girls working there wore really cute clothing and handed out samples. 



It was similar to candy stores at malls in America except cuter. I bought a little bit of candy. I got some grapefruit slices, black currant gummies, mango gummy bears, a gummy flower, and a gummy Euro coin.


Then I saw another store I had never seen before. It was a store filled with K-pop merchandise! They had several TVs in there (I think about 15) playing various music videos. Some girls got really excited about one of them and started singing along and dancing a little bit. They screamed every time one of the members came on the screen. It was entertaining, lol.


I bought a random drink with TOP from Big Bang on it, haha. It was only 120 yen which I was surprised about since it was imported. I had no clue what it was but it ended up just being orange soda, which was good.


Haha, the can cracks me up!

After spending some time in the craziness of Takeshita street, I headed over to Omotesando which has a completely different feel even though it's just a few minutes away.




That tree is sooooooo pretty in real life. My camera could't capture all the rainbowy sparklyness of it!


I bet Omotesando is sooooo pretty when the trees reach their full fall colors.


I went to Kiddyland and bought a cute little plate for soy sauce and dipping sauces and stuff. It's so small and cute! 


I then headed back to Takeshita to go to Bodyline (a cheap lolita store) since it hadn't been open yet earlier.


After Harajuku I went back to Shibuya and ate lunch at Freshness Burger. I was excited to see that the beans burger was back. That was my favorite burger there and I hadn't seen it on the menu since returning to Japan. Unfortunately it wasn't as good as it used to be. The flavor wasn't bad, but it was kind of mushy. Sad. :(

Then I went to Loft for a while and bought a couple cards. Japan has such pretty Christmas cards!

By this point my feet were hurting because of my new boots. Walking around so much when they were new was probably not the best idea. So I went back to Ikebukuro to drop off my purchases and change into my other shoes. I had been afraid that they would fall apart but they were actually holding up pretty well.

Before heading to the hotel though I stopped at Auntie Anne's to get an apple cinnamon pretzel. It was delicious! :)


After eating my pretzel and changing my shoes I headed out to Asakusa. I had never been there at night before and I liked it even better than during the day.


I had read online that many of the souvenir stalls stay open until 7 but that some close earlier. Quite a few of them were closing earlier that day. Many closed around six or earlier. I still had enough time to buy a couple of gifts though.


Sensoji Temple is neat at night!









I didn't get any food from that stall, but I thought it looked cute! :)

After Asakusa I went to Akihabara to go back to the doll store I had visited during the summer. I bought stuff to put together a doll! I tried putting the eye decals on but they didn't stick. I'm going to try again, but if those don't work I'll have to buy some spray stuff. I saw it at the mall in Hamamatsu, but it was 700 yen so I don't really want to buy that to use just once.


Haha, all this stuff looks kind of creepy when it's separate. The head was especially creepy because I had it on a chopstick while I cut the hair.


I started off the next day with a visit to the Pokemon Center. First I took a picture of some cute owls in Ikebukuro.


A giant Pikachu was outside the Pokemon Center. Kids could go inside and bounce around! It looked like fun!

After doing a little shopping at the Pokemon Center I went back to Ikebukuro. Before shopping I ate a quick lunch at Andersen, a bakery. One of the things I had was an apple crumble pastry and it was sooooo good!



I'm not sure who these characters were, but they were trying to attract people into the arcade.

I couldn't find what I was looking for in Ikebukuro so I ended up going to Shibuya again.

As I was about to exit the station I saw an ad for Big Bang's concert tour! I would really like to go, but Jonathan and I are going to Sapporo for Christmas so I need to save money for that. It's really too bad because I will actually be in Tokyo (because we're flying to Sapporo the next day) on the night of one of the concerts!


After doing some shopping in Shibuya (and having success, but not what I was originally looking for) I then went back to Ikebukuro to pick up my luggage at the hotel and head back home. It had been a great trip! It had been a long time since I had done a shopping trip like that in Tokyo. Since returning to Japan every time I've been to Tokyo I've been with Jonathan and he doesn't like shopping like I do. I think three days of shopping would be torture for him. So I took advantage of getting to spend all my time shopping! :)