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Hachiko, Shibuya, where the run started and finished.

Quiet an achievement for me today – I circumnavigated inner Tokyo by running the Yamanote train line, visiting every station along the way. The 41.4km route took me almost 5 hours to run, and was quite painful towards the end – but worth it for the sense of achievement, and for the new perception I have of how the city fits together.

I didn’t actually think it would be that far. Yesterday I did a rough plot with Google maps, and measured it at 34km. Then, when I was running, I thought it was only about 39km ish – but then when I got home and checked the route as uploaded by my iPhone (was using Everytrail, the GPS tracking app) I saw that actually, it was a bit longer. Like 0.3 of a mile off a full marathon (I’d done a bit of twittering along the way – everytrail only adds ground covered when the app isn’t active after you upload to the site) My time was pretty crap, but then I did take a lot of photos along the way, and also, I’m not a ‘runner’ as such.

Here’s the route and slideshow. It looks better in full size on the Everytrail site (flash required).

41.4km Tokyo Circumnavigation

Map your trip with EveryTrail

In other totally dull techy news – I now have my own custom short URL domain (woo!). I can automatically shorten domains system wide on the mac, and in my twitter client on the iPhone to start ‘http://jpta.me’ – how exciting is that (my middle name is ‘Peter’)?! I’ve also bought my own name – http://josephta.me, which I again rather sadly thought was pretty cool. I’m going to use that for my email address domain too, although emails sent to my old addresses will still be delivered.

And, got paid another 120 dollars for linking two words in an 8 year old blog post to someone else’s site. This website thing is actually starting to not be a complete money waster!

Righty ho, on with the show.

Have a good week all!

Joseph

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The first section of this blog has been gratuitously copied from a post I just wrote a moment ago for Dannychoo.com

Being an Apple fan boy, my initial reaction to the iPad was ‘I want one!’ then ‘I’ll get one!’ I mean, I find *Twinkle*s iPod touch really sexy, so a BIG iPod touch must be Exceedingly sexy – like a giant Apple pie made by Mr. Kipling, drowning in Ambrosia custard.

But then I started thinking about how much time I spend in front of the screen already – I almost always have an iPhone and MacBook Pro on me already – do I really need another screen to look at?

These thoughts came to me whilst I was out running, training for the Tokyo Marathon. I thought about how much I’ve enjoyed exploring the city on these runs – but also how I’ve found it a bit frustrating that I can never explore beyond the distance that my legs can take me within a couple of hours.

It was then that I made the decision – I’d use the money that I’d put aside for the iPad to buy a touring bike, and spend my free time during the spring and summer exploring Japan.

Used to do a lot of cycling when I lived in Switzerland

As a teenager I absolutely loved cycling, and covered some pretty long distances. It was such a great way to see places, to travel far from home for free, to feel the thrill of travelling at high speed (at least when going down steep hills). The summers I worked in Switzerland saw me doing quite a bit of cycling too – it was tough going but boy was the scenery beautiful.

Thinking about this a couple of days ago got me all excited, especially as I can now combine cycling with other passions, such as photography (using my Nikon DSLR) and tracking my trail (with a GPS app on the iPhone). I feel it’s important to know my surroundings. That’s one thing I really take from our runs – the knowledge and feel of how places on a subway map link together, of where I am in relation to other places I know, of how I can get from A to B to C when the earthquake strikes and there’s no public transport system left.

So, although I haven’t even got a suitable bike yet, yesterday I ordered the iCrew – a waterproof iPhone holder to attach to the handlebars. I’d had a look at the other bicycle/iphone holders on offer, but wasn’t all that impressed. They seemed pretty dangerous really, liable to catapult your iPhone onto the road if you stopped too suddenly or jumped off a kerbstone.

Whilst I’ve obviously not tried it out on the road yet, I like it already – it’s very sturdy, and can be rotated so you can easily watch YouTube movies whilst pedalling along (OK, maybe not such a good idea). Although totally sealed, the power and home buttons can be pressed thanks to flexible rubber bits, and the touch screen is as sensitive as it is on a naked iPhone. There’s a rubber stopper in the top that you can pull out if you want to plug your headphones in.

Next on the list is the bike itself (complete with rack and panniers), a helmet, and glasses. That should do the trick. I see myself going on long weekend trips, blogging / live streaming when out and about (phone signal permitting).

It’ll be great to see more of Japan outside of the city. It’s something I’ve missed these past 18 months – about time to put it right. I hope to be able to do some mega-long trip, like Tokyo to Hokkaido, around Hokkaido and back to Tokyo – we’ll see.

Bicycle training will begin once the marathon is out of the way at the end of the month!

Tomorrow I’ll be attempting to set a new distance record – 20 miles – it’ll be the furthest I run before the marathon itself.

Ganbarimasu!

Photo-tour, blog »

It snowed tonight – and settled – for the first time this winter. We seem to have had about 8cm-10cm.

What a treat! *Twinkle* and I couldn’t contain the children within us, and so at 11pm went out for a late night play in the park…