Running / Interim report

Let me report the progress situation of the regular exercise plan what I posted on 5th Aug.

I achieved the first goal on the day-5, 2.8km non-stop running. Time was 14min+10sec. Not so bad for a novice runner, wasn’t it? As a next step, I decided to increase the distance. Now I’m examining courses.

As I started running, I realized that there were not a few runners on the road even though it was a hot & muggy summer night. Finding person with same interests is fun… when they were running another direction. But if you found them running before you, they would become your competitors and you couldn’t help but urge to go past them. I think it is a natural instinct of runner.

By the way, on the 5th Aug. posting, I told that I’ll take photos on the way running and show you on this blog. but I realized that there was no room for doing anything except for running. Wait a moment until I get some endurance.

Shige

(Lee, in his 10 months)

Nikolai-do (Holly Resurrection Cathedral) in the daylight / Ochanomizu, Chiyoda ward

Saturday morning of Ochanomizu Surugadai area was very quiet. Lee and I were walking along the alley between the college buildings. It was 7:30 AM and few people there.

We had walked for around 80 minutes, and he was a bit getting tired.

Here we are!

The contrast of the green copper roof and white wall is beautiful. When the cathedral was built on this hill top, there were no buildings around the church and it became the landmark of this area.

You can find the description regarding the Easter Mass held at this church in Meiji ara, in the famous novel "Sorekara" written by Natsume Soseki.

The board says:

• This cathedral's completion of the construction was Feb. 1891.
• This cathedral was listed as the important culturel asset.
• This is the biggest Byzantine architecture in Japan.
• This cathedral's building designer was prof. Shchurupov of Russia Institute of Technology, and the construction director was Josiah Conder.

... Several years ago, I have posted some photos of architectures built by Josiah Conder. Please check them later (Furukawa park), (Mitsui club).

As I wrote in the last posting, there was a Russian language institute in the church yard. It was the pioneer in Russian language education in Japan and boasted over 100 years history, however, they ended the history 10 years ago. I heard that the building used for the language institute still remains even now.... sorry I'm not sure which building was that.

Let's get back home before getting hot!

The closest station of this cathedral is Ochanomizu (JR Chuo-line / Tokyo Metro Marunouchi-line) or Shin-Ochanomizu (Tokyo Metro Chiyoda-line).

Nikolai-do (Holy Resurrection Cathedral) night view / Ochano-mizu, Chiyoda ward

Nikolai-do is an old Russian Orthodox Church, established in 1891.

When my father was in his late twenties, in the late 1950s, he belonged to a chemical laboratory located in Ochanomizu area as a researcher of the high-polymer chemistry. He said that Russia (the Soviet Union) was a pioneer in the heavy chemical industry at that time, so he needed to study Russian to catch the cutting-edge technical information. Then after leaving work, he went to the Russian language class opened in this church.

As I took these photos, I imagined the scene a young guy who looked like me came out from the gate and walk away.

Anyway, it is a bit regrettable that I couldn't hear any Russian he spoke.

I'd like to take this church's photos in the daylight again.

I am back

I am very sorry for my long absence. I’m back.

I want to extend my appreciation and apology to all of you who kindly dropped in this weblog although I haven’t posted for such a long time. Now, I’m OK and I’ll restart this weblog from today.

As the 1st posting of restart, let me introduce what I'm into now.

I have recognized the necessity of the regular exercise for a long time, but I couldn’t start anything. Last weekend my daughter and I went swimming pool. Recently she joined the swimming team in her junior-high, and I would have liked to see how she improved. However this activity reminded me my decreased cardio-respiratory function. I was shocked I could not follow her at all! I often said to her “Don’t say do it tomorrow. Tomorrow is always tomorrow. Say do it today.”,,,, zee, these words were just for me. Then, I decided to commence this Monday. In the way home from my office, I get off at the next to my closest station, wear a T-shirt, short pants and sneakers, then run! It’s about 2.8 km gradual rise. The first goal of this exercise is “running through the full distance without any stop (except for red lights)”.

Today is the day-3 and I have achieved 2.3 km. I would like to take some photos and post it on this blog, after I would manage to run the entire distance.