Squampton.ca
Living Out Of A Suitcase
Posts tagged Health and Fitness
Get Fit Or Die Trying, Part 2
Dec 9th, 2009
As anyone that is on my Facebook can see, I’ve been running a lot lately. There’s a great park just minutes from our place so I don’t have to deal with traffic and exhaust and all that other crap. Anyways, here’s the playlist I run to. I don’t even know when I made it, but it’s been sitting on the iPod for a while. I gotta update it though… any suggestions?
A Day At The Hospital
Feb 18th, 2009
Took another day off work, this time to go to the hospital. I’d been sick since last week and had been avoiding going there. To me, especially in Japan, visiting the hospital is a last resort measure only.
The health care system is very different than in Canada. Local medical clinics and family doctors are the exception rather than the rule. To put it into perspective, think of this situation. You are sick. Headaches, chest pains, nausea, whatever. You go to the emergency room. There are already about 200 people there, waiting. Most of them are elderly. You have to wait 3 hours or so before you get your 5 minutes with a doctor. But you actually have two problems, head pain and chest pain, for example. So you gotta wait another hour or two to see another doctor about your other ailment. Then you gotta wait another 30 minutes or so to pay. After doing this a few times last year one can see why I was so reluctant to go again.
Maybe it’s just where I live, in this backwards podunk town. Hopefully the system works better in Sendai.
Can’t Stomach It
Feb 12th, 2009
Who wants to ride the sushi train? I'll take the next one...
Picked up a mild case of food poisoning this weekend. I’m almost positive it wasn’t from the Oyster Festival, as Kyoko and I shared all the food we bought. It might have been from the take-out sushi we ordered on Monday. She and I have pretty different tastes when it comes to sushi. Kyoko likes hotate (scallop), negitoro (fatty tuna belly), and uni (sea urchin), while I gravitate towards shime sabe (pickled mackeral), ebi-ten maki (shrimp tempura rolls), and salmon. I thin
k it was the mackeral that did it. Luckily there was no vomiting, but I had to take Tuesday off work (today, Wednesday, is a national holiday), and I think I’ve spent more time sitting on the toilet these past few days than I’ve spent all year. Still not eating much, but I’m drinking lots of water, Pocari Sweat, and Aquarius, and the grumblings in my tummy have subsided.
Hopefully I can keep my strength up today at work, because tomorrow I’m off to Tokyo for 4 days to party with Eric Olson, of all people!
Forgetting how to run
May 16th, 2008
I would consider myself an “Intermediate Beginner” when it comes to running. I logged about 350 kilometers between May and September last year, culminating with a 10K race at the Tazawako Marathon. Then… I stopped running. I ran only one more time in 2007, after I had to find a new job, after I had to move to a new city, and before the snow came.
When I started running again about 2 weeks ago I realized that I was having some problems breathing during my runs. At first I couldn’t put a finger on it, but eventually I realized that I wasn’t breathing properly! I run with a 3:3 ratio, meaning I take 3 strides as I inhale and 3 strides as I exhale. During sprints, hills, or 1-mile tests it increases to 2:2. I guess I was running using a 4:4 though. No joke, no punchline, sorry. (What the heck is this though?)
Some thoughts on running, for anyone interested in torturing themselves.
I’ve already dropped 3kg in one week, which is more a testament to my winter lethargy than my superior genetics. My metabolism is slower than the time Mike, Colleen and I took the Volkswagen down to Seattle on 3 cylinders. Anymore tips on running or cardio exercise? Feel free to leave a comment below!
Get fit or die tryin’
May 10th, 2008
I started running again a couple nights ago. I ran a lot last spring / summer, around 20-30 kilometers a week. Participated in my first 10K race last September too. But I had to move a month after that, and then winter hit, and the town I moved to has a definite lack of gyms (or ones that aren’t astronomically priced). A couple months ago I picked one of those all-in-one home gyms from my friend Tony; I use it for pecs, lats, biceps, triceps. It has the leg extension as well, but I always preferred to run or cycle to work my legs. I used to hit the bike when I went to the YMCA in Victoria, but shortly after joining a gym in Japan I began working the treadmill. Running is a better workout than cycling, although there is more impact on your body.
I used the treadmills at my old gym for 2 reasons. The first was that as summer comes the weather becomes really, really humid all over Japan. The second was that the treadmill measured the distance I ran, the calories I burned, and my speed and time. It was an invaluable asset as I was training for the 10K race.
It’s going to get hot and humid here this summer, no doubt, but I figured I’d suck it up and get that extra sweat going. I’ll probably end up looking like Peter Griffin after he wished he had no bones after my runs, but oh well.
So I’d been looking for a 2G Nano, so I could do the Nike + iPod thing. The 3G Nano has video capabilities however, so I said to hell with it and bought the complete package to get my run on. The whole shebang: iPod Nano 4GB, Nike+iPod Sports Kit, Nike Air Zoom Structure Triax +11
So, after I got home from work I popped my new kicks on and set out on a 5K loop I had mapped out. By the way, I dunno why all these people that use iPods use the supplied earbuds – they suck. I chugged through the night breeze and sobbed silently as I broke in my new running shoes. Here’s how my run looked: I think both my feet went numb at the 3km mark.
Bad Medicine
May 4th, 2008
My name is Andrew, and I have dandruff.
Watching my dandruff float gently down the stream.
In the past I had read that many foreigners in Japan have difficulty with Japanese deodorant, claiming that it isn’t effective. Luckily, I don’t have that particular problem, but when you add all these things together it seems that the medicine over here isn’t really up to gaijin standards. If it is a genetic trait, then perhaps the more dominant one resides in non-Asians. It reminds me of that old Secret anti-perspirant ad, “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman.” Perhaps the hierarchy of humans goes something like this:
- Men
- Women
- Asians
The same goes for over-the-counter cold & flu remedies. I’ve tried all sorts of crap over here, but I’ll take Nyquil/Dayquil in a heartbeat over the thousands of medications I find at the local drugstores.
Expect a phone call soon Mom, I’m gonna need a care package!
New site, new teeth
Mar 24th, 2008
Been a pretty hectic 2008 so far. Work has been pretty busy, making quite a few trips here and there around Miyagi, Yamagata, Iwate, and Akita, and enjoying sharing my apartment. I’ve also had to make 6 trips to the dentist over the past 3 months to fix a problem that some stupid fuck dentist did to me when I was living in Ottawa. Yet another reason why Ontario sucks. Had to clear up the infection, then get a root canal, get a root extracted, and finally get a bridge. I opted for the shiny silver model; besides being 4x cheaper than the porcelain version, maybe I will have enough by Halloween to go as Jaws, from 007 fame. Japan’s national health insurance also covers dental (80%), so the total monetary damage was only around 12,000 Yen, which is like 120 bucks.
So, to commemorate the new teeth, I decided to get the site reskinned and move it over to Blogger’s Blogspot. I can do pretty much everything I need to do with the site, and it’s a whole lot quicker to do. Posted a couple “photoblogs” below, which are just some groups of photos with only a small caption. For the times when I’m too lazy to write anything. Like all the time.
