Tokyo Day 5 (Japan 2017)

I woke up on Day 5 and was a bit sick (related to the previous night’s visit to the New York Bar). The sad part is that we had ordered the Girandole Japanese breakfast. Girandole is one of the restaurants in the building and the Japanese breakfast is supposed to be one of those “must haves” while in Tokyo. Unfortunately due to how I was feeling, I only had a small portion of it but it looked amazing.

It was our last full day in Tokyo so I tried to get my sh*t together and we headed out before noon. I wanted to see Tsukiji Fish Market and possibly get some fresh fish while there. Since we were arriving so late, I knew we probably wouldn’t see as much as if we went super early like most people. I learned that if you want to see the actual tuna auctions, you have to sign up because it was becoming too popular, that start super early like 4 am. Next to the marker were some tourist-filled small alleyways that were lined with restaurants and other shops. We ducked into a small sushi joint to get some lunch. I will say that the fish was definitely fresh and overall good. And for dessert, my wife had some taro ice cream. yum!

From Tsukiji Market, we walked over to Hamarikyu Gardens, which sits near the water.

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Carmel/Monterey (Big Sur Marathon)

Since my marathon recap post was kind of long, I decided to separate out the actual weekend part of marathon weekend. We decided to stay in Carmel because of the locations of the bus pickups to take us to the marathon start. Right in the heart of downtown Carmel was one of the pickup spots. Luckily there are a ton of small hotels, inns, and B&Bs in Carmel. Rather than leaving the dog in a boarding place in Sac, I found a place that allows pets (Carmel is historically and well-known as an extremely dog friendly place).

We made a pit stop in Fairfield to get some lunch on our way down on Friday. The wife found a sandwich spot called Joe’s Buffet . They made a tasty sandwich – I had a combo of pastrami and corned beef.

IMG_20170428_114441 — *Pastrami/Corned Beef*

Once we reached Monterey and stopped to do my packet pickup, we swung by PeterB’s brewpub (right behind the expo area at Portola Hotel). I had the Belly Up Blonde since I wanted to keep it light.

Prior to our trip, I had done some research on dog-friendly restaurants in Carmel. A ton of places have outdoor sitting and allow dogs in their patio areas since so many people have dogs (either visiting or living there). The Inn that we stayed at also provided us with a list of some of the nearby dog friendly restaurants. Our living quarters for the weekend was the Svendsgaard’s Inn. This place ended up being only about 4-5 blocks from the bus pickup. The accomodations were nice and it was a small quaint little place. They had a small grassy area in a courtyard with poop bags available.

That first night in Carmel (I still don’t understand how the official city name is Carmel-By-The-Sea…such a mouthful), we walked over to Bistro Beaujolais for dinner.

Billed as a French restaurant, we ordered with this in mind. I had the French Onion soup, escargots, and sand dabs. My wife had a lemon chicken soup and the Steak Frites. The last time I was in the Monterey area is when I learned about Sand Dabs. I guess they’re a local fish that is wildly popular and served at pretty much every restaurant (doesn’t even matter if it is American, European, Mediterranean, etc). I was surprised and pleased to see that they had a Michigan beer and ordered the Founders Porter.

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Tokyo Day 3 & 4 (Japan 2017)

After a restful sleep, we awoke and ordered some room service and then decided to head over to the Imperial Palace area along with Tokyo Station and the many things around that area. The weather was still fairly overcast and rainy, my wife was very smart and brought an umbrella.

We walked around the outer perimeter of the Imperial Palace but didn’t try to go inside. We started to get hungry and went looking for a snack.

Near Tokyo Station is the KITTE building, which houses a lot of stores as well as restaurants.

I had read about it on a web site and since we were right there, we stopped in. It was still fairly early in the day so they weren’t letting people go up onto higher floors. So we headed to the basement and walked around where they had little shops of various food items and small trinket type things. We got some Chicken Karaage from the convenience store. This is essentially their version of chicken nuggets. I also had an Onigiri (which became a theme of the trip). Onigiri are triangles of rice wrapped in seaweed and filled with various items (I ended up trying some that had tuna salad, smoked salmon, fish roe, egg, etc). Continue reading “Tokyo Day 3 & 4 (Japan 2017)” →

Tokyo Day 1 & 2 (Japan 2017)

It has taken me quite awhile to finally get these first two days published from our trip back at the end of March-early April. Will hopefully get the rest up in a timely manner.

Day 1 was a short day due to travel. We landed at Narita airport in the late afternoon around 4:30 pm. However, there was a crazy wait at customs/immigration. The line for Japanese citizens was crazy short and those of foreign passports had a long wait. They even had two separate customs areas and it still took somewhere around 1-1.5 hours of wait time to get through. And then we needed to exchange our vouchers for the Japan Rail Pass, which came in handy throughout the trip but it was another 1 hour wait to get this pass. As you can imagine, after an almost 11 hour flight, we were quite tired. Thankfully once we received our rail pass, they also booked us on the train that would take us into Tokyo (about a 90 minute train ride).

Initially on approach to Japan I thought we’d have time to get to our hotel, put our stuff away and then head out for some dinner. I realized after all the aforementioned wait times, we’d be lucky to find anywhere open for food. Add onto that we were just bone tired and I wasn’t sure what we were going to do about foodstuffs.

After arriving at Shinjuku station (the one closest to our hotel for the night), I looked on the map and decided that it wasn’t too far of a walk from the train station to the hotel. The wife had mentioned there was a courtesy hotel shuttle from Shinjuku station though we couldn’t be exactly sure where the pickup point was. So after about a 15 minute walk, we arrived at our hotel, the Hyatt Regency Tokyo. It has quite an impressive entrance with these very large low hanging chandeliers. We checked in and immediately headed upstairs to offload our stuff. When we first arrived, I noticed that there appeared to be some restaurants and stores in the basement level (which becomes a theme in Japan). We initially looked at some of the hotel restaurants (they have a handful of them situated in the hotel itself) but it looked like most places closed at 9 pm and we had arrived just after 9 pm.

So it was off the convenience store in the basement for food. Luckily they actually stock some food that is edible and not extremely bad for you. The wife and I both picked up a pre-made sandwich and I also got a hot dog and some snacks (chips). After eating some food and cleaning up a little, it was off to bed for us. Continue reading “Tokyo Day 1 & 2 (Japan 2017)” →

2017 Big Sur International Marathon Race Recap

I did it! Successfully (mostly) completed my fourth full marathon. I am currently recovering from a hard effort. I’ll have a separate post about our time in Carmel that is unrelated to the actual marathon itself.

Let’s start with the race expo. We drove down from Sac on Friday late morning and went straight to the Portola Hotel, where the race expo was being held. We had the dog with us so I didn’t get to explore the expo too much on Friday but went back Saturday morning to get a better idea. I had read on other blogs that the expo is typically fairly small for a major marathon and they were correct. Packet pickup was very smooth. The organizers were great in sending out emails prior to the weekend letting me know my bib number since that was what you needed to get your bib. Because there is only one way to get to the race start, I also had to pick up a bus ticket (free) from my pickup location (which was in the heart of Carmel). There were about 4-5 different areas of pickup for the full marathon. After grabbing my bib and bus ticket, I got my shirt and gear check bag and the helpful volunteer put everything into the bag for me. The following morning I walked through the expo. There were a few of the usual booths for various races as well as a few gear booths selling everything from gels to water bottles to clothes. The largest merchandise area belonged to Asics, who is one of the big sponsors. Overall it was a nice little expo area but nothing to write home about. I did find my name on the Big Sur poster that is comprised of every runner.

I had all intentions of a breakout run on Saturday morning but that fell threw just because I was doing enough walking around with the wife. The day before the race, we did drive down Highway 1 to Big Sur because my wife had never been. Essentially we drove the course backwards on our way down and then in the proper direction on our return trip back to Carmel. The drive really showed me just how non-flat the course actually is. When you look at the elevation chart of the race, you go “okay, there are a few major hills and few minor ones,” but when you’re actually driving the course you realize the entire thing is essentially either “up” or “down.” There aren’t actually many flat spots to the course.

The drive is when I really did start to worry about my race and my training. I knew that my trip to Japan as well as my illness didn’t hep matters but I wasn’t that worried about it. After driving the course, I started to wonder a bit. I had an “A” and “B” goal for this race. The “A” goal was to PR the race, which I know is a challenge given the above regarding elevation changes. My “B” goal was to finish under the 6 hour course time limit, which given that I was overall physically okay I figured I should be able to do. Honestly I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt but knew that I had signed up, gotten in the lottery, and trained for it so I might as well give it a shot. Outwardly of course I didn’t reveal my concerns to my wife. Continue reading “2017 Big Sur International Marathon Race Recap” →

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