I just found out that there is a running club where I work. Nice. I joined up and the first run of the year was on Friday. Generally the club meets for dinner at 9:30pm, after running. People run at their own pace, so you have to make plans with people that you know that run at your pace if you want to run with people. The run is around the Imperial Palace, a run I’m intimately familiar with since I did it two or three times a week for 2.5 years. It is a convenient place to run because there is a facility called Runner’s Station nearby. It is a little place where you can drop your stuff off in lockers, run, come back, and shower. It is actually very convenient, and I wish there were more of these places located conveniently around the city at nice running spots. Actually, I guess you can get almost the same deal by joining one of the gyms in the area and using them as shower facilities, but Tipness doesn’t have a location convenient to the Imperial Palace.

After a nice run I met up with the rest of the crew and we had dinner at a korean place nearby. We got there at about 9:30, and probably left at about 11:30. It was so late in fact that I wasn’t able to make the last train on the last leg of my commute. I had to take a taxi from Shinagawa back home, about $10. I didn’t get home until 12:30, which is easily the latest I’ve come home because of the train system here.

On Sunday afternoon I took a long jog around the island across our house. I went as far south as I could for this run. It was about a 9.6km run, and I think I did it in about 56 minutes. It was a nice run. The most interesting thing was that down near the very tip of the island, in the midst of an industrial park, I came across a group of about 30 people. They were young, maybe in their mid 20s. There was a huge speaker system set up, and they had music going. I think it was a small rave-style (?) party. It was really strange. There is really nothing in the area. A nice little park, and a bunch of industrial factories and loading docks. And a big party of hip fashionable youths rocking out by Tokyo bay. Strange. I’ll see if they are there next week at about the same time (Sunday, maybe around 4:00pm or so.)

I hope I can run a bit more often in the coming weeks. I still really want to find a way to run by the open side of Tokyo Bay, but it just doesn’t look like I will be able to do that from where we live.