Coolest jacket in Japan

Finally today in Tokyo Hands, the store that has it all, I found it, the coolest jacket ever! Maybe not fashion wise though. The jacket I'm talking about has two fairly powerful fans built in to the lower part of the back.















When running on the high power mode the jacket gets filled with air and it's streaming out by the neck. It gives you a nice tickling feeling when it cools you down and as part of it it makes you look like that Michelin guy. I've wanted to try this ever since I saw it on japanese TV last summer. This is a must have.

Good friends and hot onsen

This week we have had friends over from Sweden. Niklas, old friend from university, and his wife Celina have visited us for a week. As a "bonus" another university friend, Johan Nilsson, was in town last friday so it was a fun reunion at friday dinner (Johan is behind the camera though).












Karaoke is mandatory when visiting Tokyo and luckily enough we found a good place close to our home! We had a nice mix of '80s pop music and '90s punk/rock music.












During the weekend we took a tour to the Hakone mountains for some black eggs and "fresh" air (air surrounding these hot springs are partly toxic due to the sulfa gases coming up from the mountain, at least they say. It smells bad anyway).












More of the relaxing activity to soak in the hot springs. Here Sunday morning at the hotel and later in the day also in the favourite onsen Ikkyu in Tenzan area in Hakone.

Pad thai & Singha

This weekend we met up with Nigel, a friend now living in Edinburgh who is in Tokyo for a business trip, and went to a thai festival in Yoyogi park. Maki was at the same festival last year and enjoyed very much and wanted to go back. After our nice holiday in Thailand in february I didn't mind to go for some spicy food and singha. It was a very nice festival with plenty of various thai food including fresh fruits typical for Thailand. The downside is that you are far from the only person in tokyo who thought of the idea of going to the festival, crowded was the word. It seems this festival is getting more and more popular every year and the area used for the festival does not grow quite as much as the number of visitors.

Summer festivals

Summer has come (or technically I think it's still spring but for me this warm weather is summer!) and many festivals are arranged around in Tokyo. I would think there is at least one festival every weekend somewhere in Tokyo during this warmer part of the year. Today we went to Kanda (close to Akihabara) for the Kanda Matsuri where they carry portable shrines, Mikoshi, to the Kanda temple. It was a hot day today, 28 degree and clear blue sky, so it was perfect conditions to see other people carrying heavy things!

Finally we came around to buy bicycles this weekend. Yesterday we ordered a couple of 20" foldable Dahon bikes. Amazing that it took us 16 months to manage to arrange that after moving to Japan.

It's now been two weeks now since the 72km race in Fuji goko. My legs are finally back to a state when I can start running again. Still I can't do any longer distances but the training has started for the challenge of the year, 100km race in Saroma up in Hokkaido at the end of June.

Photos from today.











Big streets around Akihabara were closed for traffic and filled with groups of people carrying the portable shrines, Mikoshi.











Many groups looked exhausted in the warm weather. This group was still full of energy though.











Kids was riding on some of the shrines.











I got to try to carry the shrine that one of our friends, Chie-san, group was responsible for. After 5 minutes I had had enough in the heat. They kept on going for hours...











The goal was to carry the Mikoshi to the temple where there was a ceremony to finish off the festival.