Beau's Blog

It’s 2:30pm on June 6th. I’m in a cozy corner of Flux Café in Ebisu, Tokyo on a cloudy day feeling sated after a tasty plate of butter chicken with salad. I find it amusing that I chose brown rice. When asked what kind of rice I wanted, I didn’t understand the question and only after brown rice was offered did I realize what I was being asked. The playlist here is full of American bangers, and I’m feeling nostalgic for college hearing Memories by David Guetta. I just spent some time looking online at things to do in Tokyo and life is good.

May 18^th – May 25^th | Hino, Tokyo

I spent the week away from central Tokyo in the town of Hino. It was a different experience and I went to lots of cafes, did my first trail run and took it easy (found this gem). Upon arriving in town, I immediately felt a slower pace of life and fewer people in general. I reveled in having my own space yet also longed for friends and more social interaction. The Airbnb I stayed in wasn’t quite as comfortable as I was expecting so I felt especially compelled to get out and explore.

Wanting to prioritize catching up on the blog, I went to cafes most days, typically in Tachikawa only one train stop away. At the cafes, I found myself drawn to matcha drinks and happily unconcerned with caffeine due to a forced late bedtime.

In Tachikawa, I spent a little time doing things other than cafes. There’s a trail running store amusingly named Trippers. Beyond the items I would expect a store like this to stock, I bought some Japanese running food – yokan and mochi. I also tried to pull cash with my debit card and learned that it had expired on May 1^st. Amusingly, I had pulled USD in San Jose airport on April 30^th – the final day it had been valid so was very surprised to find it was expired. This is also the town that has the Tokyo disc golf course so I met up with Chadwick to play it. One highlight was throwing our whole bags at hole 8 attempting the ace run until Chadwick hit it with a forehand flex that flirted with the trees. We also met up with Sacha who performs in Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria and it was fun learning that many of the cast and crew in the show are disc golf enthusiasts! Afterwards, I enjoyed running back rather than taking the train which has felt inevitable going out doing stuff in Japan.

My favorite part of the week was the Sunday Mt Takao trail run. Both from the helpful guy at Trippers and Chadwick, I had heard Mt. Takao was a good place to trail run so I made sure to take advantage of being close by. On Sunday morning, I made the 25min train ride over to the base of Mt. Takao and was stunned at the massive crowd at the station. People of all ages, families, single people, mostly hikers yet a healthy number of trail runners too. There were several different routes up and they all seemed packed. I suppose when you have a city with tens of millions, it makes sense that the closest mountain will be crowded on a pleasant weekend May day. For hiking between the US and Japan, food is a big difference. In the US on trails like this, people would generally be eating granola bars or sandwiches with no options beyond consuming what you’ve brought in. However here, not only are there vendors selling hot noodles, snacks and drinks up on the tops of scenic spots (in addition to the ubiquitous vending machines), there were many many people clearly out on day hikes decked out in very fancy gear and using stoves to cook food up there too. My mindset was more of a move quick through a beautiful place spending just enough time to appreciate the natural beauty. That said, much of my trail run was at hiking pace. Between the near constant crowds, muddy and surprisingly technical terrain, my body still adapting to humidity and working hard to not get lost – I was not so speedy. Random lovely surprise: Many of the trails were up high on ridges. At one point when no one else was around, I passed a guy peeing off the side of the trail. Given Japan is a place where people generally seem quite proper and “by the book”, seeing this (as well as jaywalking) makes me smile a bit. As I bathed in the post run euphoria sipping on an orange pulpy drink which hadn’t remained as cold as I had hoped, I thought to myself, “wow a lot of things have had to go right for me to be here right now.” From a practical perspective, this experience validated that my workflow: scout out runs using Strava’s route planning feature, load the GPX file onto my watch and then do it! I felt confident this would work in the Japanese mountains for future runs too.

Other highlights from the week

• Many konbini meals at home while watching disc golf
• Trying Yoshinoya for the first time ever (despite there being a location on UCLA’s campus)
  • Shoutout to the random dude who came over to my table to help me open the salad dressing container!
• Running along the Tama River feat. a water fountain that squirted my face really hard
• Lunch with Lina in Kichijoji – good luck getting your yoga license!
  • Lina is one of the very impressive bilingual people who has lived in both the US and Japan and is able to navigate both cultures well. Wow!
• Lunch with Miyoko at a Todai cafeteria – awesome selection of solid food at reasonable prices
• Found out that I’m eligible for German citizenship
  • This is due to my great grandparents leaving the country in the 1930s given persecution from the Nazis. Thanks Dad and Frannie for looking into this!
• Taking myself out for bukkake udon and yuzu ramen
  • I’ve been eating noodles very often and am showing no signs of slowing down 🙂