Category: Slice of Life

New On Cloud Running Shoes

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On Cloud Shoes
On Cloud Shoes

I got a new pair of running shoes last week: On “Cloud” running shoes. They are very light and would be classified as a minimalist shoe, but they do have some decent padding. I’ve always run in a standard-type running shoe – shoes with a medium amount of padding, but in the past several years there has been so much variety in the market, with minimalist shoes becoming popular a few years ago, and now super-cushy shoes are getting the spotlight. So for my latest pair of shoes, I wanted to try something besides my standard shoe. A few of my friends really liked their minimalist shoes so I decided to try some, figuring I would ease into the new type of running by alternating between the Cloud shoes and my standard running shoes.

Running in the new shoes the first time was great! First of all, these shoes are so light – they weigh almost nothing! I was expecting a really different feel because these shoes supposedly have less support and cushioning than my regular running shoes, but it was really comfy. The angle of the shoe is different, so I do have to change my running form to a more forward posture, with shorter strides. My normal running style is with pretty short strides, so there wasn’t too drastic a change form me, but the shoes felt really good. I ended up running 2 miles on that first run.

The next day, my feet were a little sore. But it was a good kind of soreness, not like an injury or anything. The following day I was fully recovered and went running again in the Clouds and enjoyed the run even more. My third run was the best so far and I haven’t actually went back to my normal shoes yet. Today I am taking a day off from running, but I am planning on trying to run maybe three days, then one day of rest. We’ll see how that goes. Overall, I am happy with the On Cloud running shoes and would recommend them!

Pizza Margherita and Peperoncino Pasta

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Pizza Margherita and Peperoncino Pasta
Pizza Margherita and Peperoncino Pasta

Tonight’s dinner was homemade Pizza Margherita and Peperoncino Pasta, made by my wife. As I’ve mentioned many times, she is an amazing cook and we eat like kings at home. The other night we went out to a local Italian restaurant which was rated pretty highly on Yelp, but the food was just too salty for our tastes. I think maybe that left my wife unsatisfied since she really wanted Pizza Margherita. So, she made us a homemade pizza pie! It was great!!!

It got me thinking a little about how American and Japanese palettes are different. I’ve come to realize that I don’t like too much salt on my food anymore, but here in the States it is common for food to be pretty salty. There are always salt shakers on the tables in restaurants, and they get used really often! After eating Japanese and Japanese-style food for years now, my taste buds are not used to so much salt, so lots of times the standard restaurant fare is just too much for me. To be more specific, the type of saltiness I am used to comes from shoyu and miso, and not regular table salt, so it is a more complex flavor. I guess it is rare for us to say about a Japanese meal that it is too salty, but we might say that there is too much shoyu in it. I hope that make sense.

What is also a little uncommon about our meals is that often times there is no meat in the meal at all. Honestly, I don’t notice much of the time because the food is really delicious. It is such a normal thing to have a meat component to a meal in America and I think we’ve been conditioned by the meat industry that we need to have meat as a main component for every meal, whether it be breakfast sausage or bacon, turkey or ham in our sandwiches, or chicken in our pasta. It might be hard to believe, but there are delicious meals without any meat in them! I don’t mean to be preachy, but I do think we as humans should realize the impact our over-consumption of meat has on our environment, as science is showing us more and more in studies. I think it is really good, though, that people are becoming more aware of these studies and are choosing to be more mindful of where their food comes from, and the resources that are required to produce our food. The sharing of information on the Internet has a lot to do with that.

森恵「接吻 -kiss- (ORIGINAL LOVE)」

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Megumi Mori’s cover of 接吻 -kiss- by Original Love is so good! I hope you agree. It’s a great pop song.

After watching/listening to this, I decided to try to learn it on guitar, which is kind of a problem since I don’t know how to play guitar! But why should that stop me? With that in mind, I picked up Koa’s guitar, watched a couple beginner videos, and learned a couple of chords. As thousands of hopeful guitarists before me, I learned how to play E major and A major and then strummed along to Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth”. That was actually quite fun and satisfying!

Anyways, it is kind of a goal of mine to learn a few tunes on the guitar so why not start now? It should be a fun experience. Who knows, someday I might be able to play 接吻 like Megumi Mori! (the singing though is impossible…)

First Day at the Pool

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Today was the first day at the pool for us this year. It was just Koa and I who decided to go — Mariko was out at the Farmer’s Market and Bay stayed home to read — so Koa didn’t have anyone to play with in the pool. I swam for a bit, and played with him, but I’m sure it’s a lot more interesting to play with his friends! Still, it was fun and we got some good exercise. We got there at 2pm, and there was a nice crowd of people there. Not too much that we didn’t find chairs, but at around 2:30 it seemed like the rest of the neighborhood decided to drop by. When we left at 3pm, there were cars parked on the street and no empty chairs to be found. I need to remember to arrive before 2:30!

Also, I continue to be enamored with my Panasonic DMC TS2 camera. It’s a waterproof/shockproof camera that captures some good pictures and video, and with the magic of post-processing, you can get some fun images out of it. Plus I love the peace-of-mind knowing that I don’t have to take care of the camera as much as a dSLR. I think it is definitely worth it to have one of these rugged point-and-shoot cameras in the bag at all times!

Day Off

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I’m so happy it’s the long weekend! It’s funny that a day off from work that happens every year always seem to creep up and surprise me. This time because of some things at work, I knew that we have Monday off, but still, the free day doesn’t seem to sink in until Saturday comes around. I don’t really have any plans but just the thought of a free day gets me in a good mood. Maybe it’s the anticipation or open possibilities of things that we can do that excite me… even the option of doing nothing but catch up on TV shows is a positive.

In the not-too-distant past I used to have a more negative frame of mind when I have a free day. Maybe not really negative per se, but I would kind of feel like I would be wasting time or missing an opportunity unless I have something planned. These days I like to just enjoy the fact that there is no plan. It’s ok not to have everything worked out in advance!

I think I may have mentioned something like this before regarding vacation planning (more specifically the lack of planning), but now I also like when it happens on a smaller scale, such as just a single day off. It’s a nice change of outlook and the stress reduction is amazing. Life’s too short to be stressed all the time! And taking time off just relaxing and reducing stress it definitely time well-spent!