Turning over a new leaf...Yuko, the Morning Person??

Swear to god.  This pic was taken a little BEFORE 5AM from my hotel room:

Please disregard my reflection

This must be a sign for me to become a morning runner.  But instead of that sweaty pastime I used to participate in so long ago, for the past few days here in Nagoya, I've been getting up at *not* the butt-crack-of-dawn but 4am nonetheless, putzing around for an hour or so, waiting for the nearest pastry shop to open so I can stuff myself w/ carbo-loaded sugar-loaded goodness.  What?  You don't know the greatness of Japanese pastry??  Well, here's a pic of the wide selection of drool providing options that my nose directs me to every morning this week:

I wish blogspot had a "smell" app.

Foodie on the WALK in NAGOYA

Hello from my motherland!  Time flies when you're jet-lagged and frantically trying to find a place to live!

Its been 3 days since our arrival in Nagoya, and I have yet to dirty any of the running outfits I so purposely packed.  Hmph.  But I can say that my appetite has had quite a trip already!

Due to me getting stressed out about this whole "living-in-a-city-for-the-first-time-ever" thing and the "I-can't-read-and-understand-everything-in-this-country" thing when we first arrived, I missed some photo opps from Monday's dinner.  But rest assured, the meal wasn't anything spectacular - I picked which restaurant to eat at based on whether or not I could read the listed entrees on the display menu.  Yeah I know, I'm pathetic.

After an incredibly loooong day (jet-lag got us up at 4:30am!) of viewing 10 houses/apts, we decided to try out the Chinese restaurant in our hotel Tuesday night, per recommendation from our relocation guy.  I was impressed - the shorompou (sp?) was so juicy and delicious!!  We added shrimp dumplings and streamed rice to our entree and we were in heaven.

One poke w/ your chopsticks and the juice comes oozing out!

Then today for lunch after a morning of more house hunting, Relo man took us to the best ramen restaurant EVER!  The ramen itself was thinner than usual and cooked to perfection!  And the broth was sooo good, especially w/ the smoked pork that lay atop the dish.  Add the best EVER gyoza to the entree and we were well on our way to a food coma.  Nom nom nom...

After trying to burn off some of the consumed calories with a walking exploration of the city (we even found a local bike shop, yay!!), we somehow built up an appetite yet again (how can we be this hungry ALL the time??).  So this time I decided to try Nagoya's famous miso tonkatsu.  Anything deep-fried is splendid, but the sweet flavor of miso added a unique twist to the regular deep friend pork cutlets.  I may try this at home! 

How in the world are Japanese women so skinny when there's so much to eat??

I have to say, even though part of me is scared out of my mind with this big move, here are two little things that make me *kinda* look forward to moving here in less than a month *gasp!*

1. Maccha tea latte - and not just seasonal!

2.The most delicious desserts you could ever ask for - in the best presentation you could ever imagine!

And finally, a sneak peak of what we finally decided on:

Our lil' yellow house :)  So, uh, when are you coming to visit, huh?

Chicago weekend/Race recap

Well, I wish I could report that all the quality workouts I incorporated this time around in training paid off and I managed to pull off a PR yesterday at the Chicago Half Marathon.  But alas, I lost the mental battle yet again and it was a struggle just to finish.  Here goes the weekend recap...

Saturday morning the roomie and I got up nice and early to head to Chi-town.  Being that this would be our *tear* last road trip together for awhile, we didn't waste a minute and carried on a convo for the entire 4 hour road trip (no parking no parking no parking!).  Of course, with a pit stop at Micky-D's for some fries.  Of course!

After some quick shopping at Akira and checking into our PHAT hotel (Fairmont Chicago, woot woot!), we headed to Viaggio in the West Loop for dinner w/ Dr. Gooby.  Not knowing their portion sizes, we decided to order two appetizers - the calamari and the eggplant stack (yum and yum!):

And then for my dish, I decided to go w/ the fancy-schmancy squid ink linguine w/ lobster:

Needless to say, we had to hail a cab and roll our stuffed bellies into our uuuuuber comfy beds.  A little tv watching and before we knew it we were snoozing away.

Race recap:  Well, lets just say I got my tooshy kicked.  Real hard. 

Mile 1-3:  The race itself was a little chaotic.  Though a small race, there seemed to be a lot of people crammed into a tiny area for the start.  Within seconds, I lost sight of KT.  Fortunately, Dr. Gooby was at my side, so I ran her pace for the first 2 miles...which ended up to be a horrible mistake.  I think my head got slightly inflated after a good race at the Martian in Dearborn last month, and for some reason I thought I could keep up w/ Dr. Gooby.  After going out at a 8:08 pace for the first mile, my body started questioning me.  I finally waved her a farewell around mile 3 and started running at a more manageable pace.  But I was already doomed.  My body had exerted more energy than it was used to this early on in the race. 

Mile 4-6:  I finally got back into the groove of things, but as the top runner was coming back in the out & back course, race officials were trying to squish all us "slower peeps" aside and it bothered me more than I thought.  The few times I felt like I could speed up, I was stuck behind a wall of people who I just couldn't seem to maneuver around.  At around half a mile before mile 5 I started to hear the roomie's voice (yes, she's THAT loud), and I gave her a quick wave as I sped up just a bit for show, but then slowed right back down.  Right around mile 6, I was able to see KT and Dr. Gooby on their way back and that gave me a quick boost of energy that was much needed.  And oh, did I mention it was uber hot by this time?  I was salivating between water stations, urgh! 

Mile 7-10:  I would again have spurts of energy on the way back, but they were now few and far between.  Mile 9-10 seemed like the longest mile of my life, and this is when my mental weakness took over.  I wanted to stop.  I wanted to walk.  But I kept chugging through and soon enough I heard the squeals of the roomie and Eurchenko.  As the roomie happily cheered and screamed for me, she quickly asked, "Are you having fun?" to which I barely had enough energy to respond w/ a grunt that I hoped she was able to translate to mean "hell no."  Later, the roomie described my face at mile 9 as either I was ready to keel over and die, or I was ready to kill someone (maybe I felt a little of both) - you be the judge:

Mile 11-13.1:  You'd think adrenaline would kick in for the last few miles, but not for me, not for this race.  The good news was that I didn't get any cramps (compared to at the Martian where I could barely run upright), but I'm attributing that to my much slower pace I was running at this time.  There was a slight incline into the finish area which to me felt like climbing Mt Fuji at this point in the race, but with the screams from the roomie & Eurchenko now audible, I pushed through to crawl over the finish line.  Phew.  Done!

Thanks girls for getting me to do this run!!

KT & the hubs - are they not the cutest athletic couple?

My personal cheerleaders - thanks so much for coming!!  You don't know how many times I was ready to walk and you girls got me thru it!

After I utilized the waterfall shower in our hotel room a little too long, we headed to Le Peep (near Oprah Studio!) for some brunch w/ Dr. R and Dr. Gooby.  I ordered the stacked oatmeal pancakes w/ a twist (pb & raspberry!) - Just what I needed!  Nom nom nom...

Brunch went by way too quickly!!  It was so great to see you girls!!

And now back to reality...and here begins the packing...

The Perfect Burger?!?!

Mid-week artery clogging goodness.  And at lunch, at that!  Introducing my new fav burger - the Pimento Cheese Burger from Zingerman's Roadhouse.  What is pimento cheese, you ask?  Well, pimento is the red pepper stuff in the middle of green olives.  And the combination of that spicy-ness and the creamy cheese most popular in the Southern US and the Phillipines (who knew?) makes for the *perfect* topping atop of a medium rare burger. 

Needless to say I had to secretly unzip the top of my skirt as I returned to my cube in the office.

'Nuf about all this food talk tho.  After last week's shortcomings in my workouts, I front-loaded this week w/ some quality workouts - starting w/ a tempo run, then a speed workout, yoga, and finally, a pace workout today.  I've been noticing that after every quality workout, I feel an urge to (excuse my choice of words) vomit.  I don't know what the cause of it is, but I'm eager to figure it out...  

Great food, great weekend, eh?

Another weekend exploring foods from another city!  This time, I had the opportunity to explore the great Upper Penninsula, better known as the "UP."

Our final destination was Houghton, Michigan, but we made a dinner stop in Marquette, home of Northern Michigan University and the largest populated city in the UP.  After some quick search on Yelp for a restaurant recommendation, we stumbled upon a newly opened Irish pub called The Wild Rover.  The hubs and I both ordered a boxty, a traditional Irish potato pancake, after reading rave review after another on the 'net.  Mine came filled w/ cheddar and bacon, covered w/ heavy gravy.  Hello~ heart attack!  Normally I would have been all over this, but after a pit stop at McDonalds for a large order of greasy fries just a few hours before, my stomach had its share of artery clogging-ness. 

Bacon & cheese boxty

So why were we driving 9+ hours to the UP, you ask?  For my bro-in-law's graduation!  After seven long years, he's finally done it, and we're all so proud of him!!  Way to go!!

The hubs took this cool shot - no photo editing either!

The in-laws & moi.  There was no Obama-esque speech, but a good graduation nontheless!

Oh, and I can't forget to mention the single physical activity did the entire weekend - I decided to take advantage of the lovely hills and squeezed in a quick hill repeat workout before continuing the celebration into dinner! 

We headed to North Shore restaurant in downtown Houghton.  I started off my feast w/ a cup o' BOOYAH!  You read that right!  Who knew "booyah" not only means "indication of satisfaction of accomplishment," according to Wikipedia, but also refers to a wild game stew!  I had to get it, just to say I got served a cup of booyah :)

Cup o' Booyah!  Delicious!

Then I got a traditional filet as my main dish.  The gi-nourmous broccoli frightened me after recent trend of brocolinis I've encountered, but the parmesean risotto cakes were a good starch addition! 

Filet w/ brocoli and parmesean risotto cakes

For dessert, I opted for The Sleeping Bear - dark choco cake w/ oozing bittersweet choco inside;  served w/ mixed-berry frozen custard and berry coulis.  The bomb cake was DA BOMB and the frozen custard tasted wooooonderful!  I could eat that alllll day :)

Sleeping Bear Bombshell

Although nothing to do w/ food or running, I wanted to post this pic since it makes Houghton look so exotic and fabulous:

Portage Lift Bridge, pic courtesy of the hubs - isn't he talented??

Before our departure, we headed to Suomi for our last breakfast at the famous Finnish restaurant.  For some reason the UP has a large population of Finnish people.  And I fell in love w/ nisu, a Finnish sweet bread.

Finnish French Toast made w/ Nisu bread

A weekend full of eats and celebration.  Congrats bro-in-law, and thanks Houghton for showing me how beautiful Michigan can still be!