philippe gilbert

Posted by: Ian on 3 July 2011

One of the many things Japan does well (along with food on sticks, diminutive accomodation and fast trains), is the Collectible Toy. These come in a wide range, from bento phone danglies to pimpin’ robots.

My personal favourite are the MediCom Be@rbrick series since they are pretty cheap (around ¥400), and sold in blind boxes which adds to the fun.

Bearbrick (spelled Be@rbrick) is a collectible toy designed and produced by the Japanese company MediCom Toy Incorporated. The name is derived from the fact that the figure is a cartoon-style representation of a bear, and that it is a variation of MediCom’s Kubrick design. The at sign in the place of the letter a is a visual device that is a part of the Bearbrick brand, and as such, a trademark of MediCom Toy.

The figure is an anthropomorphized bear with an extremely simplified form and a pot belly. Each plastic figure features nine parts (widely referred to as tools in the toy industry): head, torso, hips, arms, hands, and legs; These nine tools allow eight points of articulation: swivel head, swivel waist, ball joint arms, swivel wrists, and ball joint legs. [wikipedia]

Be@rbricks are often created for special events, movies, stores and the like. Being a fan of both Be@rbricks and cycling, I thought I would have a go at designing some Tour De France style be@rs – after all, what is the peloton if not a rolling morass of graphic design?

In honour of Philippe Gilbert’s emphatic win on stage one, I present ‘Phillipe Gilbe@r’:

Phillipe Gilbe@r in the Beligan National Champion (road) strip. (Yes I know that Omega Pharma Lotto wear Ruby Project and not Oakley, but Gilbert is also not a bear in real life).

  1. Be@rbrick template courtesy of toysrevil.
  2. I have in no way, shape or form aquired any licensing for the above image, it was done for fun.1
  3. I’m not planning to release a-Be@r-a-day, but stay tuned for moar Be@rs!
  1. Though if Medicom would like to do a Tour De France set I would be most happy to be involved! ↑

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open the pod bay doors please

Posted by: Ian on 28 June 2011

I’d known about the pod hotels of Japan for a long time but I thought they would all be a bit on the ‘well used’ side for holiday accomodation, plus 9/10 of them are men only; which is awkward when traveling as a couple. Since we were heading to Japan I thought I would take another search and it didn’t take too long to find 9hours, which frankly looked more like something from 2001 than a place to sleep. Cheap(ish), separate male and female floors and it looked awesome, what could we lose?

We had arrived by Shinkansen (bullet train) from Tokyo that evening so we took the metro up to Shijo-Dori (handy for free wi-fi) then counted the side streets eastwards (take the eighth, head approximately 100m south) to find ourselves at 9hours reception.

At reception we placed our boots in individual lockers, and our large case in another locker, leaving us with just our day bags (with a change of clothes) to carry. 9hours has worked hard on their design, I thought it much reminiscent of an Apple Store, but in white. Instead of complicated dual-language signs, simple pictograms were generally used (with a note where needed) and the ladies-only floors were marked with red, instead of black/grey graphics.

After checking in and receiving our locker keys1, The Australian headed for the 4th floor while I headed for the 7th to check out our pod accommodation. I had evidently been checked in as most of the pods were dark, but number 720 was glowing gently awaiting my arrival. Then it was back in the lift to the 9th floor to check out the lockers and grab a shower.

In my locker I found a set of three branded gels for the shower, toothbrush and mini toothpaste and a navy Jinbei. The styling at 9hours pervades everything, very simple branding but it doesn’t look out of place. Disappointingly though, the Jinbei was not branded2 (The Australian got an Embroidered sporty looking number).

After hanging in the ground floor lounge/ lobby for a while it to check e-mail was time to try out the pods for real. Inside you get two small phone-sized ledges, a plug socket and a clock/ ambient light controller. The lighting is linked to the alarm so when you start it it slowly brings the lighting down over about 20 minutes, and then back up over a similar time frame just in time for your alarm call.

Tipped off by The Australian, In the morning I investigated the shower room further and found the hot bath. It was maintained at 45C (which, incidentally seems to be a perfect temperature to cook seafood in a sous-vide). It was unbelievably good, and I just wish I had found it the night before!.

I would definately recommend a stop over at 9hours if you are in Kyoto for a day or two. It’s not so cost effective if you are travelling with someone but really worth it for a nights sleep quite unlike any other!

  1. Your asigned locker number is also your pod number ↑
  2. It would have been even more tempting to steal/ buy one ↑

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kyoto (onna stick)

Posted by: Ian on 26 June 2011

On the evening after our stay at 9Hours, we had to relocate a couple kilometers across town to the Capsule Ryokan. Since it wasn’t far we decided to walk west to Karasuma Street, then grab a bus heading south to the Karasuma-Nanajo intersection, and then walk west again to the hotel. This also gave us plenty of opertunities to scope out restaurant menus on the way in the ongoing quest for non-meat based foodstuffs.

On this particular trip we lucked out completely – The Australian spotted a ‘we have english’ label attached to a menu, and a quick skim through revealed it to be a place specialising in Things On Sticks tempura-style. For ¥80 a piece we could choose from a wide variety of meat and non-meat goodness1.

Inside, was a small bar with maybe ten seats and another five 2-person tables along the wall. A row of Sake bottles sat on the the bar and each pair of seats was equiped with an urn of soy2, two small plates and a wire-rack tray.

The bar-girl was super lovely and with a mix of my badly pronouced English-translated-Japanese, pointing and some finger counting we ordered around a dozen items. The Australian also spotted Kyoto Cider so, being a Cider drinker I had one of those while she ordered a ginger ale.

It wasn’t long before a steady stream of skewered delights was headed our way. Each item was battered, cooked and served steaming onto our drip rack. The cook made sure to tell us what each one was and they were all delicious.

Top picks included the bacon, eel (unagii) , tofu, rice croquette and baby green peppers.

When we were pretty much done, I had a quick look through the menu again and spotted that they had Ume Chazuke – rice served with umeboshi (pickled plum) with green tea poured over. I had first been introduced to it by my internationally travelling friend Cem, so I thought it was only right to order one (which I manged in rough Japanese). Unfortunately they were out of rice that night so it had to wait for our return visit. It was fantastic; there were some fresh mint leaves in there too and the bite of the sour plum was perfect.

It’s hard to say how good the place was. It was definately a place for locals (as well as travellers) and the staff were lovely. A few business cards from around the world had been pinned over the door and I was disapointed to find I didn’t have any spare in my waller. We went twice while in Kyoto and I will make a point of going back when i’m there next.

  1. I could’nt find it on Google Streetview, but its approximately 200 west of Karasuma-Nanajo intersection on the north side of the street – look for the red lantern. It’s called Shikatsu Sakusho, which roughly translates as ‘Pork & vegies fried on a skewer factory’ ↑
  2. Complete with a polite sign requested you didn’t double dip ↑

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on customer service

Posted by: Ian on 16 June 2011

Sunday 5th June, 2011, 16:40.

 

We had just finished our last lap of Tokyo, picking up those things that we has seen previously but didn’t want to carry around all holiday. Our suitcases had been lockered at Tokyo station for the day so we distributed our haul into them ready for our flight back to Sydney. Everything was stowed and we were checking the shopping bags to make sure we hadn’t missed anything. At this point, I noticed something and asked The Australian ‘Erm, where are the Be@rs1?’. ‘I thought you had them?!’. “You were carrying the shopping2!?’.

In a word: Ohnoes!

I hadn’t got a clue where we might have left them, but fortunately The Australian’s near perfect visual memory narrowed it down to the Yodobashi electronics store in Akihabara – our last stop of the day.

Since we knew where they were, we could go and get them. Right? Unfortunately we had a problem – tickets for the 17:30 Narita EXpress for our 20:30 flight. That left 50 minutes to get to Akihabara station (an 8 minute train ride), get to the store (5 minutes), find some help (I don’t speak Japanese and the store is 8 floors) and return. An unrealistic challenge which left us the choice – abandon the be@rs, or go searching, miss our train for a later one and run close to check in for our flight.

Not the best end to our holiday – there were a couple of sad pandas on the train, but I figured they might have been found at cleaning time. I hoped the good nature of the Japanese people we had met would help us out.

Once back Sydney on the Monday, I tackled their website and, with the aid of Google translate, I somehow found and slowly managed to fill in a fully Japanese ‘contact us’ form with our tale of woe, hit send and hoped.

Apart from an automatic reply, nothing happened for the rest of the day.

Three days later, I received a personal e-mail from one of the shop staff – they had indeed found a bag, confirmed it was mine and were happy to send it. On Tuesday it was siting on my desk.

 

Just to emphasize how awesome this store was, they had found my bag among 8 huge floors of electronics, found someone with fluent enough English to read my mail and correspond with me and they had just spend ¥1,500 to ship ¥3,500 of stuff to me. In a week.

So: Yodobashi Camera Akihabara store in Tokyo; apart from having awesome gadgets, toys and miscellaneous cool things, they also have awesome customer assistance.

While I am on the good customer service thing, Apple just replaced the Logic Board and Trackpad on my MacBook pro. It is all ready for collection 23 hours after I dropped it off.

  1. Our penultimate stop of the day had been at Project 1 of 6 where we had picked up some be@rbrick toys – little collectables that are much more available and 1/4 the price compared to Australia. ↑
  2. I was carrying the camera. ↑

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random kyoto

Posted by: Ian on 4 June 2011

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random tokyo

Posted by: Ian on 31 May 2011

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tour de east

Posted by: Ian on 21 May 2011

This is one of the most popular rides for road riders in Sydney – taking in a full lap of the Eastern Suburbs, it passes many of the beaches and features a good number of short descents and climbs in and out of each of the bays.

Traditionally the route is riden anti-clockwise, initially heading south to Botany and La Perouse before heading north through Maroubra, Bronte, Bondi and Watsons Bay. I throw in a few laps of Centennial Park at the end too to bump up the mileage a little.

With 4 laps of Centennial Park at the end, total distance is 80km with a ride time of around 3 hours.

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music to run to

Posted by: Ian on 15 May 2011

I’ve had exactly the same playlist for all nine weeks of the C25k program. I had planned to change it around, but it kind of helped with the runs in the end with a bit of familiarity.

  1. Cochise – Audioslave
  2. Arena – Daft Punk
  3. End of Line – Daft Punk
  4. Personal Jesus (Pump Mix) – Depeche Mode
  5. Dream On (Dave Clarke Acoustic Version) – Depeche Mode
  6. Superstylin’ – Groove Armarda
  7. Rusty Cage – Johnny Cash
  8. Closer – Kings of Leon
  9. Jet Son – Blockhead
  10. An Open Letter to NYC – Beastie Boys

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i ran 5k and all I got was…

Posted by: Ian on 12 May 2011

The last three weeks of Couch to 5k were a week each of gradually increasing run times with no breaks.

week 7

Week 7 coincided with the extra long Easter/ Anzac holiday, so we got the first two runs done in Centennial Park. I had no planned pace other than ‘survive’ but RunKeeper’s audio cues were suggesting five minute kilometers were doable, but I came up 130m short on Sunday and just 40m short on Tuesday. The sub-25 minute 5k would have to wait for another time as Thursdays run was around the much hillier streets of Vaucluse.

 

Sundays run also coincided with a Wiener dog gathering – there must have been 15 running around! For more about the importance of the Wiener dog during training, see here.

Day three of the week saw the return of pain in my left knee, I’m not sure if its related to the hillier route or over-work but with luck it will fade again.

week 8

Week 8 calls for 28 minutes running so on Sunday was a double with an 80km road ride in the morning and the Couch 25k run in the afternoon. Again we hit Centennial and taking it easy I managed to knock out an average of 5:11/km which I was very happy with.

Days two and three were around my area of Vaucluse again; it’s much harder to pace with the hills (I climb around 100m on the run), but with the Garmin it helps me pace a little and not overcook the climbs. The runs were pretty uneventful & my knee pain seems to have settled down to slightly niggly so I can deal with that.

week 9 – finals week

Week 9 is the last of the C25k program with three 30 minute runs. Again on Sunday we picked Centennial Park for day 1, possibly an unwise move as it was approaching lunchtime on Mothers Day. It was a lovely clear day and feeling good I managed to cover over 6km in the half-hour1.

Runs two and three were really cold (8C is arctic when you’ve been in Sydney for a couple of years), and pretty uneventful. The biggest challenge was working out a route that would get me to the right end point at the appointed time; I didn’t want to get too cold walking back to my apartment.

For the final ‘Graduation’ run, I plotted out a route I’ve not done before knowing that I would need about 5.7km to run bookended with 500m of walking.

 

It was pretty much a climb up from sea level to around 90m at the midway point before descending again. Not a bad route and one that will probably be added to the list.

In case you are ever thinking stopping before your interval is up, a little gem via Gym Jones:

A memorable gym conversation: “Why did you stop? You had 2 seconds left” – “What am i supposed to do with 2 seconds” – “Not fucking quit.”

  1. I managed 4:53min/km which put me nicely under 25 minutes for 5km. ↑

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C25k progression

Posted by: Ian on 21 April 2011

Week 4

Two rounds of three and five minute runs this week with half that as recovery time. Day 1 this week was in Centennial Park on a lovely sunny evening. I took my Edge again for some data gathering which was cool, and I was happy to manage to cover more ground than I expected (I wound up with about 4.8km, or a lap and quarter).

For the last of this weeks runs I went out with a Garmin Edge 500, A (loaned) Forerunner 110 and RunKeeper on my iPhone. I’m interested in a more running-centric GPS so it was good to trial one.

Week 5

Things change a little this week instead of the same workout three times, each is different, with just a single 20 minute run on day three. Day 1 was ok; we managed to catch a break in the afternoon rain so didn’t get soaked which was nice, though I will have to get something with sleeves soon I think as the temperature keeps dropping.

With the increase in distances my knees are getting a bit painful, taking around 36 hours to die down. Hopefully this is just due to me having weak-ass hamstrings and things will calm down as I get stronger in the relevant places.

Day 3 of this week was a big one – straight through with no walking. Knees were annoying but with a helping of ‘Shut Up Legs’ I managed a nice constant ~6min/km pace throughout.

 

Week 6

Day two of each week is definitely the hardest – due to how I schedule my runs I only get 36 hours recovery from day one. This was pretty much a repeat of week 5 with a little stretch – intervals for days one and two and then a long run on day three.

After day one I put on my calf compression sleeves for the morning and my knees have barely hurt since, which I’m pretty happy about to say the least!

For this weeks long run we settled on Centennial Park as its mostly flat and there’s no need to worry about a reasonably placed turnaround point. I probably started a little quick but things went well; next week 28 minute runs!

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the return of mr orange

Posted by: Ian on 6 April 2011

The clocks have changed, the Spring Classics have started and the clocks have changed. It can mean only one thing; summer is here and long evening rides are once again to be enjoyed. For those north of the equator.

Unfortunately, I currently live in the southern hemisphere so the clocks have just moved the wrong way so its now getting dark around 6pm and the weather is what scientists would describe as ‘a bit pants’. For me, this time of year means I get really good at changing tyres and get reacquainted with Kurt; my turbo trainer.

 

(The orange tyre is a heavy-ass turbo specific one. It would be lethal out on the road, but it stops my fancy GP4000s from immolating themselves as things get pretty hot on the trainer (you can see the heat sync in the above picture).

Last night didn’t really have a planned structure to it – it was more to get used to the suckfullness of trainer rides. They are without a doubt boring and unpleasant. After 40 minutes I was thinking about getting off, so it took some effort to stay on for the hour – as well as fitness the turbo is great for training mental fortitude.

Last night was roughly broken down into:

  1. 00:00:00 to 00:07:30 – Warm up
  2. 00:07:30 to 00:30:00 – Tempo Z3
  3. 00:30:00 to 00:40:00 – TT Z4
  4. 00:40:00 to 00:45:00 – Recovery Z2/3
  5. 00:45:00 to 00:50:00 – TT Z4
  6. 00:50:00 to 00:60:00 – Cool down

 

[Click to enlarge]

This was more for entertainment and passing time than any real science. I’ll get around to more structured sessions soon.

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look ma no bike

Posted by: Ian on 2 April 2011

Here’s the thing, I can ride a bike for three or four hours at a time and get off feeling a little sore and a little tired. I can’t run for toffee. So, a few weeks ago, as moral support for someone I took up running…

I’m following the couch25k program which aims to get you running for 30 minutes straight at the end of nine weeks.

Week 1

From my apartment in Vaucluse we plotted a quiet route around near the foreshore. 60 seconds on 90 off for twenty minutes. It highlighted how much I suck at running, but it wasn’t too bad. I even managed to get up at 6am Tuesday and Thursday for pre-work runs (after work is riding).

Week 2

For the first day of week two we headed for therunningcompany in Potts Point for a proper set of shoes (week one was done in my rather knackered and worn Asics Mexico ’68s). After a few runs on the treadmill, first in bare feet, then in a variety of shoes I wound up with another set of Asics, but these ones feature rather more in the way of support and cushioning.

 

The runs were 90 seconds, two minutes off for twenty minutes along with a five minute walk each end. Fortunitously this roughly equals one lap of Centennial Park (like I don’t do enough laps of CP anyway!). Again not too difficult, still trying to work out pacing and technique for some decent efficiency. The second and third days of week two were the same, again I managed to rise early for dawn running. My route coincides with the route of one of the popular early moring rides, so I have seen a few nice bikes out on the runs too.

Week 3

Day 1 of week three should have been Sunday evening, but the weather was foul so we postponed till Monday evening when we could run in Vaucluse. This week things ramp up slightly with two repeats of 90 seconds run, 90 seconds walk followed by three minutes running and three minutes walking. The three minute legs seemed long but not too bad, I had to check my watch a few times though as RunKeeper had paused during a week 2 session leaving me running for way too long before I realised. For the last run of week three I took my Garmin along so I could capture HR and pace data, hopefully it will make interesting reading once I have a few more runs in.

Week 4 starts tomorrow with three and five minute runs. My knees are a little sore but I think they will hold out.

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