Quiet day of laundry, departure preparations and meeting

Not that interesting day to write about I'm afraid. With need of laundry, approaching departure, agreed meeting and tomorrow's quarter marathon I spent quite a lazy day tomorrow. At morning I ate breakfast and put clothes on washing machine. Then I proceeded to do packing test. I put all my souvenirs to luggage bag #1(well it was mostly filled before but now put in last of stuff). This way I could verify how much free space I still have available. Well bag was pretty much filled up. I had this bag weighed up at nearby post office. 21kg plus change. Whee! No wonder it felt harder to get to the post office than last year when bags were 14-15kg. Wonder how they gained weight so much? Stuff I bought didn't feel that different to last year. Maybe less dvd's but not that many books either(bought more books last year). Albeit there's bit of ingredients from yesterday which might be more heavier for space taken than other stuff.

Airplane limit is 23kg so maybe good there's not much free room there either. And good thing that return flight is done by JAL. Thanks to that I can have 2 bags with me ;) Second bag is mostly filled by clothes but there's still some room left for other stuff and if nothing else I can even up the weights by transfering some stuff from heavier bag to this one.

Going to be bit of bummer to get these bags to airplane but hey books are lot cheaper to buy here than from Finland and Japanese styled statues and paintings etc are harder to find from Finland as well.

 Left bag: Books, books, books, books. Well okay some other stuff for souvenirs for others plus some other stuff for me but mainly books! Me loves books. And good way to study the language more.

Right one is for clothes. At least there's some space but since that's without wheels not looking to make it as heavy as left one. Carrying left one is pain in the ass and I need to carry it around quite a bit.

Breakfast. Rice, spaghethi and...something. Ate this last year as well. Taste isn't bad though something in it that makes me not wish it for every day. Good thing I don't have to ;)

 Well as is usual for me I went to meeting place ahead of time to do just some random sightseeing to see what kind of place this is. Never been here before. I kinda like the look of these narrow shopping streets on dark. Feels both lively and small-scale at the same time for some reason.

 Okay. I might miss something here but I SWEAR there's nothing on that advertisement that would warn that the store in question is adult store. DVD, magazines, comics, photograph collections. At top is "sale & trade in. High price buying". Below that just stating this buildings 3rd floor. Now I suppose it's POSSIBLE normal type of books etc are available but at least when you step in you see only books and dvd's with nude women in them.

Sheesh. Say something about confusing advertisement.

 Christmas here as well already.

 Well eventually it was time for the meeting. No special plans so we went for a look for some coffee or something with a warm place since she mentioned it was cold. For somebody saying it's cold she sure didn't seem in a rush to settle for place as we walked around hour chatting this and chat before she finally settled for a cafeteria.

I settled for the ice-cream thingie and juice mix(stuff on above is what she bought). Maybe not best of ideas to eat these before marathon and even less on this albeit BIT chilly evening but what the heck. The juice mix taste a lot like shake(pirtelö) in Finland though less solid in feeling.

Well we talked couple hours about bit of this and that and so on. Quite a pleasant way to spend evening.

On way home I dropped by at book off to get last volumes of uchuu kyoudai(at least so far released). I did this at the store near yamashita station on the railline that takes me home as I had 150yen of coupon. And received new one...Uhhuh. Bit of funny(or not) event followed. I rose up on the train reading book(japanese history in manga style. If I buy more books still this series is in high priority). It goes like station or two and then announcement comes "kamimachi. shuuten desu". I think "shuuten? nani ittenno? sangenjaya darou, shuuten". That's pretty much literally what I thought at that point. For sake of language studies I try to think in Japanese as much as possible. That's btw not exactly textbook japanese or one I would be using with other people but for private thinking okay. More text book in form appropriate when talking with people outside your "in" group would be "shuuten desu ka? nani wo itteimasuka? shuuten wa sangenjaya deshou". Anyway meaning is "last stop? What are you talking about? Sangenjaya is the last stop isn't it?"

I have now spent about 3 months in Japan and outside JR period pass nearly every day I have used this train line. Albeit this isn't part I'm using most but still this is FIRST TIME EVER I ran into situation where last stop in this line is something other than shimo-takaido or sangen jaya(depending on which way you are going). I'm familiar with the concept as on other lines it's fairly common there are trains that have last stop in-between but never ran into this before on this line.

This left me to quandry where I could either wait for train and pay the fee(this line btw has flat fee regardless of how far you go) or I could walk. Well it's not that far, I sometimes come this far on foot anyway for sake of nikumans, so I opted for the walking path.

Tomorrow is quarter marathon at the odaiba. Hopefully I can finish it. Traveling here hasn't been best of prepping for running as legs are bit tired + shoe sores are still but I'll try to finish it. Won't be breaking my record though.