Gym Dandy

Wandering around gyms in America is pretty foreign to me - what could I call wandering aimlessly around gyms in Japan? That was the main highlight of my evening. On Monday, I signed up for a gym package that allows me to go to the gym on weekdays between 9pm-12am...this is actually best because the gym opens at 10am each morning and there's no way I could go and then get to work. I am not sure about more populated cities but Himeji just doesn't really wake up until about 9am and most places don't open until 10. Starbucks is open from 10am-8pm...read that again and think of the amazingness! McDonald's, however, is open 24 hours - which tells me that McDonald's transcends all norms and operates as their own universe.

Anyhow, the gym has four floors and the locker rooms are on the third floor...that was the first confusing bit because there are lockers right when you walk in. So I give my membership card to one of the staff and they give me a locker card. I have to take off my shoes to walk through the faux locker room en route to the elevator. Shoes back on. I arrive on the third floor and follow the signs in Kanji to what I imagine to be the locker room. Shoes off. Yep, locker room....yep, women's locker room. After the most insincere display of surprise, I made a 180 back to the entrance of the locker rooms. Shoes back on. Ah ha!! There is another entrance; I notice at this point that the new sign in Kanji is blue and the one I'd read first was in pink. It's starting to make more sense. Shoes off. At this point, I spend three minutes trying to figure out how the card goes into the locker to take out the key - thankfully I'm assisted by a naked Mr. Miyagi. Now I'm set to find the treadmill - where, at least, I can read numbers. Shoes on. I manage to wind between the people taking classes or using other equipment with my eyes focused on the treadmill. Man, the treadmills here are pretty slow...oh no, Matt's mind is slow...Japanese treadmills, like everything else here, operates in kilometers. About ten minutes into the treadmill session, one of the staff interrupts me and asks me to stop. From there, I'm lead to a board - after three staff consultations for an English translation- I learn that the treadmills are reserved for appointments. It makes sense but not something I'm used to, so I sign up for a different treadmill - I don't know why; my mind was spinning with cultural misunderstanding. My new treadmill has a giant touch screen and motion censors everywhere. After the feeling that I was being monitored and laughed at by the Japanese Imperial Army passed, I focused on the fact that I could not get the treadmill to move because I couldn't read anything. So I defaulted to my general mode of 'hit buttons until something happens' (note: this mode proved successful on the first few days of recording absences and time worked at school). I am still not sure how it happened but I had a little avatar running on the screen and telling me how fast I was going. After finishing, I returned to locker room at.....just the wrong time. Oh, first...shoes off. One of the classes had just gotten out and I had to wade through a sea of naked Japanese men to get to my locker. Shoes back on. Elevator. Shoes off for faux locker room. Shoes on to leave.

Finally, I weighed myself. This time I was prepared for the weight to be in kilograms but still, it was pretty reassuring to see a much, much lower number. Granted it was still twice the number of the guy before but who cares. After doing the math, I realized that I've lost about 13 lbs since being here. As I told Gobel tonight, that is both surprising and unsurprising. Understandably, Gobel was confused as how something could simultaneously be surprising and unsurprising. Since my arrival 26 days ago, I think that I've ended my nights drunk nine times. One of every three days!! At home, I don't think I ended nights drunk one out of 30 days so it's quite the step up for me. Nine drunken nights - all on beer. That's a lot of heavy Japanese beer. Some of those nights came complete with a drunken McDonald's trip. I always thought Japanese food was all uber-healthy. I mean, it's just fish, rice and miso soup, right? No! I mean there are those things...and a lot of them but a ton of stuff here is fried and the quality of the meat isn't that great. Ashamedly I haven't really concentrated hard on eating healthily. So, for all of that, I am surprised that I've lost weight. On the flipside, I walk absolutely everywhere and this is the most humid place in the entire stratosphere. Couple those things with the fact that I have to wear a suit everyday and I think I sweat a small body of water each day. Some other contributing factors are that I don't really eat that much (too expensive) or often and my work is fairly active so not being sedentary helps. For those reasons, I'm not surprised that I've lost some weight.