Tochigi Prefectural Ekiden Road Race

Rina, my younger daughter took part in Tochigi prefectural Ekiden road race as a runner today. She ran over 3.08 km course, about 2 miles in 10 minutes 43 seconds.

Ekiden: it usually referred to as a marathon relay, is a long-distance relay road race.

Twenty-seven teams consisting ten runners each (junior high, high school, college students and workers both men and women) ran over 60 km, about 38 miles, from Utsunmiya city to Tochigi city, then came back from there to Utsunomiya city.

Utsunmiya city has two Ekiden teams. Utsunomiya-A team is stronger than Utsunomiya-B team. Rina always becomes a runner-up in municipal races, so she became a member of B team.

Her team finished the race 20th and Utsunomiya-A team finished the race 5th. Rina and spectators including my wife and mother-in-law really enjoyed the race.

Chris and Suzanne Are Going To Marry!

Congratulations!
Chris and Suzanne are going to marry this summer in France. Chris is from France and Suzanne is from Australia. Now they are living in Utsunomiya.
Chris came to my house as a home stay guest in August 2005, about one and half years ago. After that, even we met him sometimes on the street, sometimes in the gym or sometimes in Utsunomiya station, I haven’t had a chance to invite them home.
Finally, we could have a small lunch party yesterday. We ate Okonomiyaki and Yakisoba in the living room in my condo. Mostly I cooked for them yesterday; it’s very unusual that I cook for others by myself.
It was a very warm and nice day with full of sunshine in the room, at this time in Tochigi, the end of January; we didn’t have to turn heaters on while eating the lunch.
Chris likes taking pictures very much. I haven’t seen a guy who took that much pictures since I was a member of photography club in my college.
He bought a new SLR digital camera Nikon D40 a month ago. Thanks to Chris, I was able to take pictures using D40. It’s very well designed, far lighter than it looked, quality of pictures were very nice too. I felt that I wanted to have a SLR digital camera someday.

All pictures on today’s blog were taken using the Nikon D40. Some were taken by Chris and others by me.

Emi, my elder daughter can speak far better English this time than she could a year ago. Some say English classes in junior high are just waste of time. But she can study English only in her school. I think it depends on one’s attitude, don’t you think so?