It's not been a good year for me so far, having been beset by all manner of colds, injuries, and other things that have made a big dent in my fitness. As I mentioned earlier in “The Silliness of Japanese Medicine-Dosage Rules” a couple of weeks ago, I topped things off with a horrible cold that put me out of commission for the better part of two weeks. The third course of antibiotics seemed to have finally done the trick, and now I'm looking to reclaim my life.

When in good form last year, I was about 86kg (190lbs) with little fat and a lot of upper-body muscle. But this bad year had taken its toll, and as I emerged from the bad cold a week ago, I found myself over 90kg (~200lbs) and without muscle. Ugh. Enough. Gotta get rid of the fat and start to rebuild muscle.

The upper-body muscle will be a challenge, since some nerve damage to my left triceps leaves them very weak. They're slowly coming back and have doubled in strength to about 30% of normal capacity, so at long last I can finally do a pushup, but it's a far cry from last year when I could do 50 pushups in as many seconds. I just have to wait.

On the other hand, loosing the fat is looking to be easier than I expected. Something about the recent bad cold changed my metabolism, and I was left without much apparent need to eat. I'd spend the day working, and suddenly realize in the evening that I'd not had a thing to eat all day, and even then wasn't particularly hungry.

In cycling, there's the idea of a short morning “fasted” ride, which means a ride done before anything's been eaten that day. The thought is that getting a good hour or so of exercise in the morning before taking in food will force your body to dip into its fat reserves.

Last Tuesday my metabolism was no different, and by noon when I decided to make my first short ride since the cold, I still hadn't had anything to eat. I did bring calories with me, expecting that the exercise would demand it, but I never felt the need during the 2½ hour, 40km (24mi) ride, and ended up not eating anything until dinner.

Well, that was fortuitous for my weight-loss hopes. I didn't expect it to continue for longer rides, but so far is has, over two more rides of 76 and 121 kilometers (47 and 75 miles). This post is about those two longer rides.

The first of those two was really interesting, as I explored a bunch of things that may or may not have turned out to be actual roads, which did indeed turn out to be very lovely roads. Here it is: @ Strava

It was a hot day, and it got even hotter as I passed through the city of Otsu:

I wasn't eating anything (I brought food in case I needed it, but it turns out I never did), but I was certainly drinking a lot. Over the ride, I drank 6.4L (1.7gal)!

Having gained so much weight, I had no illusions of being fast, so I was happy to be in exploration mode. In poking around a small village tucked into the crease of a mountain, I found a short but steep climb that ended at a quiet shrine...

It's the step climb up to it that made it a nice find for me. There was a second approach, by stairs:

Neither the shine nor most of the roads in the area we even on the maps that Strava uses, so as I often do, I spent considerable time carefully adding them later.

I then made my way farther east, where I wanted to investigate what looked on Google Earth to perhaps be roads. Usually these are either off-limit construction-access roads, or unpaved paths that I wouldn't want to take on my road bike, so I didn't hold out much hope, but the first road I found was lovely, in excellent condition, and devoid of people and cars.

I made a Strava segment for it, and surprisingly, it seems that I'm the first to ever ride it: Kamitanakami Shinmeishin Tunnel Climb.

The road ends at another road that emerges from under an expressway:

I don't know who this sign is intended for, since the roads in this area are closed to motor vehicles. Hikers?

These roads were in the middle of nowhere, and not connecting anything. In fact, one of them just unceremoniously ends at nothing.

There was a little plaque saying “Management-road End / Otsu Forestry Office”, so I guess that's less unceremonious than this road from a couple of years ago.

Descending back toward civilization, I came across what seemed to be a small campground, along with the entrance to a mountain hiking road:

The satellite view makes it look like a normally-paved road, and it probably is, but it's closed off to cars, motorcycles, and even bicycles. (Wheelchairs, however, are explicitly allowed, and the ramps I saw leading away from the parking lot suggests that they're serious about that, which is nice.)

For my part, I continued exploring...

The river had a lot of these pseudo-dams, and at one downstream I came across some people fishing...

According to a little plaque nearby, Johannis de Rijke oversaw construction of a little dam nearby. I didn't realize it at the time, but according to his Wikipedia page, he's the guy responsible for the canal from Lake Biwa to Kyoto, running right in front of my house.

It was a lovely day of discovery, and of energy that seemed to materialize from nowhere. I even made a PR on a five-minute climb that I wasn't even trying on. It was just a great day.

I had a protein drink when I got home, but otherwise didn't eat anything between dinner the night before and dinner much later on after I got home.

Two days later (yesterday) I did another fasted ride, not feeling the need to eat in the morning before heading out. This one was much longer: @Strava

As a cyclist it's convenient to use my phone to take pictures, but as a photographer it's painful. The iPhone 7+'s camera is no match for an old Nikon SLR, as evidenced by a this shot from the same location five years ago.

Not long after this spot is a short fast descent that's pretty safe to go full power all-out on. I wasn't planning on giving anything much power this day, but once I got there I had a hard time holding back, so I went for it.

The nature of the road makes it safe at full power if you have the confidence to handle that much power in the mild curves. Unlike most descents, the limit is not in the safety of needing to be able to stop within your sight lines, or of worrying about oncoming traffic popping around a blind corner. Here, only a lack of power or a lack of raw bike-handling skills limits you. I've got a long way to go in the bike-handling department, and lost my nerve on a couple of the curves, so I was all the more pleasantly surprised when Strava Live on my phone told me that I'd made a new KOM (fastest time ever recorded).

Sadly, when I got home and uploaded the real track from my Garmin Edge 820, the calculations had changed and I had merely tied my previous record (which itself is the current KOM).

After a while was another fast descent, but about double the length. I've done my best (2 min 5 sec) on three separate occasions, and hoped to finally break that barrier, but no, my time was exactly the same. Four times. I guess I've at least got consistency going for me.

Later on I came across the dam that seemed to be controlling the height in the lake...

Farther downstream is the huge Hiyoshi Dam, which has a circular walkway over its spillway:

Some time ago I'd made a Strava segment representing four laps around the walkway, jokingly calling it the Hiyoshi Velodrome. But somehow on this ride today, I had it in my mind that the segment was just three laps, so I gave full gas for three and then coasted. Still, I missed my previous record by just a few seconds, so next time I'll make a PR (so long, at least, as I can successfully count to four).

This “velodrome” has appeared on my blog before, here and here. I actually visited the dam once long ago on a family trip, chronicled here.

Anyway, I then moved on to the destination for the day, a waterfall I'd seen on a friend's ride last week. From the map it looked like there were two approaches, and I took what turned out to be a 10% climb to a reservoir above the waterfall.

I guess everyone else actually followed the plentiful signs down below, because Strava tells me I'm the first to ride up here. But I like exploring, and I like steep climbs, so I'm happy to be here.

There was a sign for the waterfall pointing down some rough steps, so I made my way

Once I realized that I was above the waterfall and that it was very tall, I opted against hiking down, so hiked back up the short distance to the road, and coasted down.

Then I high-tailed the 50km home, still drinking a lot but not feeling the need to eat any of the food I'd brought.

I made good time, so threw in a little bonus climb at the end, just before home:

The cemetery is something I normally see from above, such as in this view, but on the Rt. 1 climb out of Kyoto, for a moment you have this view, at least if you poke the camera through a hole in a chain-link fence. (The orange building at the top is part of the Kiyomizu Temple, seen in the first picture on this post).

I ended up drinking 7.2L (1.9gal)! That equates to 7.2kg (16 pounds!) of drink. Yet, despite all that, I lost almost 2kg during the ride. Most of it was water loss that came back by this morning, but not all of it.

Earlier this summer I got the chance to visit — and eat a fabulous dinner at — AIC Akitsushima Kyoto (AIC秋津洲京都), and though I didn't get a chance to take any proper pictures, I did snap some as I went. It's a shame, because the entire small property was absolutely stunning, both in design and in execution.

To be frank, I'm not entirely clear about what this place is, but I do know that part of it is a restaurant open to the public (restaurant web site). It's related to a college in Auckland, so in addition to the 8% tax that's added to your bill, an additional 10% is added as a “scholarship fee” that presumably goes directly to the college.

Other than the small area that's open to the public, I got the impression that the rest of it was used as a club, for members. I joined the evening as a guest of my masseur friend Kentaro Kataoka. The president of the organization that owns this place is also a massage client, so he hosted us for the evening.

The site is quite small, but the place is designed very well, so it feels much bigger. I got a quick tour.

The dinner was fantastic...

I'm not the biggest fan of cheese, but this plate of small bits of cheese was by far the highlight of an evening of highlights. Each one was amazing, and I took the smallest possible little nibbles, to prolong the experience. Each little nibble came with an explosion of taste that I can hardly describe.

I dragged out the plate as long as I could, then spent the next while suppressing the urge to steal from others who had been slowed down by conversation.

What a memorable evening. I definitely hope to get back sometime with my camera, for dinner, or for both.

Today's post is the final installment of the story started in “Taran and Kate at the Heian Shrine”. The previous installment ended with our having to wait for a massive crowd to clear. After all three of them 🙂 left, we had the place to ourselves.

It was only as I was walking around to join them that the first heron decided to fly away...

Birds in flight are almost as difficult to photograph as children (a bird's movement is marginally less erratic). I'm focus-challenged in the best of times, but in this case it was compounded by the fact that I had the manual-focus-only Voigtländer 125mm/f2.5 mounted. Given all that, the result isn't too bad.

I'd seen this bench with its “Beware of Hairy Caterpillars” sign on the way to meet them, so when I saw that Taran had a thick fuzzy beard, I thought we could have some fun with it, along the lines of the two-shot sequence seen here.

I love their smiles in the shot above... I just wish I'd focused better. 🙁

After that, I bid them adieu with one last snap...

I'm currently on the recovering end of a very bad cold that stole a week of my life. The photo above (that actually has no dripping in it) is from a photogenic outing last fall, first seen in “Anatomy of a Selfie”.

Here's a less-photogenic photo from yesterday, with an actual drip in it (two, if you count the I.V.):

I noticed the cold coming on when I woke up last Tuesday, and it seemed to be mild at first, so I thought it might be like a one-day cold I had a couple of weeks ago, but I still had it the next day, so after the photoshoot with Taran and Kate (where I kept my distance so as not to give it to them) I went to the doctor. He said it was bacterial and not viral, so prescribed antibiotics.

Antibiotics normally make me feel better almost immediately, almost back to 100% by the next day, but this time, the 250mg of Levofloxacin twice a day didn't seem to do a thing, and I descended into a hazy world of misery.

I would have liked to have gone back to the doc on Friday, but it was a holiday, so I went back yesterday. He said that perhaps the dosage was low for my weight. I'm 90kg (200lbs), double the weight of some of the more petite adults in Japanese society.

I'd expressed some worry about the Levofloxacin, due to reports of tendon issues among athletes, so he moved me to something else, hopefully at a dosage appropriate to my weight. He was also going to jump-start things with an I.V. of antibiotics, but since there was a short wait for that, I went and got my prescription filled first.

At the pharmacy, I asked whether the prescription, 100mg of Cefditoren thrice a day, was appropriate for my weight, and I was stunned at the deer-in-the-headlights response. They said that medicine dosage for adults was something set by law, so a patient's weight was never part of the dosage consideration, except for children.

Now, if they said that this medicine's dosage was set that way, I'd not have been surprised, as I suppose it depends on the specific medicine whether it's best dosed by weight, but it was clear that they had never even considered dosing adults based on weight.

I asked “So, a ballerina and a sumo wrestler always get the same dosage?”. A big sumo wrestler can easily weigh six times that of a petite adult. The look on their faces told the story, being a mix of “wow, I never thought of that” combined with a kid having got caught with the hand in the cookie jar. It was now clearly apparent to them how stupid the situation was, but at the same time, it had never occurred to them, nor could they do anything about it because the law was the law.

Anyway, these meds are definitely better and I finally feel the cold receding.

Today's post follows “Taran and Kate at the Heian Shrine”, where I posted a few shots (and a wigglegram!) from a photoshoot the other day. Recent MBA-graduates Taran and Kate were looking to have some photos taken while on vacation in Japan, and got put in touch with me. I haven't done much real photography in a long while, except last month's mini session at Kyoto Tea Ceremony Camellia GARDEN, so I wasn't sure what to expect from myself.

We first met to get to know each other a bit over coffee, and I found them to be a fun couple with super-photogenic smiles, so I knew I'd have an easy time of it.

We started with the typical “in front of the gate” shots...

The little orange fence thing is there to stop people from driving in, because the front area can certainly look like a parking lot. At first it wasn't quite centered to the gate, which drives me insane, so I moved it over. I should have expected how heavy it was... it's solid wood. Ugh! But so worth it to have things centered.

(Now that I think about it, it's probably good that it's no longer blocking the path that the yellow dimple bricks lead a sight-impaired person on. Prior to my moving it, they would have run right into it.)

Before heading in, they did the “ritual cleansing” one's supposed to do before entering a Shinto shrine. Taran used to live in Japan so he knows the ropes, including tipping the ladle up at the end to let the last bit of water drain down the handle, cleansing it from your touch....

The Heian Shrine is a photogenic place, so there are lots of opportunities for nice posed shots, made all the better by there being so few visitors at the moment. I tried to also let them move about to enjoy at their own pace, to get more candid-ish shots.

Walking by the tree filled with omikuji (which I explain on this post almost a decade ago), I noticed one had fallen down, so I asked them to put it back onto the tree for the camera.

Eventually we went into the gardens...

To be continued...