spreading the love: mark cavendish

The Manx Missile: as polarizing as Marmite. 

Cyclist: Mark Cavendish

Materials used: Marmite

Notes:

- This stuff is almost unmanageably sticky [in the best and worst kind of way], hence the super simplified portrait of Cav.

- It took 30 years for me to buy/hunt down my first jar of Marmite. In Tokyo, of all places. 

[The Flickr set for this project is here.]

addictive like pitbull

I love to hate Pitbull.

I love to hate his lyrics, which are either so stupid, they’re actually confusing, or they’re so blatant, it doesn’t seem right to actually call them “lyrics.”

I love to hate his product endorsements, which include vodka, small cars, and Kodak cameras, mostly because I don’t like to be reminded that the terrible state of the world economy is affecting even the high rollers, these days.

I also love to listen to Pitbull. Like the running program I started last week, Pitbull is surprisingly – disappointingly – addictive.

I’d never been drawn to running as a recreational activity. It’s always seemed more like a basic survival skill than something a reasonable person does for fun. Probably because, having lived in cities for most of my life, I’ve never had to run for my life. In fact, in the past two years, I can count the number of times I’ve mustered my legs into something resembling a jog. It was always to either cross the street or catch a train, and never lasted more than five seconds. But with a winter that seems to be lasting forever, and the beckoning warmth of the gym, learning how to run seemed like a good idea.

The problem and inherent advantage of running is that it jolts you into reality. Literally. While cycling is kind in the sense that it will keep you in the dark about your power to weight ratio [a.k.a. your big, fat ass], running does the exact opposite. As my foot landed on the treadmill last week, a tsunami of excess flab rippled up my leg and exploded around my waist. I was prepared for the sensation of having a belt made out of Jello wrapped around me, but it also felt like I was dragging and bouncing an anchor on my lower back. What is that, I briefly wondered to myself, before realizing that it was my abundant butt – the one that’s used to being comfortably seated on a bike saddle – that was jerking up and down behind me.

The horror of that experience had me up and running three times last week.

I am, however, using that word in its more general sense, to mean anything that is faster than a slow walk. I am walking as much, or more than, I am running, but if you judged by the traumatized look on my pathetically sweaty face, you’d think otherwise.

There is, however, a happy constant: Pitbull in my earphones, chanting those dumb, catchy lyrics as I pound my way through my scheduled jog. He reminds me that you don’t necessarily have to be good at whatever you want to do, you just have to work really hard at it.

time for 24

Over a decade after its first season aired, I’m finally getting around to watching 24.

If, like me, you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t seen this show, there are moments when the time will appear in digital format, with beeps accompanying the seconds as they tick by, closer and closer to catastrophe. This display is sometimes accompanied by a montage of all the simultaneously occurring events, all of which are also preventing Kiefer Sutherland from thwarting certain disaster.

There is a possibility – a small one, given that I only watch like five different shows a day – that I watch too much TV. I’d like to think that 24’s ticking, beeping clock is so characteristically ominous that it will linger, even for those who aren’t actively destroying their hard-earned educations with a flood of bad television shows. I suspect that the show itself is genetically engineered to trigger that beeping whenever something in a viewer’s life involves a countdown. Which is to say, that clock will haunt everything you do.

I suppose, then, that I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard that beeping in my head as I tried to crest a small hill a few days ago. While caught in the vice grip of intense pain and a failing cardiovascular system, I wondered what I was supposed to be mentally counting down to [assassination of the president? Another nuclear meltdown?]. Then I realized there was no rushed crescendo of beeps. More like a slowing down towards the inevitable flat-lining of energy, availability of oxygen, and the will to go on. The inescapable consequence of over a month of inconsistent [“nonexistent” might be more accurate] riding.

It was 16C out, and gorgeous, but I limped home after a mere 2.5 hours on the bike, unacceptably exhausted. I heard that beep again, on the way home. This time, it was my Garmin. “Battery is low,” read the screen, as if stating the painfully obvious state of my legs and lungs. It died soon afterwards, and I was almost tempted to pull a Marcel Kittel: 

The ride and my addiction to 24 reinforced what is so easy to forget: that the problem with time is that it happens. It keeps happening, even when you’re trying to hit the pause button on training, an assassination, or bikini season. This means that there’s really nothing left to do except to do it; claw your way back to fitness, save the world, or get a set of amazing abs. The time will pass, either way.

And besides, if Kiefer Sutherland ever died/failed, there wouldn’t be eight seasons of the show…right?

eating like a pro: sushi ko honten

As gluttonous as I am, fine dining often sends me into a panic. Mention Michelin stars and I start to sweat a little. “A restaurant like…like the kind that involves forks?” I’m always tempted to ask while I mentally try to assemble an outfit in which I can drop a knife and wait for a waiter to pick it up without looking like an enormous asshole. Dim lighting and multiple knives might get some girls off, but if I have to eat with a fork, give me diner food with free coffee refills over The French Laundry, any day. Take me somewhere that provides chopsticks, and odds are you’ll make me very, very happy.

This can be somewhat awkward and difficult to explain to most friends, unless it’s a boyfriend on a budget. People think my discomfort can be chalked up to nervousness or politeness, and to an extent, they are right. Suppressing my characteristically crude personality while simultaneously trying to politely finagle a piece of blue fin tuna tartar topped with foie gras foam into my mouth tends to set off my anxiety. It’s not that I’m incapable of appreciating haute cuisine, I just don’t like how fine dining involves an obstacle course of inquiring waiters, cutlery of various sizes, and a tablecloth that seems to accentuate any crumb that falls on its surface. Navigating this while requiring me to be interesting, engaging, and possessing razor sharp table manners is like asking me to wheelie up a mountain side while chugging a handle of vodka. The idea is, you know, kind of stressful.

Sometimes, however, the stars will happily align. There will be no forks, no knives, and no annoying waiters. Great company, chopsticks, and a Michelin star will be provided. In late January I went to dinner with Adam at Sushi Ko, and had the best meal of my life.  

A one hundred and thirty year old establishment nestled in Ginza, Sushi Ko – which literally, and appropriately, means “happiness” – is meticulously managed but surprisingly comfortable. Seating only a handful of customers, the setting is intimate yet respectful; there is as much opportunity to converse with the sushi chef as to have your own private conversations. There is no menu and ordering is almost done for you. “The omakase course?” I was asked, and I nodded, before turning to Adam. “I just…I kind of just ordered for us…”

Despite that initial facepalm moment  [okay, there was another one where I asked “do you have sake?” and then had my “I’m not an idiot” card full revoked], our serendipitous luck continued as we were seated in front of possibly the only sushi chef in Tokyo who had been a serious amateur road cyclist back in the 1980s. On learning that Adam is pro cyclist, we talked about LeMond, racing in Japan, and mountainside crashes. All between bites of perfectly crafted sushi.

It is customary for most sushi chefs to ask if you have certain fish you can’t eat. Usually, I would definitively refuse to eat uni, or sea urchin. The orange, textured flesh, with its creamy texture and distinctive aroma, is an expensive treat that I habitually decline. “Ugh, uni,” I am known to say. “You don’t like it because you’ve never had good uni,” my father likes to tell me. I give him the response that all daughters are required to give their fathers: I roll my eyes.

Unfortunately, Sushi Ko proved him really, really right.

When presented with uni, which Adam wasn’t a fan of either, we hesitated. But determined to prove my father wrong, and figuring I could just hold my breath and swallow most of it if it was as unappetizing as I expected, I popped it in my mouth.

It couldn’t have been choreographed better. Adam and I both turned to look at each other in mutual shock and awe. It was completely, unbelievably delicious.

It wasn’t even the best part. We almost passed out in bliss later, when we were presented with sushi made from the broiled skin of Striped Jack. It sounds questionable, I know, and looked suspicious, but was possibly the most amazing thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. “I’m so happy,” I told Adam, “I’m just going to go lie down and die now.”

I still feel that I wouldn’t have missed out on too much if I had [okay those post-dinner waffles were good, but still]. Then again, I wouldn’t be alive to tell you all about it. And to insist that if you want sushi to change your life – and I mean that, because, as a Japanese person who loves sushi, it certainly changed mine – that you make reservations at Sushi Ko.

 

Sushi Ko Honten

6-3-8 Ginza, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0061

Tel: +81 (03) 3571-1968

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