January felt a bit hectic for me, but I felt myself settle into more of a routine in February, and I would say overall things went pretty smoothly.
Sticking to my exercise routine
I went to the gym on and off last year - on average every 1 in 3 days. But I found that wasn't quite enough to see any strength gains, and I ended up plateauing the entire year. This year I've been aiming to go 3 - 4 times a week, and I'm slowly but surely starting to see some results.
The running routine is still a bit of a work in progress. I don't really enjoy running per se, but I want to get my cardio in a better state before the summer hiking season, so it's sort of like a necessary evil for me. I also feel good afterwards, at least!
What's been working for me lately is to take a break from work and go for a lunchtime run. It's really nice to get out and enjoy the sunshine in winter, because otherwise I just spend the entire daytime indoors.
A new board game obsession
We haven't been watching much TV this month. Instead, we've been getting hooked on some board games - Splendor Duel was our favourite in January, and we added to our 2-play board game repertoire in February with The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth.
I'm a bit slow to grasp board games compared to my partner so I generally lose a lot before I claw my way to a first victory, but once I get there, it becomes a little bit more even. We’re also both quite competitive and hate losing, so usually one of us ends up really happy and the other one is left pouting after a board game session (ha). Still a lot of fun overall though! I’d been keen to hear anyone’s 2-player recommendations if they have any.
Going snowboarding
With the cold weather, it’s been fun to get to slide down mountains instead of climbing up them. If you drive about 3 - 4 hours out of Tokyo, there are a lot of great snow resorts in the neighbouring prefectures of Gunma and Niigata.
I'd still class myself as a beginner, although maybe inching into the intermediate category. This season I finally upgraded from rental gear to my own board, which has been a nice! Unfortunately my 3-door Jimny can't quite fit snowboards in it, so we have to awkwardly slot it in between the front two seats, and unscrew the bindings each time. My next purchase will have to be a roof rack for my car.
Catching up on some hike reports
Although I didn't do much hiking, I wrote up some slightly-delayed blog posts for Mt Kurodake, Mt Amagatake and Mt Kuki, which are all mountains in YAMAP’s "36 views of Mount Fuji" series. I've now climbed 32 of the mountains, so I’m getting pretty close to the finish line.
The 4 remaining are in the 1500 - 2500m elevation range, so it's a bit too snowy to climb them at the moment. I’m waiting for the snow to melt, and then planning to finish off these mountains in April or May.
It’s funny how much gamification can motivate you - YAMAP is also running a campaign where you can collect a digital badge for every month that you hike, and I sneaked in one hike on the 28th of February just so I could snag that badge.
Other posts this month
I published some other hiking-related posts this month, including:
I also finished the first level of Pimsleur Mandarin and so I wrote some thoughts on that.
February in numbers
Finally, some stats to round off the newsletter:
🏋️♀️ 15 visits to the gym
🏃♀️ Ran 34 km and hiked 13km
🇯🇵 Wanikani Level 37 → 39
🇨🇳 Lessons 19 → 34 of Pimsleur Chinese
📚 Read 1 book
📝 Wrote 7 blog posts
This was not a good month for reading - I felt myself barely picking up a book. My instinct whenever I have a spare 5 minutes is to open HackerNews or Reddit so it would be great if I could replace this with reading instead. I wondered if there could be a way to have a browser extension to automatically open whatever Kindle book you are reading in a new tab whenever you try and navigate to a certain website. Food for thought.
2P board game recommendations:
Radlands - Probably my favorite game to play with my s/o.
MindBug - Very simple rules and great gameplay, with surprising depth. Relatively short rounds, 15 minutes average.
Quarto - Simple and fun. It reminds me of more "classic" games than the games you have and that I mentioned in this comment. Every round lasts a few minutes. Great for tea time.
I don't recommend:
PEAS - It's a Japanese-made game I've seen in a few shops in Tokyo. As far as I can tell, the game mechanics are bugged out. The second player always wins.
7 Wounders Duel - It's a good game, but you already have the better version.