After eating lunch at the Tokyo American Club on Sunday I was thinking I really need to start to leverage my club membership much more. I have locked into my calendar going to the gym twice a week early in the morning. I got up early at 6AM and was out the door at 6:20...I learnt I need to pack the night before so I can get out the door quickly with my gym and work clothes. I love that the roads in Tokyo are empty at this hour. It actually cuts a significant amount of time off of my commute.

Today’s Configuration: FujiFilm x100. One side note on processing...I adjusted the tonal curve in Lightroom to give it a slight s curve to give me a little more contrast like I get with my Leica. It can get over done a bit but I think it makes the images look less flat.

While there are a few cars on the roads it's nothing like you usually see in Tokyo...it's very Vanilla Skyish...

I love the views from the gym at the American Club.

This was the view from my treadmill. I hit it for 45 minutes and worked up a great sweat. It was an awesome after Typhoon sky.

View from the Gym at Tokyo American Club

I really like the locker rooms as well. They have great steam rooms and sauna that are great to finish your sweat before a shower.

I stopped off to pick up a coffee... I skipped the donuts but you should expect to see these, it is the American Club after all.

It was nice to skip the massive crowded commute and hit the gym. I look forward to this a few days a week.

I picked up a some new Japanese study books this week. I really want to improve my Japanese. This series is very controversial as in series #1 he only teaches how to write the Kanji and what it's English meaning is but never explains how to pronounce it. He teaches this in #2 after you have learnt more than 2,000 Kanji. The concept being that people get overwhelmed learning all of the various meanings, pronunciations and end up not remembering what they mean or how to write them. I did a little research before buying and was surprised people reactions on this method. It was like entering a religious war with people standing on completely opposite sides.

If you haven't studied Japanese before, it is painstaking. It takes people years and years to learn the 2,000 Kanji required for daily fluency. This method is suppose to significantly reduce this amount of time. Now there is no such thing as a short cut to really learn a language but this basically cuts out the noise and the unproductive times.