I've always wanted to be a runner, one of those people who casually says, "I'm going for a run," then dashes out the door for a 3-mile jog like it was no big thing, returning home flushed and vigorous, making all the ice-cream-eating slobs sitting around the living room feel bad about themselves. But being the book-reading, craft-making, movie-watching, ice-cream-eating, inherently sedentary girl I am, this just hasn't happened yet. Attempts have been (halfheartedly) made. Miles have been (painfully) run. Schedules have been (temporarily) adhered to. Nothing ever lasted longer than a week or two, before life and laziness would take over and I would find myself back at square one.

So it surprises even me that I'm now in Week 5 of the Couch-to-5k running program. More surprising still: it hasn't been that difficult or even very painful. And the biggest revelation: I love running!

I feel amazingly focused, jogging my way through the rice fields near my apartment building. The colors are sharper, the sounds clearer. Even though I commute to work every day by bicycle, there are things I've noticed running that I never noticed on my bike. Like the tiny green frogs, small as my thumbnail, that scatter like a handful of dropped tacks at my approach. Or the eggplants dangling like fat purple teardrops from their stalks. Or the pink skittering crawfish in the canals. Or that field of sunflowers. Or this swooping patch of bats.

Once during the rainy season, I was caught in a downpour, which was awesome until I realized running through rice fields during a lightning storm was probably not the smartest move. But once I was out of low terrain, I felt like I was in the comeback part of a sports movie. Beaten down, down and out, out of luck -- now clawing my way back to the top, possibly with the help of a foul-mouthed, no-nonsense coach. Hair plastered against my head, shoulders slick with rain, I stared down the shoppers passing by in their air-conditioned cars, humming "Eye of the Tiger" and feeling tough.

Now imagine where I'd be if I had a foul-mouthed, no-nonsense coach! Probably halfway to Hokkaido, running all the way.

It's too hot for chocolate candy. Even just sitting in a bag in my kitchen, my Uji-kintoki Milk KitKats have turned smudgy and soft. Biting into one, I taste aggressively sweet, too-soft matcha chocolate and feel disappointed. The only thing that makes any sense is a bowl of real kakigori, shaved ice topped with (in this case) green-tea syrup, azuki beans and condensed milk. That, or putting my KitKats in the freezer. Which -- lacking a reliable kakigori delivery service -- I do.

They emerge exactly right: the cool chocolate shell breaks with a snap and immediately melts into creamy matcha-ness, while the crackly layers of wafer and azuki bean somehow give the illusion of shaved ice, a cold crispness that softens on the tongue. It's the perfect post-shower, pre-bed, hot summer night snack.

I lie on my cool tatami next to the fan and think about how much better summer is than winter. I don't think they could possibly invent a special edition KitKat that would make me feel happy it was winter. Maybe if it came wrapped in an wool sweater. MAYBE.

But what am I doing? It's way too hot to talk about sweaters! Shaved ice. Cold green tea. Frozen Uji-kintoki Milk KitKats.... That's better.

Since I arrived at the tail end of the summer festival season last year, I didn't get it together in time to buy a yukata, or summer kimono, but I was so envious of all the girls in their bright colors, flower-embellished hairstyles, square-bottomed purses and wooden shoes, crowding the trains on summer festival weekends. (This picture I took last year gives you an idea of what I mean.) This year I bought my yukata and obi early, from the most aggressive Japanese salesperson I've ever encountered, who very politely tried to sell me all the yukata-related accessories I might possibly need. I, in turn, very politely declined. I was going to make my own purse, thank you. And there's no way I would subject my poor feet to an evening of intense walking in wooden shoes. (My feet and I have a shared aversion to painful shoes, no matter how cute.)

It was my first pattern-less, guideline-less purse, which led to several mistakes and a lot of head-scratching, trying to picture how it was going to work when I turned it inside out. But eventually it all came together and except for a mistake in the lining, it's exactly how I pictured it. Best of all, both the outer and lining fabric came from my swap with Mariko and the basket and drawstring came from the 100-yen store, bringing the total cost of the purse to less than $2. Even the politest of pushy yukata-accessory peddlers couldn't beat that.

And here it is in action, on the train after a long night of fireworks and festival food:

I should add that I was so completely terrified about putting on the yukata wrong or not being able to put it on at all that I did a dry run several hours before, just to be sure. Should you ever need them, these instructions are nearly as helpful as a Japanese grandmother.

My youngest sister requested a totebag to use as her school bag when she goes off to college this fall. Being the generous and food-obsessed older sister I am, I promptly agreed, and asked her for a list of her favorite foods. Fruit topped the list, which reminded me of a patch I had seen at a craft store a couple weeks before, a tiny, expensive patch that said simply, "I collect fruit." It was so very tiny and so very expensive, so instead of buying it, I resolved to make something myself using that phrase. For free! (Kind of.)

And it all came together in this tote: fruit-collecting, fruit- and veggie-print fabrics, some quick backstitching and my first foray into interfacing. The sisterly reaction included both the words "insanely" and "cute," so I think we are both pretty happy with how it turned out. I admit to briefly fantasizing that the bag will somehow make her lots of new friends in college, like the cool people who are likely to get along with her will be lured in by the power of the I Collect Fruit tote. But maybe I'm just having one of those delusions of craft grandeur again.

You've probably already heard this, but vending machines are everywhere in Japan. It's not really the wonderland of products at the push of a button the rumors would lead you to believe, though; it's mostly drinks. (Although you really can find bizarre undergarments.) I'm mostly a tea-drinking girl, as the other drinks are often way too sweet for me, but I couldn't resist this bag of "Mix Candy," flavored like five popular vending machine drinks.

I had hoped the candy themselves would be shaped like bottles, but they were just your normal lozenge shape. The C.C. Lemon and Dekavita C are, not surprisingly, fortified with Vitamin C -- too bad the Dekavita C tastes bitter and almost-medicinal, like something a swindling snake-oil salesman in a top hat might have sold out of a battered doctor's bag at the turn of the century. The other flavors are inoffensive, refreshing and citrusy, my favorite being the green Bubble Man flavor, which is actually bubbly. Plus he has the coolest individual-package design, I think. I absolutely loathe Dakara Life Partner -- a grapefruit-flavored sports drink -- as a drink, but it's won me over in hard candy form.

As my candy collection is growing faster than I can possibly eat it, I brought these to the summer English workshop where I've been teaching for the past two days and passed them out to the high school kids in an attempt to quickly get rid of them. A good number of the students gave me one of the hard candies they brought in exchange, so my candy-reduction goal wasn't exactly achieved, but I did get to see what flavor the kids preferred.

And we're in agreement: it's Bubble Man all the way. The only candy left in the bag? Dekavita C!

According to the Ullambana Sutra, a disciple named Mokuren, deeply disturbed by a vision he had of his deceased mother in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, asked the Buddha how he could release his mother from her suffering. The Buddha told him to prepare a feast for the past seven generations of the dead. After feeding the hungry ghosts of his ancestors, Mokuren saw his mother's release and in response, he did a joyful little dance. And thus, the first Bon Odori, or bon dance, was performed.

Obon is a Japanese Buddhist holiday, usually celebrated from August 13-15, when people return to their hometowns, reunite with their families and clean their ancestors' graves as a way of paying respect. The Bon Odori is a dance festival held during Obon, a time to suit up in your yukata, slip on your geta and dance to the traditional tunes played by musicians sitting on a big wooden structure in the middle of the street.

The most famous Bon Odori in my prefecture is held in Gujo, where every night for over a month townspeople gather in the streets to dance. During the Obon holiday they -- and thousands of tourists -- dance through the night and into the morning.

But instead of going to Gujo, I accepted the invitation from my friend Chris to attend the Bon Odori in his small town of Shirotori, right next door to Gujo. And I'm so glad I did. The atmosphere was comfortable and familial, with lots of kids running around in yukata or pajamas. The dancers of all ages were friendly and willing to help out the bumbling new dancers. And the beer, sold by jovial middle-aged men who I imagined were the Japanese equivalent of Elk's Club members, was only 200 yen.

I'm not saying the dancing was easy (you can see for yourself here), but neither was it impossible. Just the same steps and arm movements, time after time for about ten minutes per song, and once I got the hang of them, the dances became almost meditative, the movements of my body to the music, the colors of the swirling yukata, the glow of paper lanterns, the clack of wooden sandals on asphalt. I was there, dancing in the street, and nowhere else.

When it started to rain, the crowd thinned and only the hardcore dancers were left. When the rain stopped, we returned to the glittering streets and danced like Mokuren, with joy, like witnesses to spirits released, until we couldn't dance anymore.

(You can see more pictures of the Shirotori Bon Odori here.)

You now have two more ways to find GJP on the Intaanetto: via the LiveJournal feed created by some kind stranger, and via giantjeansparlor.COM, which I was able to wrest from the grubby hands of some faceless domain-name-buying corporation. Hooray!

What do you get when you mix the glamorous skyline of New York, sea-creature shaped hollow pretzels and cheesecake choco? ...Pucca New York Cheesecake, of course! You may be asking what business cheesecake has filling the inside of a pretzel. And I'm here to reassure you cheesecake has every right to consort with pretzels, especially when they are shaped like tiny fish and octopi -- unless you are one of those people who doesn't believe in the deliciousness of peanut-butter filled pretzels, in which case you will most certainly throw a handful of tiny fish and octopi in the face of my reassurances. But that's okay, because that just means more Pucca New York Cheesecake for me.

These are more a snack than a candy, though the filling is sweet and a little tangy. I like that the picture on the front looks more like a JAPANESE cheesecake than any New York cheesecake I've ever seen and that the package design has the sort of cheesy (ha!) '80s glamour remniscent of the opening credits of Moonlighting.

Eating these gives you terrible breath, though. I have christened it "Japanese cheese breath." Buyer, beware.

Last Wednesday I spent the day at Lake Biwa, swimming, jet-skiing and eating BBQ. (Though what I really wanted to eat was funazushi, the super-aged original sushi only made near Lake Biwa. Maybe next time.) We camped out on concrete, next to a trash-clogged dock, so the best sight of the day was not Japan's largest freshwater lake -- it was Ricky the dog.

Upon arriving at the lake, Ricky was strapped into a life jacket. With a handle. Ricky didn't mind if you picked him up by his handle. In fact, he seemed to quite enjoy it. Ricky also liked (or at least tolerated) going for a spin on the jet ski. And hot dogs. And I liked Ricky.

It cannot be summer without ice cream, I'm convinced. Also, there aren't enough ice cream shops in my town. There are two 31 Ice Cream (a.k.a. Baskin-Robbins) branches, it's true, but there are whole swathes of town that lay barren and ice-cream-less, with nary a Thrifty's or Dairy Queen in sight.

These thoughts and more crowded my head as I walked home from the grocery store last night, eating an ice cream cone from the ol' 31. They're having a special right now: buy a King-size scoop and get a Child-size scoop on top for free. They call it a "present." I really like the idea of someone giving me a present of a tiny scoop of ice cream. Especially when it's azuki-bean flavor.

Pondering these ice cream thoughts, I realized how big a role ice cream has played in my life. When I was two years old, my mom would often take me to the Betsy Ross ice cream parlor, where I would eat an entire three-scoop sundae unassisted. Each sundae came with a toothpick topped with a tiny paper American flag, which I would save. I remember laying my collection of flags out on the carpet from time to time and proudly staring at the evidence of my ice cream triumph.

My first part-time job was at a Baskin-Robbins. I invented the best milkshake ever (strawberry-cheesecake/cookies-n-cream, so good), as well as a theory about what your ice cream choice says about your personality. (I find I get along best with mint chip people.) Though I witnessed the scary depths of ice cream addiction -- like the man who came in while hooked up to an IV, and the anorexic woman as addicted to phenfen as she was to Espresso 'n' Cream -- I don't think I ever refused the free scoop of ice cream that was my boss-given right on days when I worked more than five hours.

And when Captain T. and I were enduring the painful time between the end of my previous relationship and the point when we thought we could start dating each other without stabbing anyone in the soul, the time when we could see and be close to each other every day at work, but couldn't actually go on dates or hold hands or do anything else the newly and hopelessly in love should get to do, we would sometimes drive to the beach together, stopping for ice cream cones along the way, and sit next to each other in the sand, squinting against the setting sun, maybe letting our sticky fingertips brush together, happiness and sadness rising in succession like the crashing waves, until all that was left in our hands were two crumpled paper wrappers. Then we would stand up, walk back to the car and go our separate ways. It was possibly the loneliest and most exhilarating three months of my life.

Maybe I'm wrong to connect all this together; maybe there's no chocolate-sauce line drawn through my life. But when I lay out all my ice cream moments on the carpet, I don't know -- I still feel some of the glee of my two-year-old self. Especially if I'm eating a free azuki ice cream scoop at the same time.

If I had my way, I would own some property on the island of Coffee Rhumba. Not only could I dance in a tropical sunset under a palm tree to the smooth tunes of Coffee Rhumba, an album apparently put out by a cute Japanese lady circa 1965, I could also eat unlimited amounts of Coffee Rhumba chocolate, which would make me very happy indeed.

The Espresso flavor is milk chocolate filled with a sweet espresso syrup, a nice balance of bitter and sweet. The Cappuccino has a layer of coffee-flavored chocolate under a layer of fresh-cream-flavored chocolate; it's extremely smooth and the sweetest of the three. But my favorite is definitely the Coffee Nougat, which is milk chocolate filled with coffee-flavored caramel. I think I would probably swim all the way to the island of Coffee Rhumba in exchange for a coconut filled with coffee-flavored caramel. It's that good.

Once I arrived on the island, I would additionally demand a copy of the Coffee Rhumba album and a small record player upon which to play it. I would then find a palm tree, a sunset and a hat-wearing stranger, and dance the night away, fueled only by my coconut of coffee caramel and the rhythm of the rhumba.

Friends! Lovers of Japanese candy and '60s kitsch! I have an important announcement to make! Coffee Rhumba is real. Not the island, I totally made that up, but the album actually was released by one Sachiko Nishida and is still available for sale. As a special gift to you, dear readers, I present to you the song "Coffee Rhumba" in all its tropical-Japanese-1960s-coffee-caramel goodness. Enjoy!