52 cards to pain

Due to Japanese winter, I've been living a rather slovenly existence, because I can't stand to leave the warmth of my Kotastu (as seen in the photo of my grungy self; kotatsus are a Japanese thing as seen in this illustration of Japanese female roleplayers).
Time to work out! There is a workout I picked up long ago from shoot fighters. They beat me up and said,"that was no fun, here, follow this workout plan and we'll see if you can put up a little bit of a fight next time." The work out is deceptively simple; the only equipment you need is a deck of cards. You flip the cards over one at a time and do an accourding exercise. Red cards mean squats, and black cards mean push ups. You do a coresponding number of repetitions equal to the number on the card (face cards count for ten repitions, aces for one), then you flip the next card. It's good for confusing your muscles. It's also good for practicing the alternate (kun) readings of Japanese numbers, should you want to ("hitotsu, futatsu, mitsu," etc), but that's niether here nor there.
If you go through the whole deck, you've done 170 pushups and 170 squats. Now, I haven't done this in years, but as I'm turning into an old man, I made a silly new year's resolution to stay in shape: Gain 30lbs of muscle (computer generated image of what Clay+30lbs. might look like here). So I shuffled the cards the other night and started.
Face card after face card came up. I only made it through about 20 cards before I gave out.
The next day, my legs were made out of wood. Really, really painful wood.
This weekend, I went to Nagasaki with the Takeo crowd (when I really should have been fixing my ruined-by-vacation sleeping schedual), and saw the sights, but man, it didn't help my painful legs to walk up all those hills and stairs. I turned into an old man as the night went on. By the end, I was so tired and irritated I fear I found a way to insult or bring down about everyone there. I really dropped the ball with a girl too, but hopefully she has something more accessable than me lined up.
The moral of the story: Start with just ten cards, and get plenty of sleep if you want to give love a chance.
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Sara took lots of pictures in Thailand of Ayutthaya, which is a place I visited. So, if you want to see them (they're great!) go here.
Today's pictures of Nagasaki include:
The hearstone. If you find it, you will be happy. I'm not the one who found it...
The Nagasaki bay area.
The original Bruce Lee jumpsuit.
A Christian church in Nagasaki.