Old Man Winter is about to blast his icy breath down our collective necks, but at least we get to ring in the season of sniffles, frostbite and influenza with a great lineup of holidays, highlighted by Christmas and New Year's, and then my personal favorite, Nail-Clipping Day, on Jan. 7.
Yet, there's one more celebration you should add to your holiday calendar, a festival as "Japanesey" as it gets and one that will happen not once but several times throughout the chilly weeks ahead — ekiden — the festival of the long distance runners.
Ekiden is the Japanese word for long-distance relay race, typically held in late fall and early winter, with the expression "the festival of the long distance runners," being coined, as far as I know, by renowned coach Takao Watanabe of Sendai's Ikuei High School, in an interview for The East magazine in 2002.