Yakyuu.. Baseball!

I finally gathered enough courage to join a club here at university. I have played tennis all my life and, while it can be a fun sport, it gets old after a while – to me anyway – so the tennis club was not an option. I’ve watched countless Japanese movies, dramas and animes and in plenty of those baseball plays an important role in high school life. I’m the kind of person who likes hitting, throwing and chasing balls so baseball struck me as the perfect sport to pursue here in Japan, where baseball probably is the most popular sport in the country.

I’ve watched the baseball club’s training a couple of times from my balcony and was impressed at the speeds and accuracy they achieved throwing the ball.. to the extent of feeling depressed about the idea of ruining their practice with my noviceness. However, I told my class mate, who is a manager in the club, that I wouldn’t mind trying baseball if I got the chance. She then asked the captain if it was okay for me to join and a week later I went to practice to check it out!

When I first got there I felt so nervous and out of place because, well.. I was wearing lame jogging slacks and a normal windbreaker, with a hint of running shoes virtually useless on dirt ground. To top that off, apart from my classmate, I’m the only foreigner participating and my Japanese is terrible. It turned out, though, that everyone was really nice and they gave their best to make me feel welcome.

First up on the menu was running 5 laps, followed by sprinting and general exercises. Not having done sports in years, they already got me with the running. But I gave it my best and in the end (sort of) managed to keep up with practice, though looking clumsy and definitely not baseballer-like most of the time. After exerting ourselves, we practed fielding and batting. I was terrible at judging the ball path at first, but towards the end I got used to it and one time even managed to make it look like a regular play, albeit a slow one. As far as batting is concerned, I have little problem hitting the ball. My biggest concern here is the batting stance and distribution of weight during the swing, which I just cannot quite wrap my head around.

After fielding and batting we played consecutive catch games that finally gave me the last push onto my knees. Once practice was over, everyone went for food together and the team treated me to lunch. They are a great bunch and I hope I will be able to stay with them until I leave Japan.

Oh yeah, and Tatsu went shopping with me to get some baseball stuff:

Only missing spikes and a massively expensive baseball glove!

Bank Notes

While I was in Yanasegawa last year, I came across something interesting in a Familymart. I withdrew 4,000 yen from an ATM and to my surprise the sum was presented to me in.. 2 notes! Until then I thought Japanese bank notes were limited to 1,000 5,000 and 10,000 notes but it turns out 2,000 notes exist as well. I wasn’t too sure at first if it was real money, to be honest, so I spent my first 2,000 note in mentioned konbini straight away to confirm its validity. After successfully buying my drink with it I felt a bit stupid as surely no ATM would happily hand out monopoly money in the first place.

And so, I decided to keep the second note until I leave Japan. This turned out to be a good idea, as Hyun-Hee (sorry if I misspell your name >_>) explained to me, because apparently these notes are rare and are said to bring the owner luck. Yay! A couple of days later I proudly showed Tatsu my note and he said there existed another rare-ish note: 100 yen. Tatsu works part-time at a konbini so he said he’d check the register for me next time he went to work. Sure enough, next time I saw him we traded two 100 coins for two notes!

So here they are, my monetary all star team! (well, duo):

Look at these bad boys

Yen has never been this sexy.

Old Year, New Year

This entry is a bit late, but when aren’t they. 2009 has passed and we now live in the future: 2010. Let me try a straight off the top of my head review:

• Manchester life
• Oberursel life
• Manchester life
• Oberursel life
• Milton Keynes life
• Oxford, PA life
• Milton Keynes  life
• Katsu kare

Add in a bit of university, a depressing Christmas and an uneventful New Year’s Eve and you’ve got the essence of what I felt about 2009. Of course there were countless highlights, but the dragging of time has dominated last year mostly. Coming to Japan this changed at first to the total opposite, but daily life has set in and the novelty of being in this country has disappeared.

With that out of the way, I have enjoyed these past 12 days so far doing mostly nothing but sleeping, watching anime and playing games. The few times I didn’t was when Kat and I met up with Mariya and Jesse for お節（osechi, food served during the New Year’sHolidays) at Mariya’s grandparents’ house somewhere in Chiba.. I think. I also had ramen from a proper street vendor for the first time, so I can tick that off  on my Japan todo list! Next on the list would be leaving the Tokyo area for the first time which was actually planned for this week. However, the Japan Rail representative at a station misinformed Tom about the deadline to buy the 青春十八切符(seishunjuuhachikippu, lit. Youth 18 Ticket), so our trip to Nagoya and Kobe fell flat. I’m pondering going to the Zoo or Yokohama instead this week-end….. or maybe BOTH.

Anyhow, apart from New Year and Mariya and Jesse’s visit, not much really happened. It was a good opportunity to recharge my batteries and the sleepins will be missed.