Midnight Kick the Can

Friday evening around 11 I was casually studying, having some wine and watching the World Cup when I got a call from a team mate, saying he was going to play tag with others outside on campus and asking if I wanted to join. At first I wasn’t too sure, but then thought a game of tag or two won’t hurt. Turns out over half the baseball team gathered. We played kick the can on campus until around 2.30am. After we were all worn out, we got some drinks from the konbini and sat together until around 5am, when the security guard walked up to us and said to clean up and get going home.

TUFS Ryuugakusei Softball Team

Last week the Foreign Students Softball Team Rita and I had formed with our friends had its first game. It also turned out to be our last game, since the softball tournament the baseball club organized uses the knock-out principle. Only very few in our team have had a bat or glove in/on their hand before, so we had 2 training sessions before the big game in which I explained the rules of the game and basic throwing and batting techniques. We were all in high spirits, and even after losing 5-17 we were still a happy bunch. Each tournament game only lasts 5 innings, so I was going to sub in people on the bench in the 4th inning, but the game ended after 3 innings because of time limit, so unfortunately some of us didn’t get to play. Anyway, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and for those reading this and are studying at TUFS: definitely take part in the tournament! There were over 30 teams of different strength, so extra people were needed here and there.

And now, the group picture we took after the game!

Ryuugakusei Softball Team, me as coach, Rita as captain!

An update..?!

Sorry to do this again, but here’s a quick run through:

Mate came round to visit me here. We did lots of sightseeing in Tokyo, and also went to Kamakura. Order of things we’ve seen most of: Izakayas -> Trains -> Temples/Shrines -> Pizzas -> Baseballs.

Since then I’ve registered for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test N2, and have been studying for it every day. Well, I say every day.. it took amazon two weeks to send my books. Word of advice for future test takers: don’t get neither Kanzen Master Vocab 1,2 nor Kanzen Master 2kyuu Kanji. They’re a waste of money. Grammar and Reading Comprehension, on the other hand, are good.

In between studying I’ve had a bit of baseball going on. We finished the league somewhere in the middle with 5 wins 5 losses. Two weeks later the Japanese Public University Baseball Tournament started. I missed the first game due to stomach ache. The baseball team is currently organizing a softball tournament within TUFS for everyone to join. Rita and I have made it our goal to put together a Ryuugakusei (foreign students) Team, and it’s looking good so far.

The other day I got a phone call from a friend in Germany who I haven’t seen/talked to in ages. She was in Tokyo for a few days so we met up the same evening in an izakaya. It was nice to see her again, we both missed out on a lot of things happening at home apparently.

Other than that I’m just wasting away in my room with Kat, studying for the upcoming exam and watching Green Wing and Black Books.

Baseball, Baseball, UNI, ..Baseball.

After my parents left for Germany, baseball has taken up pretty much all of my time. While classes still hadn’t started, we practiced almost every day. A couple of weeks ago, the Spring League started. From start to finish we have at least 1 game a week, every 3 weeks or so we have 2. The place the games are played is about 2.5 hours away from where I live and it costs me about 3000 yen every time I go. That aside, the whole experience is usually fun and well worth the effort/money. I’m still a noob, so I don’t even get to play in the games, but just being there and warming up with everyone, watching the game, helping out here and there, I feel I’m doing something great with my time.

We have had 3 games so far, one of which we’ve won and the other two we lost. Our last game was very frustrating, things just wouldn’t work out for us and we lost pretty badly in the end (called game). Even so, I was looking forward to yesterday’s game, but it was canceled due to bad field conditions because of the terrible weather here in Tokyo.

Oh yeah, classes started this week. I’m now in the 500 level at TUFS, and I can tell it’s a slight step up content wise. However, the workload is still meager in language class. But that’s okay, because I’ve got things to do for Manchester Uni on the side, so I’m still quite busy. I just can’t wait until it gets warm and sunny every day, so I can fit in a picnic or two every week with friends. Right now, days are just cold, wet and demoralising.

2 Week Trip With Parents

I’ve been avoiding this post because it felt like so much work. Thus, to motivate myself, I will keep this very short, even though the trip was really nice and we experienced many different things.

I was on a 2 week trip with my parents, which was by now a long, long time ago. We went from Tokyo->Kyoto->Himeji->Kobe->Kurashiki->Nara->Tokyo. It has been a long time since I saw my parents, so it was great to spend some time with them as a family on vacation kinda thing. They tried many different foods and drinks, saw great buildings (and ugly ones), and, I think, came to understand the Japanese culture quite well. Well, as much as one can in such a short period of time.

I shall now present one picture for each location we visited. If you want to see more, ask me and I shall prepare a 4 hour presentation personally for you (no breaks), in which every temple/shrine’s detail we visited is depicted. 3 hours of that alone would be Kyoto by the way.

Tokyo - ..yeah.

Kyoto has more temples/shrines than inhabitants.

Kobe - HQ of Evil Inc., known for trying to take over the world.

Himeji Castle. ..That's all.

Kurashiki - Stayed in a bangin' Ryokan and enjoyed bangin' food. The town itself is..

Nara - DEER!!!!!!!! (And otherwise a beautiful city.)

Shimokitazawa

Kat and I used the last day of nice weather for a while to do a quick tour to 下北沢(Shimokitazawa). It’s a part of Tokyo that’s a couple of train stops before Shibuya. I mentioned once I think that Harajuku, right next to Shibuya, is the young and alternative shopping area. Shimokitazawa is just like that, but less expensive and closely resembling Camden as Kat pointed out to me.

We haven’t had food all day so eating was No. 1 on the agenda. We found a nice little café/restaurant that had a bit of a Trof feeling about it. We ordered some banging salad and each had a pizza. All in all a good place if you are willing to spend 450 yen on 190ml Cola.

After eating we just wandered about until it got dark. There are many cool shops, too many to register in the short time we had so I’m definitely going back there again. Sorry for the lack of pictures, I forgot my camera.

Yokohama

Yesterday I went to Yokohama, a city I have already visited years before and enjoyed a lot. I can safely say this time around just as much fun was had, and just as much beauty was found. I’ll start you off with a few pictures:

View from the port of Yokohama. Most beautiful port I have ever seen.

Here by night with a brilliant light display.

Once Kat and I met up with Tatsu, we took the train from Shibuya to Yokohama Chinatown. Chinatown was a neat little place and, I bet due unusually nice weather, also quite crowded. We (Kat) checked out the shops, ate some Nikuman and stopped at a temple:

110% Tourist Style.

After that we strolled down to the harbour to enjoy the views (see pics at beginning). Kat really wanted to go on a roller coaster ride that was close to the harbour, so all three of us went on it. Tatsu isn’t a big fan of them, but we convinced him to try it anyway as it looked relatively mild. The ride was fun and faster than it looked, but Tatsu wouldn’t be able to confirm this because his head was down and eyes closed the whole ride.. haha. Sorry for making you buy that ticket, Tatsu.

We then went shopping a bit in that area and ended up waiting in Starbucks for Tsugumi and Hiroshi to arrive. Once the Manchester gang was reunited, we headed to a nice restaurant close by and had plenty of dishes for our meal.

Ribs! Also had chicken, pizza, rice with meat and salad. Desert was cheesecake and.. some other cake.

And then.. the unexpected happened. Hiroshi called up his girlfriend to come and join us at the restaurant. Until yesterday, I was of the strong opinion that Hiroshi had made up his girlfriend and based or on a manga or some sort of dating simulator game. When she turned up I strongly believed she was an optical illusion.. but once she took my napkin to blow her nose I knew she was the real deal. Here are Toshiko, Hiroshi, Kat and me at said dinner:

Hiroshi you missed.

After dinner Toshiko took the train home and the rest of us went to 大さん橋(Oosanbashi) one last time before we parted from Hiroshi and went home.

Ketchup

HI BLOG! I haven’t written in a long time and thus only remember half of what happened. Therefore, I went through my pictures and shall now present you one photo for each occasion. Here goes:

Snow.

Setsubun is where people go to the shrine for a ceremony that is held within and that can't be seen by public. We waited outside until all the people in neat clothing came out and threw beans at the crowd. Doraemon was there, too. People then grab as many of those beans they can, go home and throw them out of windows and doors to drive off evil demons and invite good luck.

Of course, many a sushi were had. Mhh sushi.

The ryuugakuseika gave out free tickets for some sort of Asian Cup or whatever football matches. I went to the women's finals (China vs. S. Korea) with my tutor Shin, and we routed for China - and they won. There were about 300 spectators in that huge stadium.. which nearly TRIPLED!!! when the men's finals were held between the same countries. China won 3-0, even though I was routing for Korea. Boo. I was supposed to meet up with my friends from the dorm for this game, but they all bailed and left me watching alone in the cold rain. Shame on you.

In Japan, on Valentine's Day girls give boys chocolate etc. and not the other way around. And so, the managers of the TUFS baseball team made the players cookies for V-Day. They're still hanging from my lamp to remind me how good it felt to belong to a team - can't bring myself to eat them.

Apart from all this sort of stuff happening, I was mainly caught up in Japanese class related work and going to baseball practice. Theoretically, we have on average about 4/5 times practice a week now. My body is slowly catching up with training demands, although ye ol’ knee injury frequently keeps me from performing at my best.

Coming Sunday my parents will come to visit me for 3 weeks, out of which 2 weeks we will spend together traveling in the Kansai area. Maybe I’ll find the time then to do some more blogging. During the time I spend with my parents I obviously cannot participate in training and practice games we have against other universities. I’m a bit relieved, to be honest, that I don’t have to go to the practice games, because I feel nervous enough as it is now having to speak and understand Japanese during training with my club mates. Even so, it’s not like I’d be in the starting lineup for a game at my skill level, so cheering on is all I’d have to do.

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!

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.