HANAMI!!

Well I promised to try and write more often than the last three months, so here we go!  Fortunately, this last weekend was replete with news and noteworthy events.  The most notable of these was the arrival of Sakura Season!  Sakura means cherry blossoms, and they are something of a national treasure here in Japan.   

Now, as I wrote last week, the weather has been from ideal here in Tsu this spring.  Its been colder, windier, and rainier than normal, and many of my students were expecting Sakura Season to suffer accordingly.  This is a big deal for most people here, because almost every single one of my students had some sort of Hanami party to go to this week.  Hanami means to look at flowers, and a hanami party is something to behold.  Mie, and I'm sure Japan in general, has many many parks that are designed to be as beautiful as possible during Japan's two most beautiful natural events:  fall color season and hanami season.  

In Tsu, we are lucky to have Kairaku Koen (Kairaku Park).  It has made one earlier appearance in this blog, and is the location of most of our recent laser tag battles.  Unfortunately, we have been forced into a tentative ceasefire on the Kairaku battlefield because it has been taken over by the hanami vendors.  Every spring, parks all across Japan get filled up with food vendors, beer vendors, candy vendors and picnickers looking to buy stuff.  It is quite a sight to see, and see it we did.  A group of us headed over there saturday afternoon/evening to have a late picnic and hang out. 

Saturday afternoon was far from ideal hanami conditions, but we still had a pretty good evening, eating and drinking in the cold and blustery wind.  The next day was substantially better.  My friend Koya planned a big hanami shindig in Yokkaichi at a riverside park.  I made the trip to Yokkaichi with Sarah, Chinatsu and Ashanthi.  Few men have ever been blessed with such lovely companions.  However, my joy was short lived, as all three of my fellow travelers take great joy in making fun of me.  Sarcastic train rides aside, the morning was beautiful!  The weather couldn't have been better, or more different than the previous day's as you can see from the pictures.  

We got to the station, where we were picked up by Koya's friend and driven to the park.  I wouldn't usually make note of such a mundane detail, but Koya's friend drove a GMC Yukon.  It even had the steering wheel on the proper side of the car!  It was a nice change from the teeny tiny Japanese cars I've been riding around in for the last 10 months.  We got to the park pretty uneventfully and found about 25 people waiting for us!  Koya and co. had done a lot of prep work for this party and it showed in the food.  They had coolers of beer, coolers of food, a couple of grills, and were already cooking when we arrived.  We ate yakisoba (that is what is on the plate I am holding above: noodles, carrots, cabbage, onions, pork and squid) okonomiyaki, beer, hotdogs, and potato salad.  The closest thing I can equate it to is the 4th of July if instead of freedom and fireworks we're celebrating springtime and flowers.  

Springtime in Japan

Well, it seems like its been ages since I lost wrote anything here.  I guess that's probably because it HAS been ages since I last wrote.  As a testament to that fact, my fingers are creaking across the keyboard at a particularly tepid pace tonight.  Anyway, sorry it has been song long since the last time to wrote.  It is unfortunate, because I don't really even have an excuse.  I haven't been terribly busy, but at the same time there has been plenty for me to write about.  I guess I am going through a bit a detached streak right now. I’m somewhere between homesickness, finally feeling like I actually live here, and being sad about leaving so soon.  It’s an odd place to be in. 

Outside of my minor existential crisis, my life in Japan has been pretty great lately.  When I last wrote, I had just taken the LSAT.  Now, that feels like years ago.  The acute, high-level of stress I was feeling leading up to the test has been replaced by a general low-level of stress about the future in general.  I finished all six of my applications at the end of February and beginning of March, and now I am waiting to hear back.  I should hear from the first school I applied to sometime in the first half of April, and everything should be figured out by the beginning of May.  I don’t know what is worse:  the days leading up to the test or sitting here waiting for things that I have no control over.  Anyway, there is nothing I can do about it, so I’m trying to relax.

In that vein, I have been keeping relatively busy in the last month.  The highlights of March have to include running a 10k in Nagoya, the resurrection of our Futsal games, a wonderful game of touch rugby in the mud, and watching the Chunichi Dragons play baseball in the Nagoya Dome.

The 10k was awesome, but brutal.  It was held on March 11^th, the first anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that destroyed the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and was a part of the Nagoya City Marathon.  The City Marathon consisted of a 10k, a 21k, and a full 42k marathon, each starting from the same place at the same time.  Also running that same day at the same time and the same place was the Nagoya Women’s Marathon.  I think this race was a full marathon only, and as the name suggests it was only for the ladies.  So, with the four races that day there was something like 30,000 people running.  Combine that with the spectators, and it was pretty close to the most people I have ever seen in one place.  I ran with three friends, Chinatsu, Machiko, and Jon.  I was the youngest of my group by a few years (slightly more than a few in one person’s case!) and finished last.  It was a bit embarrassing, but it was a pretty wonderful day.  It was also just a training run for the next 10k we are running on April 22^nd in Shima, near Ise.  That race is going to be crazy, because apparently it’s all up in the mountains along the ocean.  I’m pretty pumped for the view, but I hope I survive the race!  Wish me luck!

FUTSAL!!!!

The next thing that has been keeping me busy has been Futsal.  Futsal is essentially indoor soccer played outdoors with a slightly smaller ball.  Now, anyone who saw me play indoor intramurals or outdoor for that matter might doubt this next sentence, but the last two times I’ve played futsal I’ve essentially been the next incarnation of Lionel Messi.  No exaggeration.  Ok, maybe a slight exaggeration.  But only slight.  I am a goal-scoring machine!!  Goal scoring prowess aside, futsal is a fantastic way to take your mind off the hook for a while.  We get together with 20 or people and run around like idiots chasing a ball for 2 hours.  It’s wonderful.  A lot of the people I only see at futsal, so it’s as much a social event as it is a sporting event, probably more so for some of us!

My time in Japan has been full of sporting firsts.  I went to my first rugby game last fall, and I played my first rugby game a couple weeks ago.  A bit of back-story first.  This spring in Japan has apparently been much colder and wetter than usual.  I say apparently because anytime I can get through March without a blizzard, I feel like I’m doing pretty well.  Anyway, it’s been persistently chillier than it’s supposed to be.  Being stubborn as we are, that didn’t stop us from organizing a game of touch rugby at a local park.  As has been the case for most of March, it was a cold and rainy day when we decided to go play.  We decided to tough it out and headed to the park.  About half of us had never played before, so we started with the basics.  Rules and basic throwing technique took up the first half-hour or so.  For all my newfound skills at soccer, I am terrible at rugby.  Something about having to throw backwards all the time seems terribly counterproductive and I just couldn’t get the hang of it.  Even though I was severely lacking in the skill department, the game was great.  It was muddy and sloppy and tons of fun.  I’m going to add it to the lists of sports that I love to play even though I am terrible at them.  That list now includes hockey, golf, basketball, soccer, and rugby!

To cap off a great month in Japan, I was lucky enough to go to a Chunichi Dragons game in Nagoya!  For those of you who don’t know, the Chunichi Dragons are Nagoya’s pro baseball team.  Last year they were central league champions, and this team has pretty high expectations.  It was also the Dragons’ home opener weekend, so the stadium was packed!  I went with China and Machiko.  China’s dad is a member of the Dragon’s fan club, so China had a pair of tickets to the second game of the season.  We had three people for two tickets, so we had to buy another when we got to the stadium.  Unfortunately, there were no tickets left in our area, so we were forced to buy a lower level ticket instead.  None of us really wanted to sit alone though, so we just sat together in the club level and hoped that none of our neighboring seats filled up.  We weren’t that lucky, but we got the next best thing.  A random college student came all alone and sat next to us in the seat that Machiko was illegally occupying.  China and Machiko asked him if he wouldn’t mind trading seats with us, and since the extra ticket we had was twice as expensive as the one he had purchased, he agreed, and we could all sit together happily ever after.  The game itself was great too.  The opposing team was the Hiroshima Carp, and they were about as terrible as their name suggests.  The game was over after the first inning with the Dragons leading 2-0.  The final score was 9-0 and the best part of the game was the fact the China’s crush was the player of the game.  Mr. Ibata was 3 for 4 from the plate and made some great plays at shortstop.  All in all the game was pretty great.  Both the Hiroshima fans and the Dragons fans were super entertaining.  They had songs for each of their players, and they brought instruments and flags into the seats.  It was really cool to listen to.  I even learned a few lines of the Dragons’ song!

Well, that just about sums up my last month or so!  Happy Easter everyone!