On October 18th Akita Cricket Team took on Sendai Cricket Team in Sendai. We played two games. Sendai clenched the first game by a single point. But Akita came back strong in the slightly longer second game to claim victory.
The following report was written by our team captain; Tapojoy Mandal.
A mere run separated us from Sendai in the first game, played over 10 overs. The highlights when bowling included a spectacular tumbling catch by Julie, who, by allowing the ball to bounce off her arms, shoulders and hands before she finally grabbed it with a face-forward dive, outdid David Thompson's similar effort (he only let it bounce once and so wasn't as spectacular). The catch gave Wil a wicket in his debut over. Julie followed that up with a wicket in her first-ever over as well, while Abby dismissed their wicket-keeper again. When batting, Paul played a spectacular debut innings - before being forced to retire on 22, he had spanked the ball all over the ground, losing the ball at least twice. Owen matched him with a good innings at the top of the order, but with both retired, the job to take us over the line, at the required rate of a run a ball, fell to debutants Robin and Todd. Very tight bowling by an experienced Sendai bowler made the task very difficult. It came down to us needing 2 runs to win off the last ball, and although Robin made a brave dive and looked to have made his crease, he was declared run out and we were denied even a tie.
Much as that loss irritated us, we now knew we had to cut out the small mistakes in the field. The next game was a longer, 12-over contest, and we bowled and fielded brilliantly to restrict Sendai to a paltry 67 runs. We had the harder job of bowling and fielding in pouring rain, but Robin and Todd picked up their maiden wickets, and Julie and both Davids chipped in with important breakthroughs. Owen showed Sendai that wicketkeeping gloves were for sissys, with two stumpings and a catch with his bare hands. Tapo got into the act with the final two balls of the innings, getting two bowleds including the opposition captain for a golden duck (out without scoring first ball), completing 3 overs conceding only 6 runs. The fielding was effective throughout, with Austin and Julie particularly sharp.
The rain receded but Akita's ballistic batting made Sendai wish it was still raining so that they could go home. Although Austin's foray as an opener ended with the first ball, he ran bravely for Wil, who had managed to tweak a muscle within a few minutes of taking the field. Wil followed Paul's lead in playing a debut innings of bravado, although he often forgot he had a runner and would set off at a hobble every time he connected. After he was dismissed for 23, we had a brief hiccup with some quick wickets, including Tapo when his foot brushed the base of the stumps and a bail dropped - quite unfortunate, considering in real cricket there is no base that sticks out half a foot either side - but then we unleashed Owen and he all but finished things off with a manic 25, retiring with just a run to get. Cue Abby to be in the middle during the winning moment as she has often done before, although it was left to Julie to clout the winning run. We had beaten them comfortably with several balls to spare and shown that the first game was just an aberration.
We had our annual rowing competition on September 13th. Unfortunately this year my team, Aburakoji Guys, had very few practices beforehand. In fact we only had one practice where we all practiced together as a team.
This year our team was made up of Kikunosuke (cox), me (stroke), Jon (3rd), Austin (2nd), and Takafumi (bow). The weather on the day of the competition wasn't the may west. It was quite windy with heavy showers at times.
In our first race there was 3 boats. We were going to go through to the next round no matter where we finished. It was really windy during the race, with the wind helping us down the river. We finished in 2nd place, posting a time of 2:01, which was actually the 3rd fastest time of the day and was a faster time the the winners of the competition last year! But of course it had a lot to do with the wind!
After an extended break, mainly due to the competition moving slower because of the weather, we were back in the boat for our second race of the day. There were 3 boats in that race too. We got off to a good start, and could clearly see that we were not going to have any problems in this race as the other boats were much slower than us. So we didn't push ourselves too hard and easily finished in 1st position.
Our next race had 4 boats and we needed to finish in the top 2 to progress to the next round. Unfortunately for us 2 of the teams in this race were very strong rowers. One had won the competition the year before, and the other had made it to the finals. So we knew we wouldn't have the luxury of taking it easy this time.
When the gun fired we started as strong as we could. But became very obvious to us that our start was our weakest point. The two good teams had great starts, and both got about a boat length of a lead within the first few seconds. We kept on their tails but never the ability to catch up to them. So we finished in 3rd place, and bowed out of the competition for another year!
Sunday July 12th was the 5th annual Akita International Sumo Basho (秋田国際相撲大会). It took place at the Kenritsu Budokan (県立武道館) in Akita city. This charity event is in aid of Room to Read.
After arriving at 8am and meeting up with other ALTs in the prefecture that we rarely see, we got our mawashis put on. I had bought my own last year so that we could practice. Though unfortunately we didn't get any practice in this year before the competition, mostly due to my trip back home in June.
We had plenty of time (hours in fact) to practice and warm up before the competition began. I wanted to get in an much practice as possible, without wearing myself out! We began with stretches then some light practice, slowly building ourselves up. I challenged as many people as I could. Often a bout (fight) will only last a few seconds, though sometimes it can last a few minutes, and they are the ones that really tire you out.
As the various rikishi (wrestlers) practiced on the ring outside, I was looking on trying to see who the stronger people were. One fight I watched had a guy fall slightly awkwardly and he didn't get up quickly. I looked down to see what the problem was and I noticed that his left toe was pointing in the wrong direction! He was taken to hospital; luckily it had only been dislocated. But unfortunately for him he could not take part in the tournament.
I was delighted to be there though, and anxious to try to best my ranking from the previous year (joint 5th). There were going to be only 22 men competing this year, down from 32 last year. We were divided into 4 groups, and after a round-robin system the top 2 rikishi would progress into the semifinals. The draws for the groups had been announced the previous day. I was in group B which had 5 people. Unfortunately group B also had by far the biggest rikishi in the competition, James Jones. There was also another guy that was into various martial arts, and although he was smaller that me appeared a lot more muscular and fit than I!
After a 4 hour wait, and about 3 of those in a mawashi, it was time to start the proceedings. After having all the rikishi introduced to the audience, Noshiro Berabo-daiko gave an amazing taiko performance. And finally, at about 1pm, we were ready to begin sumo!
My first bout was the 4th bout of the day, and it was against the big man, Jones. I was well aware that I could not beat him head on, so I had devised a strategy to beat him. I had been watching him practice earlier and noted that he always put his right leg forward first, so my plan was simple: kick his leg from under his body, and when he is off balance push him over. That was the plan. What I had not factored into this plan, was that his legs were like that of an elephant, and with plenty of weight on his leg to keep it in position I didn't kick at all hard enough to take the leg from under him. I think I just pissed him off a bit. I went ahead with the next step in my plan anyway, which was to follow through and push him off balance. I pushed him back a few feet before he regained himself, got a hold of me, and flung me around like a rag doll out of the dohyō (ring). Landing on my left hip did me no favours and that hurt quite badly. That was one loss for me.
My next fight was against an Indian, Harsh. He is taller than me, but not as aggressive. At the tachi-ai (start of the fight) I went straight for him. I think I made contact with him before his forward motion kicked in. I pushed him back to the straw ring and over without too much effort.
In the same round James Jones took on the smallest rikishi in our group; Matt Kuehl. It was definitely one of the more funny fights of the tournament!
After getting a short rest while the other fights continued, I was called up for my next encounter. This time I was facing a Hawaiian by the name of Nakashima. Although he was a little shorter than me he was a lot more muscular! I knew that this was a really important fight for me, as the winner of it would more than likely be the one, along with Jones, to make it to the next round. So again at the tachi-ai I made sure to attack him as fast and as powerfully as I could. My initial charge stood him up and had him moving backwards! I pushed him back as far as the straw. And it was easy from there to push him over the straw for my second, but all important win!
My last fight in the opening round was against the smallest guy in the group who was still chasing his first win. I didn't charge at him as I had done in the previous two fights for two reasons. The first being that I expected him to jump of of the way, and the second being that I didn't want to hurt him either. I took my time and easily pushed him out for my 3rd win.
I didn't have to fight in the last round, but just got to watch the Jones vs Nakashima fight. This was a very important bout for me, because Jones was undefeated and Nakashima had only 1 loss, the same as me. If Nakashima won, the 3 of us would have had to had a 3-way play-off. Luckily for me, Jones destroyed his opposition. Flinging him across the dohyō in a way that had Nakashima spinning around 360 degrees before falling over!
I was through to the semi-finals!
After the men's 1st round was finished, the ladies took to the ring. This was the first year we had a women's tournament, 10 women took part. Two women from my city took part; Abby and Jez. The women's tournament was divided into 2 groups of 5 people, with the winner of each group going into the final. Unfortunately neither of two women made it to the final, they both put in a fine effort.
Next was the semi-finals of the men's division. I had though we were going to draw straws to decide who was fighting who, like last year. But a different system was in place this year. At the time I had no idea who I was going to be fighting. But I was called up first, and I was fighting Dan.
As we squared up behind our respective white lines, I stared at his forehead just between his eyes. Apparently this is a good place to look to make someone feel uneasy. An indeed he did feel uneasy, to the point where he though he'd lighten the mood by winking at me! And everyone behind me saw him doing that and started to laugh, and then I could no longer hold my straight face either. I laughed for a bit, composed myself and put my fists on the clay.
I decided to keep with my winning strategy of hitting hard and fast. And with adrenaline pumping a lot of what happens seems to happen almost automatically. About one second into the fight I was pushing Dan backwards, my right hand on his throat and my left hand on his right shoulder with my fingers under his armpit. I kept pushing and had him over the straw with more ease than I had expected. One down, two more to go.
My next fight was against Phil, the only other guy from my city to take part again this year. Out of all the people I had practiced with, I definitely practiced with Phil the most. Unfortunately my tract record was far from perfect. He had the weight advantage over me and also he wasn't shy about fighting. So I decided to change my strategy and go for a tachi-ai henka, basically jump out of the way and then try push him from the side. So I jumped diagonally forward to my left and tried to get a grip on the back of his mawashi to continue his forward motion. Unfortunately for me his right arm caught enough of me to prevent my plan from materialising and he was able to push me out for an easy enough win. I should have used this much simpler technique!
My last fight was against a guy called Chris Parkins. I decided that I would one again return to my tried and trusted winning technique, which has an official name of oshidashi. I executed it as I had done before. But this time as I pushed him to the straw and we both started falling towards the ground he resisted putting his foot out or his hand down to break the fall. And because of that I also could not do it, or I would have lost. So I braced as the two of us fell towards the ground, both of us fighting against the instinctual urge to put a hand out to break the fall. Looking back at the video now I see that I did put my hand out at the last moment, which made it pretty close. But I won!
Phil had won all his fights in the group, so he progressed to the final. In the other group the winner was a guy called Doug Heller, who is big into judo. Doug went on to with the final, with a fine oshidashi move. So the winner was Doug and runner up was Phil. James mountain Jones and myself tied for 3rd place. And considering my size and weight I am very proud of coming 3rd.
The weekend before last (Feb 27th~Mar 1st) Sophie organised a charity trip to Appi Kogen Ski Resort in Hachimantai, Iwate, our neighbouring prefecture, in aid of Room to Read.
As soon as school finished on Friday we packed our snowboards, skis and gear, got some munchies for the road and began our 4 hour journey north-east. Sophie drove and took Matt and myself with her.
We stopped at a sushi restaurant in Kakunodate for dinner and randomly met two of our friends that were also on their way to Appi. We travelled in convoy from there. Before arriving we were lucky enough to see one of the snow rabbit that are on the logo of the Appi resort. We finally arrived at our pension guesthouse at called Mutti.
We met the rest of the group there. Many were ALTs from Akita, but some were from Iwate and Aomori, and some Japanese people joined us as well. We had a relaxed enough night, just sitting around and chatting having a few beers. One guy brought a load of different spirits and tried making us drinks... perhaps it was his first time, they were pretty bad!
The next morning we got up at 8 for breakfast and headed to the ski resort. We could see the mountain approaching and its long lifts stretching to the top. Sophie made a right turn at a point that looked like we were nowhere near the lifts, but as it turned out the main lift was very long, about 3.5km! By the time we had assembled and got our tickets it was close to 10am. The weather was beautiful, barely a cloud in the sky.
Appi is the largest ski area in Tohoku. It has 21 trails, 18 lifts and its summit is 1,328m. The longest trail is 5.5km long. As opposed to Yashima, our local ski-jo, which has 7 trails, 2 lifts (1 of which is usually closed as it only goes half way up the slope), an elevation of only 690m and the longest trail is 1.3km long.
We skied and boarded for the day. Before the most snowboarding I had ever done in a day was about 3 or 4 hours. That day we were on the mountain for about 6 hours! My legs were wrecked. We headed back to the pension for dinner and had a huge dinner and then went to the onsen at the ski jo. We stayed up for a while drinking and chatting that night, but were aware that we had to be up early the next morning to do it all again!
The weather the next day was beautiful again. We headed off the mountain and stayed there till just before 5. Because it was our last day we decided to ski in the out-of-bounds areas, as the consequence for being caught is having your pass taken, assuming you don't get killed. The areas we wanted to go in were directly under the gondolas as the snow there only had a few tracks in it, and it was fast and had many little jumps! We had to avoid the moving gondolas as at time they were low enough to hit your head off. It was a lot of fun though, and we didn't get caught!
Before we left for home we went to another onsen to help our aching muscles relax! I love onsens!
The rather small town of Ouchi where I work was recently catapulted into the world spotlight as the Roller Hockey World Championship took place here. Twelve countries entered in this prestigious event; Japan, South Africa, Argentina, USA, England, Macau, Spain, Portugal, Chile, France and India. The competition took place from October 5th to 11th at the main gymnasium in Ouchi, Yurihonjo.
As my main school is only 5 minutes away from the gym, I decided to go see what all the hype was about. It was the perfect way for me to figure out just what in fact roller hockey was. Many of my co-workers were asking me if I knew what it was, they also had never heard of this strange sport before.
But as a sport it is actually quite interesting to watch. It's very fast, and does seem to require a good deal of skill. Perhaps I liked it because it had many similarities to hurling... if you use your imagination!! The players were even taking the ball up on their stick before striking at goal.
Not too many people outside a few family members had come with the teams, so the gym was never full. And there wasn't even an entry fee. We went to watch the final too. Portugal were beaten by Spain in the final 3 goals to 1.
On Monday 15th September 2008 the annual regatta for amateur rowers took place at Aquapal Boat Plaza in Honjo. Our Board of Education entered 3 mens, and 2 ladies teams. In total there were 54 mens teams and 19 ladies teams. Our team name was Aburakoji Guys. Aburakoji is just where our BoE is located. There are 5 members in a rowing team, 4 rowers and a coxswain. The coxswain sits in the back of the boat facing in the direction the boat moves and gives us instructions, all the rowers face the opposite way. I was in stroke position, which is just in front of the coxswain. On my team was Takafumi (Japanese), Jon (Canadian), David (Tasmanian) and Brett (American). We had about 6 practices before the competition, which was a 50% increase on the amount of practices we had last year!
In our first race there were 3 boats, and we needed to finish in the top 2 to qualify. Despite me getting my oar stuck in the water at the start of the race and almost dragging the boat underwater, we managed to recover and passed out a much slower boat to finish in 2nd place. So we progressed to the next round, though we were going to face much stronger teams from there. For our 2nd race we were supposed to be in a 3 boat race, but one boat did not turn up. This was a very good thing for us as we needed to finish in the top 2 again to progress. But obviously we wanted to win our race. And as the gun fired and we had a very strong start we quickly pulled into the lead. However another oar got stuck, not mine this time. But as that rower was sorting that problem out, his seat came off the rails... so we were going nowhere fast! Eventually when we did get going again, we accepted the fact that there was no way we were going to catch the other boat, and laughed and acknowledged how lucky we were that the 3rd boat hadn't turned up!
After having progressed from a awful last round we were finally in a race with 4 boats. We were also racing against another boat from our BoE. Before the race Jon and myself studied the previous race times of the boats involved in our next race. We needed to make a 6 second improvement on our first race time to be in with a real chance. I was hoping that my mistake may have lost us close to that, unfortunately I was wrong. For out final race we gave a very good performance, we beat the other BoE team, but were far from catching the much stronger 2 boats in that race. Had we finished in the top 2 we would have advanced to the semi finals, where we would have been embarrassed!
Our best time, over 500m, was 2:17. The overall best time in the competition was 2:02.
One of the ladies teams however, made it to the final! Two of the ladies, Amelie and Sophie, were on the same team as me last year when I was coxswain for them. They showed amazing strength and speed in the 2 rounds before the final, finishing in 1st position both times, and by a long way! They started strong in the final race too, but one boat gained a sizable lead. The ladies were neck and neck with 2nd/3rd position for the majority of the race, as the last boat seemed to lag way behind. But in the final stretch the last boat steamed forward and with a very tight finish between the 3 boats our ladies were robbed and finished in 4th position. Overall it was an excellent display from a very competent team, who were all very pleased with their performance.
Their best time was 2:27 with overall best time in the ladies at 2:22.
During the day the BoE had a tent by the river, and they cooked us lunch and gave us drinks. And after we took down the tents at the end of the day we all went out for dinner and more drinks.
