Kakinoki James

Last Saturday (June 17^th) I made a road trip to Izumo for the Chugoku Cup Soccer Tournament. This region of Japan is called Chugoku, and the Chugoku Cup is a regional tournament that the Shimane-ken JETs have put together the last few years. I was hoping to play for the Shimane-ken team, but they said that players needed to arrive by 8:30 AM. Izumo city is a 4 hour drive away, so I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I arrived at the sports complex around noon and as soon as I got there I got drafted to play for the Hiroshima-ken team. Only 3 members from their real team made the trip, so they were scrambling to get enough players to field a team. I ended up playing 2 games for them, both of which were held in the main stadium. The stadium is home to a pro team, granted a minor league team, but it was still cool to be able to play in a pro stadium. I’m not a very good soccer player & I seem to have lost a step or two from my baseball playing days, but I had a good time. I think my proudest play was actually a play in which the guy I was defending ran right past me and had a good shot at the goal. Just as he was starting to kick the ball I shouted “HELLO!!” and he ended up kicking the ball over the top of the goal. He’s a Japanese guy so I figured that he wasn’t used to having foreign words yelled at him.

I was hoping to get into Shimane’s last game (the tournament championship game), but they had a full squad of guys much better than me, so I just stood on the side and took pictures with my new camera. Still trying to figure the thing out, but I think I got a few nice shots. Shimane played Shimane University’s team. They lost 3 to 2, but it was a great game that went back and forth. Considering that they were playing a team of guys that actually get to practice together everyday, I thought the Shimane team (a bunch of ALTs rarely see each other much less practice) did pretty well.

After the tournament there was a great party. A number of cabins and a good-sized building were rented for the party. There was excellent food prepared by professional cooks, several really good bands, and a large amount of alcohol. I drank far too much alcohol, but didn’t realize it until it caught up with me at the end of the night. She probably shouldn’t have been there, but I met a high school girl who said she wanted to teach foreigners how to speak Japanese when she grew up. Her being a shy girl, I had a lot of fun pushing her to talk to many foreigners. Was probably the first time in her life she was in a place where Japanese people were in the minority. She had a bit of cultural shell shock, but she had a good time. For someone who wants to work with foreigners in the future, it was a great place to be. At the party there were people from America, Canada, England, Wales, Ireland, New Zealand, Germany, probably Australia, and two guys from Africa.

The next morning I certainly wasn’t feeling at my best, but I still had a 4+ hour drive home. On my way home I visited Izumotaisha, which is an extremely old Shinto shrine. This place was quite old when its main building burned down around the year 1200. Most of Japan refer to October as the month with no gods. That’s because they are supposed to get together for a big meeting at Izumotaisha. So in Japan, even the gods go on business trips.