We arrived in Osaka on Friday morning, it was a great time staying with Nana and her family, and we had some great times hanging out in Kyoto. Nana and her friends brought a group of us lax guys out to downtown Kyoto on thursday night, and we ended up meeting with a whole group of USA-Westers at this bar called "Locked-up". It was crazy; I've never seen a theme bar in the states before. You walk down into "the dungeon" and are met by the "jailer" (a scantly clad Japanese girl in a cop outfit) who then hand-cuffs the first person in the group and leads you to your "cell". A long table is inside, and we had about 10 people in the room. For two hours, you order drink after drink and they bring food out for you. It was great times, and only cost about $30.
LACROSSE.
We arrived at Miashima island on Friday morning. It's a man made island built to house the Olympic atheltes if Japan every held the Olympics. There is a sweet baseball stadium and arena, and a ton of atheltic fields and facilities scattered around the island. It's great, but it has no internet!!! We're really cut off out there; right now I'm in an internet cafe in Osaka station, trying to scrape out my great memories from the last few days. Yesterday, we played a Kansai U-20 regional team who were surprisingly better than we expected. Every team in Fukuoka we played we breezed by. The field is top notch; perfectly maintained low-grass, with a great backdrop of an Osaka bridge and buildings.
The Kansai U-20 team was obviously inexperienced but played very hard and put in a couple impressive shots. We got off to a hot start but struggled a bit in the 3rd quarter, partyl due to the atrocious officiating in Japan, and getting used to some of the international rules (subbing ALWAYS must be done through the box, in every situation except for after a goal or timeouts. we found this out the hard way a few times).
Today we saw the best competition we've seen all trip; we played a men's club team called HELP. They were all obviously older and more experienced, and play got a bit chippy at times. The final score ended up being 10-4, and they played hard to the end. It was tough for our team to get used to playing a good team for once, we are onviously skilled as individuals but playing on an all-star team is tough because...well...we're ALL-stars. Cito had a great game; ended up with 4 goals i think. They do a pretty funny "player of the match" interview at the end with a microphone.
The next game was another surprise, we played a Kyoto all-star team which really gave us a run for our money. I got a quick assist to early in the game off of a loose ball to make it 2-1. Again in the 2nd quarter, I got a pass from Cito off a designed 1-3-2 throw back play, and buried a shot low and away to make it 4-3. That ended up being the score well into the 3rd quarter until Brooks Korvin from Army broke the drought with a great assist, follwed by a sweet face-dodge goal. We kept playing hard until the end and ended up winning 9-4. Dave Rineheard from Michigan our faceoff guy who has absolutley dominated all trip, finally got some accolades for his performance and got the player of the match. Even though we won, we all feel like we could have played way better, but this was really our first test as a team and we ended up pulling out two tough wins.
Tomorrow should be the biggest game of the trip. Not only because it's the last game of our Japanese adventure, but also because we are playing the Kansai regional team made up from some of the best players in the greater Osaka area, and apparently they have been practicing for months preparing for this game. Should be a battle.
I'm gonna wrap this up because we're going to have to catch the last train back to the island pretty soon here. I'll do some wandering by myself to see if i can find anything sweet downtown before I head back to the station. This might end up being the last post until the airport on monday, it's been a great trip but I'm definitely looking forward to coming home!
mama-san
post-game clinic for beginning japanese players
box-lunch sesh
No comments:
Post a Comment