Awaji Soccer Tournament

(My JET Intramural team)

So in the spirit of trying new things, I joined the JET Intramural soccer team of my prefecture, and have been practicing with my team and also with my students. It's cool because the worst students in my class are usually soccer players (they are the dumb jock equivalent), and they really get all jacked up and happy when I come out to practice with them (and they get a chance to try out all of the dirty words they know in English). I've even noticed that some of them are behaving better in class and actually trying harder!

This weekend was the Western Japan Intramural Tournament. It was located on Awaji Island (a small island, in between Honshu (entry city is Kobe) and the next island to the south, Shikoku), on the training fields that were built for England's team during the World Cup. JET/Intramural teams come from all over Western Japan, and the winner of the tournament (not us), goes to the spring Championship in Saitama (and they get to play in the Japanese National team's superdome, cool huh).

(This is the grounds that we played on - mountains in the background, nice manicured grass, and ocean views on the other side. Niiiiice.)

My team was "AC Hyogo," which was the social/"B" team of our prefecture, made up of mostly the beginner players (our "A" team, was mostly big, fast, experienced Brits). We actually never played together as a team before, and it really showed in this tournament!

Overall, our tournament record was 1-3 in round robin play, and we lost the first game of actual seeded play (we won the first game but never succeeded in scoring a goal the rest of the weekend). BUT, it was awesome fun and I managed to score a goal in overtime in our winning game (sweet), got rugby tackled by a big Aussie dude (it sucked, I was seeing stars for 2 minutes), managed to dish out my share of punishment, and came home with lots of bruises and a twisted up knee (sucked walking up the stairs when I got home).

Soccer is fun! I wish I had played in High school! I'm going to keep practicing with the students and JET team and hopefully go out for the A team next year, but for now I gotta ice down my knee, it looks like a big grapefruit. Yikes.

Oh PS, DJ Jeno started his own radio show and is archiving his stuff: http://www.djjeno.com/noisefromthevoid.html it's freakin' awesome music, very ecclectic and cool stuff.

Okay, that's it for tonight. Peace, -m.