Awaji Soccer Tournament, redux.

A few weeks ago, my soccer club played in the Spring Awaji Island soccer tournament. The "A" team took 2nd, and my team (The "B" team) came in dead last, we didn't even score a goal the whole time. We were having such a good time though, it could have mattered less. As an added bonus, we got to watch some really awesome soccer!

AC Hyogo, a bunch of classy fellows.

The backdrop was great - mountains to one side, ocean on the other. Nice green grass fields, a rarity in Japan (for some reason they salt down most of the fields, so that no grass grows. Weird, huh?)

Man it was so hot! Here's Alex (from England) giving our team a pep talk at halftime. The gal in the middle is Pumla, from South Africa. She plays for the girl's team, who took first for the girl's tournament, and her man Curtis plays on my team. (71 - Haight and Noriega, what's up).

On the second day of the tournament, we showed up and the junior kids from Awaji were having a tournament too. Turns out, a bunch of them were Micah's students, they got a big kick out of seeing him. Cute, huh.

The Awaji Soccer Grounds were originally made for the England team to play on in the last World Cup, so they pictures of the British players all over the place. Markane, Taku, me, and Beckham.

Another cool thing was that this time, we had student teachers at my school, who were teaching for 3 weeks. Taku (guy in middle, above picture) is one of the English student teachers, and really loves soccer, so I invited him to play on our team. It was cool because I got to hang out with him outside of work. His family actually owns an awesome Teppanyaki restaurant in Tatsuno, which we've eaten at a couple of times already.

I had a great time playing soccer. Even though I'm still learning the game, I've got to hang out with a lot of cool people and have a load of fun!