Sports (i.e., Learning to Play Ski)

(Summer 2008 Issue)

Some of us sought out the sports to play, and some of us stumbled into them.  The universal experience was Sports Day, but there were many others as well.  Read on!

Damine Elementary School is an anachronism.  A country schoolhouse in the foothils of the Japan Alps, it has used the same building since the Taisho period, if not earlier.

Last time I checked, Damine had a total student body of 17 children who were taught in combined classes.   The school is unique in that it has compulsory kabuki training for all its boys and girls in order to perpetuate a 300-year-old village festival dedicated to the deity Kannon.  With an eye ever watchful of waning interest in traditional arts, the Japanese government continued to fund the tiny school.

Two of the seventeen students were in a special education class.  Seiji, a fourth grader, could interact fairly normally with the other students, but he required simpler explanations, clear directions, and extra patience.  Fumiyoshi, a sixth grader, had severe down syndrome.  He could sometimes form words, but more often, he would vocalize a series of sounds unrecognizable in any language.  The school embraced them both, encouraging these two boys to attend classes with the mainstream students, but also reserving a classroom for their own studies and resting times.

Once, upon visiting the school, I was looking forward to recess outside.  The kids, all quite athletic, usually played soccer, and despite my lack of ability in sports, they were always thrilled to have me in their non-competitive but fast-paced matches.  On this particular day, however, the kids were setting up a net in their meeting hall.   “What, no soccer today?”  I asked.  “Oh, no,” came one student’s answer.  “We’ve decided to play balloon volleyball from now on.  It’s not fair if we always play a game that Fumiyoshi-san can’t also enjoy.”  Nonplussed, I asked the teachers whether they had encouraged this, but it turned out that the students had thought of it and implemented it independently of any adult influence.

As we all clumsily bopped balloons at each other, giggling the whole time, I reflected on my own past.  Going to an intellectually rigorous private school, I had never really interacted with disabled peers.  Here was an environment where all the village’s children were in the same physical space;  even more importantly, the community of kids did not feel that including them was a burden, but rather an opportunity to discover common ground.  At this school, at this moment, there were no restrictions, only random, wild glee, buoyant pink balloons, and collisions leading to unmitigated laughter.  These kids had transcended sportsmanship as a philosophy of winning and losing gracefully; their brand of sportsmanship was solely about having fun together.  In a world where we can debate the supremacy of baseball, soccer and American football, I learned that balloon volleyball was indeed the greatest team sport of all.

Mia Simring (CIR Shitara-cho, Aichi-ken, 2004-06)

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The Funo-son Shogakko Sports Day took place only a few weeks after I arrived in Japan.  I didn’t understand much, due to my electric dictionary’s severe lack of village dialect translation skills, but through my favorite new game, charades, I understood that I could sit and judge events.  Since this involved plenty of ice water and copious amounts of sitting under a tent during a typically sweltering August day, I agreed.

All was well until after lunch.  Fearing that I was bored (but actually still just jet-lagged), my principal asked me to participate in a teachers-only relay race.  It involved running hand-in-hand around the razor gravel track with the second grade teacher, Nakamura-sensei. She and I didn’t have much time to get acquainted. We each quickly introduced ourselves and Nakamura-sensei gave a handshake that could crush bones.  Her smile belied her iron muscles, and I realized that even if I fell behind, I was going to cross that finish line, under my own power or not.

The starter gun went off and, while the parents and students cheered us on, we ran like a very clumsy and slow wind.  But there was an obstacle in our path!  Up ahead, the other teachers had stopped and were frantically putting on costumes to wear for the final leg of the race.

We stopped at our pile and found that we were to be married.  Nakamura-sensei pushed the voluminous white dress at me, graciously allowing me to be the blushing bride.  After wrestling her tux on, complete with cummerbund and bow tie, we again raced around the track, this time like a very clumsy, slow, but blissfully wedded wind.

We crossed the finish line to many cheers and not a little laughter.  After that race, I figured I’d capped off my daily wacky story from Japan quotient and would be allowed to collect myself under the cool shade of the announcer’s tent for the rest of the program.  But that was before I was asked to wear a giant box and chase the first graders…

Stacey Kerns (Hiroshima-ken, 2001-03)

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Being the only member of my sports-obsessed family who wasn’t offered an athletic scholarship to college, it is unsurprising that I have great disdain and even greater disinterest for most organized sports. Thus Sports Day certainly didn’t register on my social calendar in Japan, not even in pencil.  But on my second year of the program, my visiting school begged me to come.

I did.

But I wore a suit and tie just to make my point clear.

Upon arrival, I was whisked off to the staff room, where my participation was explained to me.

“We are going to play Indiana Jones game, and since you are tall and big and have blonde hair and blue eyes, you will be the Nazi and you will chase the children with a machine gun.”

And along with the instructions, a huge plastic machine gun was handed to me, along with a swastika-emblazened armband.

“But,” I said, ”Won’t that be a little strange and confusing?  After all, the Japanese and the Germans were on the same side.”

Silence.

Then response:  “Don’t be sassy.”

At that moment, pride overcame good sense.  I had taught the English teachers the meaning and different possibilities of the word “sassy,” and here it was, being used correctly!  So I put on my swastika, grabbed the gun, went outside and chased little Japanese archeologists around and about the sports field, all in the name of internationalization and sassiness.

Randall David Cook (Fukui-ken, 1991-93)

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You may call it hump day or suiyobi, but for me Wednesdays were basketball days and, better yet, It’s-Okay-To-Be-A-Geek Day.  After school on Wednesdays, I was happy to scurry home and scarf down dinner alone, because moments later I would be on the back of my ba-chan bike ringing the bell from neighborhood to neighborhood gathering fellow JETs, like the pied piper of intramural sports.  We were headed to 4-chu for our weekly meeting with Ramen-sensei.

I cannot tell you how he got his name, but I can tell you that Ramen-sensei was about twenty-five years old, drove a minivan and was the de facto leader of our misfit basketball club.  His wife, Asuko, was also a member and probably the best player of the bunch.  She would often lead our warm-ups, which had an uncanny resemblance to the innocuous morning calisthenics radio program broadcast all over Japan.  Ichi, ni, san, shi—-go, roku, shichi, hach…

For the first few sessions we gave legitimate basketball a try because we had some real players show up, like the guy from city hall who gave himself the nickname Hanabi Hair.  Even I, a girl much better suited for stomping around the gym and shouting cheers in broken Japanese, was scoring points.  But the most memorable meeting of all was the day we pulled all the equipment from the gym closets and set up a ninja warrior-style obstacle course.  Where else but Japan can you get ten adults to do nine turns around a dizzy bat on any given Wednesday?

Devon Brown (Tokyo-to, 2002-04)

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I once went with a friend to his softball game and almost got to play.  I stepped up to the plate but was wearing blue jeans.  Standard softball wear in America, not accepted in Japan, so I didn’t get to play….I lived in a small town and we started with Sports Day on Oct. 10 for the entire town.  Then over the next few weekends the shuuraku (neighborhoods) had their sports days.  There were also competitions involving the town-hall staffs of the four towns in our county.  The town meet had teams based on the shuuraku in which you lived, and the neighborhood meets formed teams based on what part of the shuuraku you lived in.  People wore colored headbands to indicate their team….In the neighborhood sports meet I once pinch hit for an office-mate in the husband-wife piggy-back relay.  The track was maybe 60 to 80 yards long.  The men waited one-third of the way along the track and the wives ran to them, they ran piggy-back for the next third, and then switched.  Unfortunately, both the woman and myself were carrying some extra pounds.  One of the other events I remember at the neighborhood meets was the ikki relay, using tea and a jan-ken-pon relay for the senior citizens.  Of course, with an enkai afterwards.

Mike Harper (CIR Kagoshima-ken, 1990-93)

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When the World Cup came to Japan in 2002, I was lucky enough to secure tickets to a game in Sendai.  Three JET friends and I and were treated to a stadium of 50,000 screaming soccer pilgrims divided into green (Mexico) and yellow (Ecuador) who’d crossed the globe to support their teams.   Mexico won a thrilling victory, but soccer fans of all nationalities created a Mardi Gras-like atmosphere up and down the shopping district of this normally sedate city by setting off fireworks and dancing to music played on native instruments.

The party intensified when the Japan national team pulled off its first World Cup victory against Russia that evening.  My friends and I watched the entire game on the TV screens above each of the lanes in a local bowling alley.  In the spirit of the moment, the owner had opened the alley’s doors and broadcast the game gratis for anyone who wanted to cheer for the home team.  Stepping out into the raging festival on the streets, my friends and I followed a crowd into a nightclub packed with a drunken mass of Japanese and gaijin alike.  It strongly reminded me of the JET Renewers’ Conference.

Two of my friends and I caught a cab back to the place where we were staying, but our fourth member decided to stay at the club.  When we woke up the next morning, he still hadn’t returned.  We figured he’d found a place to stay with another reveler somewhere, but we began to get worried when we hadn’t heard from him by lunchtime.  He showed up in the early afternoon, a complete mess and lacking his cell phone and wallet.

He didn’t remember losing his personal effects, leaving the nightclub, or what park he’d eventually curled to up to sleep in.  But he keenly recalled waking up in the holding cell of a small koban-like police station early the next morning.  The officer on duty opened the cell, led him to the front desk next to the building’s entrance, and started asking him questions in broken English.  Half-drunk and panicked, my friend took advantage of Japan’s relatively friendly approach to law enforcement:  He dashed out the front door.  Once he felt he’d put enough distance between himself and the officer, he found another park bench and resumed his nap.  He woke up a few hours later to a shogakusei girl standing next to the bench and looking disapprovingly down at him.  He begged the train fare home from her parents.

Earth Bennett (Aomori-ken, 2000-02)

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I was never much of an athletic person in school.  In fact, I was one of those individuals who were usually the last to be chosen on a team by my classmates during gym class.  I also did very poorly during tryouts and could not join any sport teams.  Sports and I just did not mix, and the sour memories of watching the jocks get all the praise and attention lingered within me for many years.

When I arrived in Japan, I was shocked to find out that tryouts did not exist, and students were free to choose and enter their club of interest.  Seeing as club activities were the perfect opportunity to watch and interact with my students outside of English class, I decided to make my rounds through the various clubs every day.  I spent the most time with the softball club since they constantly reminded me to visit.

As I observed the students warm-up and practice, I noticed that many of the ichi-nen-seis did not put forth much effort.  I distinctly remember one girl attempting to hit the softball as it was pitched to her and she lazily swung her bat and naturally missed.  Yaru ki ga nai (lack of motivation) was written all over her face. Yet, the other members continued their “fighto” and “ganbatte” chants.  I found myself annoyed and after watching them constantly lose to other schools during matches, I thought that it was only normal since anyone could play!  The coach did not even seem to show much care towards the losses.  I explained to my Japanese friend that in America we have tryouts to choose the best students to play.  In America, it was always about winning.  In America, you just could not play if you dragged down the team.

The softball girls eventually invited me to practice with them and for a while, I was ashamed at my poor skills of tossing the softball back and forth with students.  Not only did they not laugh at me, they even taught me a few tricks on how to improve my throw.  With the daily practices, the yaru ki ga nai girl and I started to actually hit the ball somewhere during practice matches.  When I did well, they cheered.  When I did poorly, they constantly assured me, “Daijoubu!  Ganbattayo!” (It’s OK! You tried!)

I was touched, but more importantly, I realized that initially, I was looking at them through my American glasses. I took the standards I was used to, the very ones I loathed, and used them to judge these amazing girls.  Looking at their team, I realized why Japanese people treasure the group mentality.  These students were not constantly playing to win; they were playing to teach and support each other.  The skilled students had the opportunity to guide the weaker students.  If they performed well, they truly reached it as a team, not because of certain individuals.  For someone like me who was never good enough to enter a sports team in high school, they showed me that supporting each other made winning so much sweeter.

Emily Wong (Mie-ken, 2004-06)

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Story #1: At my first Sports Day I was recruited to run one of the legs for the teachers in the 100m relay.  The rest of the teachers were fairly slow, and we were a bit behind the students when my turn came.  I run pretty fast, and I took off, and passed two to three teams during my lap.  We ended losing pretty bad nonetheless, but it was fun.  After the event, however, one of the teachers pulled me aside and told me that we weren’t supposed to pass the kids–we were supposed to let them win.  Oops.

Story #2: I played for an adult baseball league on occasion.  One of the reasons I love Japan–baseball, not softball, and 70-year-olds are out there trying to hit the pitches (and they occasionally succeed).  This isn’t a great story, I just always thought it was funny that we were named “Bubbles.”

Story #3: One night I went out to karaoke with my soccer team.  It turns out they liked to play a drinking game where they light each other’s pubic hair on fire. Burning hair smells gross.

Anonymous

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It was just another ordinary day at the office when my bucho slid a glossy photo over my desk.

“That’s Wing Stadium, Kobe City’s new venue for this summer’s World Cup,” he said.  “We want you to go there during match week to help promote the city to international visitors.”

Then the day stopped being ordinary.

Tickets for the World Cup had been sold out before I even knew what the JET Programme was, and now I had an all-access pass!

The year Japan co-hosted the World Cup with Korea was the year that everyone suddenly became a soccer fan.  All the men could explain what an indirect free kick was, and all the women were crazy about David Beckham.  Japan constructed seven new stadiums across the country just for the occasion, and bright and early one sunny morning in June, I followed the city’s bilingual public transportation signs to the stadium, which curiously instructed me to “get it on” from the central station.

My job was to hang out in a special press pit below the pitch, where my natural enthusiasm for Kobe (as well as being relieved from rank-and-file office work for a full week) translated beautifully.  One memorable encounter involved a pair of French journalists—one asked me questions in his native tongue, which his colleague translated into English for me, which I then in turn translated into Japanese for the press manager.

The week was electric, and on the morning of the first match, I was graciously permitted to run around in the bleachers before they were graced by their first-ever spectators.

At week’s end, after three matches and countless 50-yen bottles of Aquarius (Coca-Cola was a sponsor), I bid sayonara to my courteous hosts.  As a parting gift, the press manager presented me with a giant-sized official World Cup promotional poster, which featured a dreamy watercolor of Kobe Port Tower superimposed over a vast blue ocean.

“Justin-san, thank you for your hard work in making Kobe City everybody’s city,” he bowed.

I bowed back, and the framed poster hangs in my living room today.

Justin Tedaldi (CIR Kobe-shi, 2001-02)

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As part of my job as a CIR, I would visit elementary schools once or twice a week in order to introduce the students to American culture.  The pattern was usually the same every time: a presentation in Japanese about New York for one or two different classes, followed by lunch with one of the groups and then spending recess together.  For the most part, the game of choice during the break was dodgeball.  It could be played indoors in the gym on rainy days or outdoors on the field when the weather was nice, and the kids loved it like nothing else!  Thinking back to my elementary school days, I remember being a big fan of kickball and not having played dodgeball as often.  But my time in Japan quickly got me up to speed.

In the beginning I was amazed at the strength of the students, no matter how tiny they seemed, and how fearlessly even the most mild-mannered ones would take out the gaijin sensei!  But over my three years on JET, I was determined to master dodgeball in order to gain some cred with the kiddies.  Every visit I was less worried about how my presentation would go than how my skills would be on the dodgeball court!  Sure enough, over time it took longer and longer for them to eliminate me, and I even got some kids out myself (which I felt bad about until my pint-sized teammates cheered in joy).

After each school visit we usually received thank-you letters from the students, which tended to go into detail regarding what they had enjoyed about our time together.  Initially these notes would include the same generic message of “I learned a lot about New York,” but once my inner dodgeball goddess came out the students would write things like, “You rock at dodgeball!” and “I wish you had been on my team.”  Who would have figured that the international language of exchange was not English but dodgeball?

Stacy Smith (Kumamoto-ken, 2002-03)

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One night over a few drinks with colleagues I’d casually mentioned that I’d played tennis at the varsity level in high school.  And before I could slur out the words “shibaraku yatte inai kedo,” I was recruited on to the company’s tennis team.

The following weekend, I found myself with several colleagues and families at the company’s research center in Kanagawa-ken, home to two weather-beaten asphalt courts.  As I was the newest recruit and the team’s first-ever gaijin member, I was greeted with much enthusiasm and called upon to play in the first doubles match of the day.  I was paired with my colleague, Yuko.  I quickly asked her about tennis terminology and was pleased to find out that it is basically the same as what I’m accustomed to: Love, 30, 40, deuce, advantage receiver/server.  Great, I should be able to get through a game without miscommunication.  Or, so I thought.

In my inaugural doubles match, I’m paired with my colleague, Yuko.  I recall one rally when she glared at a ball as it sailed out-of-bounds.  She veered up and shouted back at our opponents, “Wan-boorudesu!”

I turned to her, “Huh, ‘one ball’?”

She returned the quizzical look on my face, “It looked a little long to me…”

When I’d inquired further, it was explained to me that, in the Japanese tennis vernacular, the expression “one ball” is used to describe a ball that goes out-of-bounds by a narrow – one ball! – margin.  And there you have it.  My first brush with tennis gairaigo, or loanwords.

Over the next few months of practice, I’d come across some more English-based terminology.  Here are a few gems for the uninitiated:

Romaji                  Origin          Meaning/Usage

Foa Fore            Forehand
Bakku Back            Backhand
Jasuto, jasuto!      Just, just!    Used to describe a ball just out of bounds.  Never means just in.
Wan-boo(ru)!        One ball!     Used to describe a ball a mere one-ball margin out of bounds.
Don-mai!              Don’t mind!    Never mind!  No worries!
Naisu-wocchi!       Nice watch!   Used when a teammate allows a ball to sail out of bounds, untouched, by a small margin.
Naisu-kyaa(cchi)!   Nice catch!
Naisshoo(tto)!       Nice shot!
Naissaa(bu)!         Nice serve!
Naisu-bolee!          Nice Volley!

Not-so-surprisingly, once I committed these common expressions to memory, I was able to communicate with little difficulty during play. I’ll admit that my colleagues and I had many a good laugh over the use of such loanwords, with a handful of teammates going as far as changing their speech to reflect more standard English, much to my dismay.  But those experiences served up on the tennis court allowed me to gain a broader insight into the culture and the actual spoken language that would have been difficult to attain otherwise.  For this, I am truly grateful to my former colleagues and teammates at Tosoh Corporation.

Nancy Ikehara (Yokohama-shi, 1994-97)

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Note:  The following submissions were received after the deadline (or were submitted by the editor of this publication) and were not eligible for consideration in the judging.

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It was no coincidence that I was on JET during the 2002 World Cup.  I’ve been obsessed with the game of soccer since I was eight years old and nothing is more thrilling to an avid fan than watching the World Cup live.

Through the ticket lottery, I was able to purchase seats to four first round games but was locked out of the much-coveted quarter and semi-finals.  I had resigned myself to watching the Brazil-England quarter final on TV when my friend called with truly wonderful news.  He had just broken up with his girlfriend and wanted to sell me her ticket to the match.

Not believing my good fortune, I immediately said yes and then called Akamine-san, my colleague at Kibogaoka JHS, to say that I would only have time to teach my first class the next day as I had to catch a train for Shizuoka at 10:00 AM.  The next day, as I prepared to leave my school, I said the obligatory “shitsurei shimasu” but was met with silence from my fellow teachers.  Eventually, the kocho-sensei broke the silence and said, “Lyle-san, escape.  Soccer baka.”  And shook his head in dismay.

Lyle Sylvander (Yokohama-shi, 2001-03)

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I joined a shorinji kempo club in my town and, despite countless hours of practice, never reached a point where I actually felt confident fighting another human being.  That didn’t stop my sensei from entering me in a local tournament that involved sparring.  It was all relatively mild and controlled – we wore head and chest protectors, and points were scored by making contact with a punch or kick to the chest protector or a kick to the head.  But even then, it was more about making contact than knocking out your opponent.

I have to be honest here and say that I really don’t like the idea of getting hit in the face.  (Maybe it has something to do with my “high” nose.)  So when my opponent’s punch accidentally caught my face, I was suddenly gripped with a fear that quickly converted to anger, and I started using that anger to attack my opponent (though not necessarily with success).

At the end of the round, my club mates (all Japanese) were chuckling and saying to me, “Exciting shorinji!”  And I realized that my reaction was embarrassment.  Why?  Because I had lost control and lost my cool.  I had turned to the Dark Side of the Force.

I believe that back in the U.S. my reaction would have been acceptable.  But I realized that in Japan, people rarely competed in that way.  I thought of professional soccer matches I’d watched between Japan and Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran.  In those games, while their opponents faked injuries and complained to the refs, I remember noticing and realizing that the Japanese players did not.  They had too much pride, and perhaps confidence, to complain or fake an injury.

Thinking back, I still shudder a bit with self-consciousness at the way I responded.  That kind of unchecked aggression just seems so….American.

Side note:  The gi for shorinji kempo is like a karate gi except for the Shinto temple symbol on the chest that looks similar to the Nazi sign.  I can’t tell you how much my parents appreciated the video footage I sent home of their nice Jewish son fighting while wearing a “swastika.”

Steven Horowitz (Aichi-ken, 1992-94)

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I tried out for the Colby College hockey team, but before I could get cut on account of talent, they cut me because my right shoulder, dislocated two years before while wrestling with my own teammate, was deemed to be, in medical terms, “too weak.”

When I arrived for a three-year stint as an AET in Kariya-shi, Jeff, a friend on JET, and I joined a team in Nagoya.  We were surprised to find that the level of play was pretty high, especially the guys from Hokkaido.  Jeff and I were placed on a line with Terry, from Canada, and we became a bona fide gaijin line.  We dominated the league (I embellish, but who is going to fact check this?).

Then, in February of 1994, six years after being cut from the Colby team for shoulder weakness, it happened.  This little guy on our team, Fukami, nudged me while my arm was extended towards an elusive puck, and out it came.  (My shoulder, not the puck.)  Apparently, being cut from the Colby team hadn’t been incentive enough to actually strengthen my shoulder.  Brilliant.

I was sweaty and groggy as my coach drove me to Mizutani Byouin in downtown Nagoya.  It was after hours, so a real doctor was not present.  A scruffy looking fellow with sneakers was present, though, and he stuck his shoe in my armpit and started yanking.  I squeezed the nurse’s hand hard, as if I could relocate my shoulder by dislocating her fingers.  My armpit started to bleed from his shoe.  Jeff said my screams, which he heard echoing through the halls of the hospital, reminded him of genocide.  Really, he said that.  After a second unsuccessful attempt, I learned a new Japanese word:  masui (i.e., anesthesia).  Even with masui, the shoulder would not go in.  They called a real doctor, and 20 minutes later I was signing a special document for those too wimpy to weather the storm like a true nihonjin.  I signed my life away, gladly, and after being administered an obscene amount of anesthesia (by Japanese standards), I blanked out and woke up with an arm intact.

Scott Alprin (Aichi-ken, 1992-95)