水泳大会

Yesterday, my city held it's first ever (annual) open swimming contest. The focus was on students from elementary to high school, but there was a general division that was open to any competitor. The general division was limited to the 50m events which was a bit disappointing, but since for the sake of time, each competitor was limited to two events, it probably was for the best. Not that it really mattered though.

When I arrived at the pool for warm ups I was given a program with all the events and competitors. I checked my two races to see what kind of competition I was up against. Lovely! Me and one other guy. My chances of winning now stood at a solid 50%. Then my competitor came into the change room, all 5 foot 6 and 72 years of him. Make that 100%.

But it wasn't about winning for either of us. Both he and I just wanted to get out there and see how we held up. First up was the 50 breaststroke. I forgot what stroke I was doing when I first jumped in and flutter kicked a couple times. At the turn I noticed the old guy wasn't that far behind and I picked up the pace for the last 25. Either I flew, he slowed down, or a bit of both, cause I finished 10 seconds in front of him. Still my time, 38.9 or so, was nothing spectacular, especially when I heard that one of the elementary school students I teach does a 40 second 50. She also happens to be in the Japan Junior Olympic program though, but that's another story.

The 50 free went pretty much the same way. I finished in 31.6 seconds. I was really hoping to just barely crack 30, but it wasn't meant to be. This time was also around the best time posted by the top elementary school student.

Considering I went in with no practice, having not swam competitively in 10 years, I think it went pretty well. I got a couple of nifty certificates too, and had the lovely support of some of my fellow English teachers who came to cheer me on. Also as I was leaving I heard one of the parents in the crowd remark "This was on heck of a competition huh? Even a foreigner and an old man came out to compete!"

Burgled

It appears that someone broke into my motorbike over the weekend. I was down in Kyoto over the weekend so I parked my bike Saturday afternoon at a local train station.

When I came back to the station Sunday night I noticed that my gas meter didn't rise and said empty. I knew I had plenty of gas, so I just thought that it didn't move because it was so cold at the time.

Monday morning it didn't move as well so I thought I would take it to the bike shop to get looked at, but as I was driving close to my house, suddenly the bike died, and I realized it really was out of gas. Luckily, I was close to a gas station, so I walked it over to fill up. That's when I noticed that someone had broken the lock. The gas cap was also gone and the tank was completely empty.

It's only a 5 litre tank and it couldn't have been more than half full at the time, so I can only wonder who steals 300 yen of gasoline?! Maybe they tried to steal the bike itself, but couldn't because of the lock I always have on it. If that's the case, I guess I got off light, but still now I have to go through a bunch of hassle with the police, my insurance company, and I have to bother my supervisor at the board of education to help me with it all. All for 300 yen of gas and a gas cap.

I'm thinking of trying to set up a sting Friday night, but I'm wondering what are the chances that they'll strike twice, and even if they're tempted, seeing the same bike in the same place, might seem a little fishy and scare them off. I still might give it a shot though, cause I'd really like to get this guy, and I'm sure the cracker-jack police force will spend little, if any time looking into such a small matter.

Go Lakes!

Last weekend I was down in Yasu to see Shiga's brand new professional basketball team, the Shiga Lakestars, in action. While it was no NBA, it certainly was a great game. We were up against the league leading Ryukyu Kings from Okinawa who were 9-0 at that point.



The first quarter was very sloppy on Shiga's part. Rebounding was terrible, they couldn't get the ball inside, and were moving it poorly around the perimeter. Down 14-33 at the end of the first quarter things were not looking good.



I'm not sure what happened after that, but the team game alive after the poor 1st quarter. Nailing threes, getting the important rebounds, both defensive and offensive, and controlling the tempo of the game much better. They went 20-3 in the second quarter to finish the half down by 2 at 34-36.



The second half of the game, they played just like the second quarter. The action was tight, and while the Kings were still ahead, one of the players decided to showboat on a break and ended up slamming a dunk into nothing but back iron. It reminded me of the jam that Jordan missed in the All-Star game. Everyone was loving it when the ball flew back to center court.



Shiga took over the lead and held on to a comfortable 6 point lead to finish the game 81-75, handing the Kings their first defeat and improving to 4 and 6 themselves.



The 52 game season runs until April, so you can bet I'll be going back to check them out. Quality ball at a quality price (2000 yen for 2nd floor, 3000 for 1st floor, 6000 for court side) and it's right in my backyard.

Halloween

With the help of my mom I was able to order and ship a Dark Knight Joker costume to Japan for this year's Halloween festivities. A buddy of mine who teaches with me in town was kind enough to go along with my theme and dressed as Batman. Aaron and Ken from Kyoto, as well as Sho an Komo from Tokyo made the trip out to Shiga for the party as well, and a good time was had by all.

The costume was fantastic and went over well both times I wore it. People kept saying how creepy I looked, and some people even had a hard time looking at me. I thought I was a shoe-in for the scariest costume prize at the JET Halloween party, but Sarah Palin beat me by a vote (good thing it didn't happen that way yesterday too). I can't complain though cause it was an excellent night and weekend. One of the best Halloweens ever even if I do say so myself.

すげぇ

The yen has appreciated so much to the Canadian Dollar in the past month that my yearly salary which was equivalent to 35,000 CAD last month is 46,000 at today's exchange rate.