ON THE JOYS OF TEAM SPORTS

Parts of this one are going to be PG-13, so I apologize. I will warn you about them before they come.

I posted a short and cryptic update about my soccer weekend and never actually got around to finishing the post. I’ll try not to make this a mammoth post, but something tells me that it will be.

From June 8-June10, there was a large soccer tournament on Awaji Island near Kobe. ALTs from the western side of Japan came to drink beer and play soccer, in that order. We had had a tournament similar to this in December except that in the December tournament, it was sleeting while we were playing.

Our girls team was going to go in 2 cars to Awaji, a great feat, seeing as it is a 6 hour drive. We left Friday night and would return Sunday night. I was placed in the car driven by our goalie, a very nice, possibly insane, lady. She is from Australia, she is a chain smoker, she loves to drink, and she has some serious anger management problems. Great fun. It turns out she has serious road rage, too. If someone was driving slower than her in the fast lane, she would drive up right behind them, flick her lights on and off at them, and honk her horn. Great times making friends in Japan. There were 5 people in the car, so it was a little cramped, but still enjoyable for the first 5 minutes. After the first hour, we (we being the others in the car, not me) decided to play an absolutely wonderful game which has a bad word in the title, so I will not elucidate. Essentially, a person had to give the names of 3 people, either famous men or men in our prefecture, and then everyone else has to decide who they personally would sleep with (one night stand), kill, and marry. Great fun, great fun. This game was sadly interrupted by the apparent typhoon that suddenly came upon us. As we were driving through mountainous, windy roads, a storm suddenly overtook us. I have never driven in a storm like this, and I was quick glad that I was not driving. It was almost impossible to see through the rain; every time thunder struck, we could feel the car shaking, and the car was being hit by debris from the trees near the road. We were driving on a 4 lane highway, and we couldn't even see the cars next to us. We were inland, with a city on one side and a mountain on the other, and I will clarify that there were no bodies of water nearby; all of which made it very surprising when the tidal wave hit. We have no idea where it came from or what it was. We were driving along, and suddenly, a gigantic wave came at our car from the right side, engulfed the car for 3 seconds, then was gone. Totally out of nowhere. Fun times. We got to Awaji 7 hours later, all grateful to be alive.

We got to the hotel and found out that there were only 2 rooms for our team - one with 3 beds, and one with 4. 2 of the other girls in my car were nonsmokers and pretty calm people, so we immediately decided to steal the 3 bed room on the pretense of it being a nonsmoking room. I was fairly happy with the arrangement, as I thought the other 2 were nice girls. One of them, who shares the same name as me, has a similar sense of humor to me, and she likes anime. Happy times. So we went to bed at around 1 in the morning and got up around 7. Nice, relaxing night sleep on a bed as hard as rock. We got dressed, headed out to the field, met 2 of our players (girls play on half-fields and need 6 players for a team; we had 5, so we asked 2 girls from another prefecture to play with us). Played the first game. Won 4-0. Played the second game. One of our girls rolled her ankle, so she was out for the rest of the day. We had to play most of the second game and the third game with no subs. But we still won the second game 6-0. The third game was a long awaited grudge match between our team and the team that had won 1st place at the December tournament (we had been second). They have girls on that team who played soccer in college, so they're a really strong team. Our goalie was doing all sorts of swearing to rev herself up because she really hates this team. The previous year, one of their players accidentally injured her, and she was looking for revenge. So it was rather ironic that 5 minutes into the game, one of their players accidentally kicked her in the head, making her bit through her bottom lip and giving her a concussion, thereby bringing our number of players to 5. Hurray. Luckily, someone was on had to take her to the hospital to get stitches, and the other team waited long enough for us to get another team's goalie so we could have 6 players. Amazingly, we actually managed to hold them to a tie. Until the last minute of the game. We asked the ref "How much time?" and she said "Less than a minute". Great, we only had to hold them for one minute, then we could go into Penalty Kicks! And then they scored, with 30 seconds left in the game. Crap. Heartbreaking loss, 1-0.

Everyone wanted to go into Kobe that night to a Brazilian restaurant, but our goalie was in no position to drive, as she was taking some great pain medication that made her slightly loopy (though that could have been the concussion...). Darn, looks like we couldn't go. But wait. What's that, you said? Was there an AET nearby who had only just recently earned her Japanese driver's license? Why, yes, amazingly enough, there was!! And just GUESS how EXCITED she was to be driving a TOTALLY INSANE strangers CAR through LOTS of traffic in a BIG JAPANESE CITY?!? She was THRILLED!!! So after an incident I won't talk about, as it involves onsens and embarrassment, we went out to Kobe.

The restaurant was indeed nice (I still haven't taken the time to get the pictures on my computer yet, so I can't post them. Sorry), and it features a large array of salad bar type foods buffet style. Also, at each table, there were a few empty plates, and every few minutes, a large man would come by with a ginormous spit of meat (pork, sausages, beef, chicken, you name it, they had it) and he would carve some of it onto the plate using a knife which any samurai could have easily used as a sword. It was about $25 for nomihoudai (all you can drink) and tabehoudai (all you can eat) for 2 hours, so most of the AETs consumed an amount of alcohol that would have made most Vikings stand back in awe. I had fun listening in to conversations around me (I had people from Canada, England, Scotland, Australia, and South Africa sitting around me) and contemplating if our goalie should be mixing her pain medication with 3, no, 4 beers and 1 chuhai (a fruity alcoholic beer thing, I think). Nothing wrong with mixing medication and alcohol, right? I'm sure there could be no bad consequences from that. Everyone kept saying how sorry they felt for me because I couldn't drink since I was driving. Yup, it was a shame, but we all have to make sacrifices in life. It probably helps that I don't drink anyways...

This next paragraph is a little...gross at parts, so if you're squeamish or don't like potty humor, don't read it, please. If you read it anyways, well, I did warn you... So we left the restaurant. I didn't know the way back to Kobe (I had followed another team's bus to get to the restaurant), so the girls in my car all piled back in and we waited for the other team to go back to their bus (it had to park a few blocks away from our cars, so they had quite a walk). After 20 minutes, one of the girls finally said, "I've gotta pee." Now, I know that we had all been thinking that (I had had quite a few ginger ales myself, so I was feeling the pressure, so to speak), but no one wanted to say anything. After 25 minutes, we figured the bus must have forgotten to come back to get us. The girl then said, "Okay, I can't hold it, I'm gonna pop a squat." For those of you who don't know, to "pop a squat" is to crouch down where ever you are and go to the bathroom. So she gets out of the car, goes up to are goalie who is smoking a cigarette (high, intoxicated, and getting some tobacco in - great combo!) and asks the goalie to stand in front of her. She then goes up on the curb so some bushes are blocking her on one side, the car on another, a phone booth and bushes behind, and the goalie in front. She then proceeds to pull her pants down IN FULL VIEW OF EVERYONE DRIVING ON THE ROAD and goes to the bathroom. She then gets back up and gets back in the car. I must say that at that point, everyone in the car was dying with laughter, including the goalie who was standing in front of her. She was very unapologetic about it - "well, I needed to go!". Five minutes later, she announced that she had to go again. Everyone berated her for "breaking the seal" (going to the bathroom the first time after lots of drinking; once you go the first time, apparently, you need to go soon after that), but she got out again and went once more. Another girl in the car then figured that she might as well go, too; plus, she's wearing a dress, so she figured it be easier for her to go. So she goes out to almost the same spot and starts to do her business. She suddenly shrieks with laughter and informs us all that her legs are getting wet because she is going so hard that it's ricocheting off the sidewalk and on her legs. Poor girl. Couldn't get much worse than that. Oh, wait, what's that coming towards us? Why, it's the bus for the other soccer team pulling up right across from Peeing Girl! Wow, talk about phenomenal timing. She leaned over onto the hood of the car, laughing so hard that she couldn't even stand up. "I'm still peeing," she gasped, "I can't stop!" Some of the other team looked out the windows and saw her, which was quite amazing, as she had at least 10 Japanese people walk past her without noticing what was going on. She finally finished her business and got back in the car. Her nickname the next day was, of course, Potty Legs.

So we got back at around 11, and there was another party that almost all the players were going to at a nearby bar. Hmmm...I could go to a bar and watch people get drunk and do dumb things, OR I could relax, stretch my aching muscles, read a book, and get to bed early. Yeah, I am such an old woman at heart. So I went to bed at around12, was woken up at 2 by one of my roommates coming in, was woken up again at 4 by the other roommate coming in and talking, I assumed to my other roommate, woke up again at 6 because someone was snoring really loudly (one of my roommates had a cold and warned us that she might snore), and finally got up with my alarm at 7. I looked over at the one roommate (2am) and she was awake and looking slightly annoyed. I assumed it was because our other roommate (4am) was snoring. I nodded at 2am, indicating that yes, the snoring was annoying. Then I looked over at 4 am and saw that HER EYES WERE OPEN. Weird. Her eyes were open and she was snoring. Talented, that is. I will comment here that even though I don't drink, my mind tends to act drunk when it is tired. Logic and I are not friends in the early morning hours, especially when muscle pain, cramps, and sunburn are involved. Looking more closely at 4 am, I saw something else weird. She apparently had 3 HANDS. AHH!! Freaky! How'd that happen? I put my glasses on and peered at her again. 3 hands. 3 arms. 2 heads. Ummm...yeah. There was a guy in her bed. THERE WAS A GUY IN HER BED WITH HER!!! Well, now I knew who she had been talking to at 4 in the morning. When she realized we were both awake, she said, "I'm sorry, guys, he followed me home!" Apparently, they had met outside our hotel the night before at 3am and had started talking and making out. He was so drunk at that point that he actually couldn't remember the name of his hotel (he had come that day, so he had only seen it for 10 minutes), so 4 am, being a kind soul and not wanting him to have to sleep out in the rain, had offered to let him stay with us. Nice. Very kind. So that was an exciting way to wake up.

So we got up, got ready (which is really hard when every muscle in your body is trying to remind you that the most athletic thing you've don't since December was play tag with the elementary school students, and you had had to stop after 5 minutes because you were so winded and sore), and headed back out to the field. For some reason, the brackets were messed up, and even though there were 8 girls teams, we ended up playing 2 of the same teams we had played the day before. We won our first game 2-1, and then our second game was against the Team of Amazingness. They hadn't gone out to the bar the night before, so they were all fresh as daisies. The entirety of our team, except for me, were playing with hangovers (the first game started at 9:30am). This was not going to go well. Their first attempt at scoring was stopped by our goalie; after seeing our goalie coming towards the ball, their player backed off and stopped charging. Our goalie talked to their team and told them she was okay (which she wasn't - apparently alcohol+medication+tobacco really DON'T mix well. Who would have thunk?) and that they didn't need to play overly-easy for fear of hurting her again. They took her at her word, and we lost 3-0 (should have been 2-0 - the first goal was scored offsides). It would have been worse, but for the last 4 minutes of the game (The games were 40 minutes long), we knew there was no way we were going to come back, and they were saving themselves for the championship game, so it was nice. Everyone jogged instead of running, when someone got the ball they just hauled off and kicked it as far as the could instead of passing to other people, and no one was being entirely aggressive. Heartbreaker for us, since it meant we wouldn't get 2nd place this time around, even though we deserved it (for those who know me, I usually don't brag often, but when I do, it's deserved bragging. We really were the only competition this other team had. Our team had 3 girls who played high school soccer, and the rest of us played some sort of sports in our lives, so we have a generic sports coordination thing going on; the other teams mostly had girls who had never played a sport in their lives. People kept asking how often our team practiced [Team Amazingness practices once a week]; most were stunned to learn that we, at best, practiced once a month, and that we had just met 2 of our players on the first day of the tournament). So we went into the 3rd/4th place match against an equally unenthusiastic team. We each agreed that we were tired, and they knew we were going to win, so we got the ref to allow us to play a 20 minute game. We scored a goal in the first minute, and it was pretty much over after that. It was a much more relaxed and fun game than our last had been, so it was a nice ending. We got third place - a nice trophy, and a large case of beer. Hurrah.

I had to drive home that night, which was all sorts of fun. 6 hours of driving after 2 days of intense physical exercise, sunburn, sleep deprivation, and stress. What more could one ask for? What's that, you say? A trip to an onsen (hot spring) after which the guys describe as a RUDE TERM COMING UP, PLEASE DON'T READ IF YOU'RE EASILY OFFENDED "wang by wang replay" OKAY YOU CAN READ AGAIN. I need to hang out with AETs more often because it makes me feel so good and morally superior. Anyways, 5 hours into the drive, the goalie says she can drive, and I'm so tired that I believe her. We got back to the city we departed from at 12:30, and then I had to drive another teammate home, so I didn't get back to my apartment until around 1 or 1:30. And I had school the next day. Fun stuff. All day Monday, I was doing a sexy "Night of the Living Dead" jolting type of stop-and-go walk. Stairs were equally amusing, as I could barely lift my legs (before I started playing soccer, I had not been aware that I even HAD a groin. Did you know that everyone has groin muscles, and that these muscles can be pulled and strained? See how much I've learned since I've come to Japan?). Now, two weeks later, I finally got over the cold I got from Miss 4am (her midnight make out partner didn't get it, which I think is a little unfair), I'm walking more naturally, and I've stopped crying every time I see a soccer ball. Progress is being made, I think. Maybe by the next tournament that rolls around in December, I'll actually be willing to make another attempt at being sporty. Until then, though, I think the most exercise I want is the bicep curls I do while changing tv channels.