Kyle's World

Today I played in my own wakare jiai today. A wakare jiai is like a sending off, final game. Since I'm leaving in a few weeks, this applies to me. I had been helping Mr Tokuzumi with our school's baseball practices and games since April; I even made it up to the title of coach. It was really fun, like hitting infield grounders and attending the games on weekends and cheering my head off in English when no one knew what I was saying. Very good memories these four months, my first four month stint as a baseball skipper and four months that I won't soon forget.

As for the game itself, it was the grade 9's and I against the grade 7 and 8's. Before the game, I outfitted my team with team Canada caps, so we had the international angle down. If we had fielded a lineup with everyone playing their own positions, we would have pasted the other team, but we were just having fun so we had the real first baseman pitching, the right fielder playing catcher, the catcher playing left field and so on. I grabbed first base, my position of choice as an 18 year old ball player. It was mighty hot in the blazing sun (think 35 degrees C) and when the other team exploded for 7 runs in the third inning, I was out there on the field with sweat pouring off my head for a mighty long time.

At the dish in the 4-spot, I had a pretty non-descript game. 0/1 with 2 walks, a fielder's choice, a strikeout, 2 stolen bases and 2 runs scored. We were down 10-2 at one point, but then we exploded for 8 runs in the bottom of the fourth. The kids didn't want to have the game end in a tie, so we went to extra innings. I thought we were in trouble in the top of the 7th, but with the grade 7 and 8 team threatening with a man on second, a couple grade 9's hooked up on the ol' hidden ball trick to nail the guy. The hidden ball trip works every time. I was laughing so hard in centre field after witnessing that. They ended up scoring that inning anyway, to take an 11-10 lead. Mr Tokuzumi said that if we didn't score in our half of the inning, that the game would end in a tie. So batter 3, Shogo, grounded out. 1 away. I walk to the dish, stare down the grade 7 pitcher, and dig in for my at-bat. The count goes to 3-0, so I start thinking walk. The fourth pitch comes in...it's at my shoe laces. I hear Mr Tokuzumi call strike behind me. I look at him with a smile and he says "you don't want to walk right?". After hacking at the next pitch, I draw the walk. Tying run on first, winning run at the plate. I steal second base, then watch as the next pitch to the fifth batter Kengo sails over the right field fence for a game-winning, sayonara two-run home run. It was Kengo's second 2-run jack of the game. Of course, the entire team mobbed him at home plate as the crowd went wild. What an owakare jiai!!

The peanut gallery is calling for more updates. Thank you to my 3 loyal readers. I have listened to your requests, and have decided to oblige you with more posts (disclaimer: no one knows how long this new found desire to post will last...enjoy it while you can).

 

Every year, in October, all junior high schools in the former Shimomashiki Gun, hold their English Recitation Contest. For me, it's a huge event, perhaps the biggest in the school calendar. It's bigger than the Sports and Cultural festivals even. I think this is because I have more responsibility than anywhere else since I'm the coach. I get to pick the students, and the programs of the text that they will recite. And mostly, I would practice with them, mornings, lunchtimes, after school.

There are 12 junior high schools in my Gun, all competing for 6 prizes: 3 bronze prizes, 2 silvers and a gold. If you get the gold prize, you get to compete in the Kumamoto English recitation contest against the other winning schools.

The contest this year was held on Friday. Since this was to be my third and last English Recitation contest, I felt that all students, especially the grade 2's (grade 8 back home), were really giving their all for a shot at the Kumamoto competition. This year we started practicing like 3 months ago, about the start of the summer vacation. I love having support from the other English teachers, Mr Izuno or Mr Sudo, but they were often too busy to attend the practices, so I was often left alone to coach the students and help them improve before the contest. Try doing that when the kids go off and play, don't really listen to you, and when your words of advice just aren't enough when spoken in Japanese.

Still we chugged along. There were certainly rough stretches, like morning practices from 7:30AM and so on. Gradually the students improved. Call it "blinded by the pride of your school" if you want, but I really felt we were great this year. We were certainly in a good position to improve upon last year's showing when the grade 1's and 2's won a bronze prize. 2 girls on the grade 2 team were members of the grade 1 team last year.

As far as predictions and/or expectations go, I thought the grade 1's might grab a bronze, but I wasn't sure since it's always so wide open with the grade 1's. There's not much to distinguish them from the other competitors. I thought the grade 2's would grab the silver if not the gold. They were so sure of themselves, so full of confidence that I went with it. Also the grade 2 ace-in-the-hole spoke a very long, important part of the text last. As for the grade 3's, I unfortunately didn't think they would get anything. I kept thinking their pronounciation was off in places during practice. Also the girl I chose has a soft voice, I wasn't sure it would reach the judging table.

The grade 1's got a raw deal as far as their order of presentation was concerned- they got the lead off slot. Since the order is grade 1's, 2's then 3's, my grade 1's presented right after the opening ceremony. Not that they weren't already nervous enough. Their presentation was flawless, as far as it going the way we'd been practicing. After looking at the other 11 schools, I thought we were definitely in the top 6 so that meant a getting a prize.

The grade 2's had a bad placement too, being the last grade 2 team to present. Going last is good in the sense that you can see how good the other teams have presented (although I guess that's bad too since you might start to think too much), but it's bad in the sense that, at least as far as I'm concerned, the judges have basically already finalized the best 6 teams by the time they get to see the twelfth team. But the presentation went really well, I thought they'd nailed the performance and there was a strong chance they'd get a shiny colour prize. Bronze isn't that shiny after all.

 

I've heard so often about how Japan is in a population crisis, what with the aging population, and low birth rate, Japan's population is actually expected to shrink within the coming years. My old Board of Education head (now since retired) urged me to find a nice Japanese girl, settle down back in Toyono, and have lots of babies to replace the low numbers of enrollment my town is having. The picture is generally seen as bleak.

The thing is that, looking around the country, it doesn't seem so bleak. I don't doubt the seriousness of the issue, nor can I speak for 130,000,000 people. But while in Fukuoka this past weekend to catch some baseball games, the stadium had healthy numbers of young expecting mothers, or young mothers already. It's a random sampling of 30,000 people, but who knows? The future might be rosey. Either that or pregant women like going to baseball games so my sample was skewed.

Post script: Don't Japanese women look young? I guess men too. But going back to these prenant women at the baseball games, many looked like they were in their late teens or early twenties. And alot of the mothers of kids at my school look young too. There's the fact that Japanese women seemingly start families earlier than Canadians. There's also the element of, as I said, Japanese just generally looking younger. You could be talking to a 35 ear old, and think they just graduated university.

Going by the old saying that when it rains, God must be watering his lawn (I don't know if it's an actual saying; I just remember thinking it as a kid), God must have gone to the Supermarket and left his sprinkler on, since it hasn't stopped raining here recently.

It's definitely the rainy season here, so I guess it's supposed to rain. But after starting the rainy season off really dry with no rain, I saw a segment on the weather channel that was expalining the dry phenomenon. You knew, of course, that as soon as they made mention of how dry it was, that it would start raining buckets. And it did. I don't think it's stopped raining since that broadcast.

This past weekend was particularily bad; I saw footage of flooding in and around Kyushu, people's homes being washed away, and people shovelling mud and debris from areas that were likely once indoors.

To the big guy upstairs, you've left your sprinkler on. Please turn it off as you are wasting water.