Farmer Sam

So I didn't play this weekend.  I had a slight strain of the calf over the week from the last game, so they rested me for this match.

My right knee has been bunk for months which, when strapped, is unbalancing my gait and putting additional stress on all kinds of interesting places in my body, resulting in small strains and minor stress all around the shop.

Something unexpected came of it:

I was promoted to groundskeeper for the game, bringing me back to watering mums garden.

One of the new arrivals this year, Pat.

When the teams were playing I was relegated to ball boy, only in charge of one ball at a time.  No more.

Trying to roll up 50 metres of hose, a three man operation.  I managed to cut myself quite handily on an old rusty connector.  Tetanus hoooooo!

After I cut my hand I had to tape it up.

It's an Interesting Thing

Last week I put up some pictures I'd taken of a park.

I thought they were absolutely fantastic, but interestingly enough I didn't get many page views on the particular post, which leads me to believe that they weren't anything special.  It's an interesting thing, taste.

As an aside, I've been given a load of photos from the game against Hino, so here they are!

A few are from training.

It's starting to get really cold so I'm wearing an awful lot of clothes.  It's starting to feel more and more like England.

I've started a few games now so I've got some game fitness, but there's nothing like running some laps to get breathing.

This is the warmup before the Hino game.

As we walked onto the pitch.

The ground was in a park from the 1960 something olympics held in Japan.

You can't see it but the in-goal areas are about 2 metres long, given an extra 2 metres by laying some carpet.  Literally carpet.

The solo effort from a kick our wing and fullback fielded.

You can't really see the carpet from this angle but I made sure to dot down before getting anywhere near it (I was actually tackled and just fell over the line).

The first time I've scored and had such congratulations from the team.  Feels good!

Smiles all round!

This is probably me walking right after the try, attempting to catch my breath.

The Australian guy was playing centre, but switched positions after the try to cover my position.

This is me scoring the second try, pulling a sexy face.

Unfortunately the second try was judged to have a knock on during the build up.

After the game.  Annoyed at the score and extremely tired.  I attempted 12 tackles, the most attempted on our team was 13.  Needless to say it's strange to see a winger trying so many tackles in a game.

This face sums up the game pretty well, I think.

IBM vs Secom

So we played a company team called Secom at the weekend.

They were in the same position as us in having lost their previous games, so both teams were battling to keep out of the bottom two.  The last two in the league have to play relegation matches against the top two in the league below us.

We played in the national stadium in Japan with the Secom fans on one side, and our supporters on the other side.  Despite the relative emptiness of the stadium the noise and atmosphere were great.  They don't do the Japanese baseball thing of making up chants for the players (there's SO MUCH downtime in baseball, I guess the fans have to keep themselves amused somehow) but they get behind the action nonetheless.

The game was played at a thousand miles per hour and there were a lot of mistakes, particularly towards the end.

I don't know how far I ran (no fancy GPS units for us) but it felt like I ran gauntlet as I came out somewhat bruised.

Knocked six bells out of a couple of people and won a few turnovers which isn't really a wingers job, but I scored a try which makes up for the lack of attacking I did all game.  Kind of.

Next up is Shane Williams and Mitsubishi.  I think that's another away game?

The Promo

So IBM was once a big player in the Japanese rugby scene and as such, they commissioned promotional videos of their team whenever the new season started.

Along with the photographs and other associated silliness, they've kept that tradition alive and as such, here is this years video.

I can't get the video to embed in this post so you'll have to make do with the above link.  Sorry about that.

IBM vs Secom

Secom are a team in our league.  IBM beat them last year, making them the only victory of the season.

As this year has started with a couple of positive results, we could have been expected to go on and further improve despite the four days of solid, heavy rain prior to the occasion.  Amazingly enough, it wasn't particularly wet underfoot (the field must have immense drainage) and there was no rain in the air - so it ended up being fairly dry.

Unfortunately, a week ago during the game against Fuji Xerox (which we won by forty or fifty) I'd pulled my left hamstring scoring my second try of the day.  I was only on for fifteen minutes.  In that time I made 1 tackle (still 100% for the season) and effected one turnover along with the two scores.

Needless to say I was disappointed not to be playing today - a game in which we won by only two points.  Seemingly neither team could catch a ball, and we were constantly pushed off the ruck meaning we lost momentum all over the place.  Having said that, we won, which considering the backwards and forwards nature of the game is impressive.

Anyway, that aside, I took a few pictures.  

I'm particularly tired today because I hit the gym hard afterwards, so the colour balancing on a lot of these is somewhere between wrong, and completely wacko.  Try not to think about it too much.

7's and Mitaka

So I went for some rugby trials last week.  They were for the Japanese national 7's team (crazy) and were a ton of fun.  It started really early, so I had to stay in Mitaka overnight.  It's now my new favourite residential area in Japan, there's tons of green space, museums and interesting spaces.  Really nice.  Anyway, pictures!

There are also a lot of flower shops in Mitaka.  I don't know why.

A bed of purple things.

This guy is all over Japan.  He's one of the candidates for some kind of election (who knows what?) and is one of the religious leaders here, apparently.  (That is to say, he's religious in his outlook, not necessarily a priest.)

This is a typical small shrine, found all around the country.

This is someones garage entrance, interesting design lives!

I can't remember what kind of food this is, but it looked pretty delicious.  It was before the restaurant opened so I didn't try any, but the guy was kind enough to let me take a picture.

Some old cameras.  Not my area of interest, but they were quite interesting anyway.

A random chef.  He smiled afterwards, honest!

They try to pretty up the streets in any way possible.  (Fake) copper lanterns count as prettying, apparently.

More flowers.

Yet more flowers.

Bill and Ben, Japanese style.

Even more flowers.

A tall building.  I've no idea why this one building was so tall, there really were no other buildings of the same size anywhere near this area.  With all the flower shops and parks, I've got to assume this area has a lot of money floating around.

People don't like their pictures being taken, but they don't mind their dogs being shot.

One of the dancers from the original YMCA group.

Like a bicycle stand, but for mopeds.

I bought a few things from this shop.  It seemed to be a local craft shop, with products made by the local knitting circle that I stumbled across.

I had to shoot at 24mm because the shop was tiny.  Not the most flattering angle, but I couldn't fit any other way.

This is a fairly typical sight regardless of where you are in Japan.  They love neon and flashing lights.  The question has to be, if everyone has showy signs with lights and music, how does anyone get an advantage from putting on such displays?

I wondered whether this extremely interesting arch was man-made or a happy accident.

You can just about see the house on the left has a green roof.  That's actually grass, and any near horizontal surfaces are covered in grass and plants.

On the way to look at the Ghibli museum (I didn't have enough time to go inside, just had a look around) you pass through a park.  The park emanates the kind of whimsy feel you expect from the movies; it's a good fit.

This is the exterior of the museum, at closing time.

Another dog.  Like I said, no one likes having their pictures taken, but everyone loves their dogs being photographed.

There were a couple of old fashioned buildings hidden inside the park.  This was one of them.  It was quite late by the time I'd made it to the park, so everything is a bit dark and blurry.  Whoops.

I poked my head over the gate to take this, nearly impaling myself in the process.  They had barbed wire wrapped around the gate which I felt was somewhat approaching overkill, especially considering this looks like a religious building.

This is one of the lakes in the park.  Again, it's quite dark but there's nothing that can be done about that considering the lateness of the hour.

A bridge leading to another shrine.  Pretty self-explanatory really.

Guess what this is a picture of.

This guy was taking pictures of people as they passed over the bridge, with his giant camera.  I managed to take his picture before he could take mine.  Score one for the novice.

This grilled chicken restaurant is immensely popular, and according to the local shopkeepers is packed every single night.  That queue is heading downstairs, then upstairs, then downstairs into the restaurant, or up for takeaway.  Mental.

The perfect example of an 'almost,' picture.  The only one I managed to take of this dog that was in focus, and I missed the head.

This shop was dedicated to all things English.  I've no idea why.  Who would want to run a shop like that?

They love cute things, even if they're borderline terrifying like this guy.

He's the brother of the YMCA guy from before, but I couldn't manage to get him dancing.

The streets around the next station (I walked from one to the other by accident, I was just wandering) are extremely busy.  The people have an ability to part when a bus is bearing down on them, even if it's coming up from behind.  They don't need to look, and the buses are actually damn quiet.  The same thing for cars and bicycles.  This leads me to the conclusion that they must be ninja.

There aren't many estate agents that employ such pictures to sell their houses.  It's relatively unique, if somewhat confusing.

Yet another flower shop.

So I stayed in a capsule hotel, which is basically a coffin with a curtain.  Mine also had a computer, but it was too dusty/old to do anything without sounding like Concorde was landing next door.

The coffins double up.  One up, one down.

My shoes were horrifically smelly, needless to say they lived outside.

There weren't many people at the trial, but the ones I met were pretty nice.  By met I actually mean talk to, because the atmosphere was pretty standoffish.

There were three foreigners, one aussie, me, and this guy, a Fijian.  Pretty handy as you might expect from a Fijian.

The Toshiba factory complex is massive, and has one huge free standing tower right in the middle of it.  No one could figure out the purpose of it, I'm pretty sure everyone agreed it was phallic.

I don't know why the two guys in the middle were doing the haka.  No idea.

All that haka made them sleepy.

There were a few caged kittens on the way back to the station.  I don't know whether they were being exploited for charitable reasons, but the locals couldn't get enough.

The long walk back home.

The train racing a car, on the way back home.

Red lights mean walk, right?

A random bar on the way back home.

And that's it.  Next time I head out into the wild I'll take some more pictures, but for the last three days I've been exceptionally lazy (I've not been to the gym once!) because the buildup to this particular weekend was quite hectic.  Recovery time.