Baseball and Taiko

Hello again!

Well what an exciting weekend this has been! Thursday (yes my weekend starts thursday!) was our last day of class (technically - one more class on thursday this week but that's it) and so we went of to Sachi's for a good ole drink. A fellow student from Leiden is in Japan for a month or 2, and he's staying at Sachi's so he was there too! Friday was mostly spent working on my paper. I'm writing a paper about the 100 yen shop haha, so academic. Anyway, got a good start on that, ready to go see baseball on saturday.


About 15 minutes walk from my house is a big baseball stadium, and this weekend there were the quarter and semi finals of Nagasaki prefecture high school baseball. Now doesn't that sound exciting? Well it was. Highschool baseball is a big thing in Japan, it's even televised and everything, so don't take it lightly! I love baseball in general anyway, but it had been a really long time since I'd been to a game, and for 500 yen I got to see 2 games, not bad! It was a really cool experience, the highschool baseball games. On both sides of the stadium above the dug-outs it seemed like the whole school of that particular team had gatherd, wearing their uniforms and bringing along a range of instruments, ready to cheer on their school's team. One team even brought practically a whole orchestra! During the first game it was only Maarten and I (it started at 10 - try getting the others up on time on a saturday ;) ). It was a fairly good game and despite it being cloudy it was warm. For the second game a whole bunch of other people came to watch as well, but unfortunately it started to rain!

Maarten was the only one with an umbrella I was the lucky one sitting next to him hahaha. So after the game Maarten, Yuki and I went off for treat at the Gusto, and onwards to Nishi-machi to watch a movie, where I realised that despite the clouds and the rain AND the sunscreen, I was a little sunburnt!! My schoulders, left leg and my feet are a bit red and sore. Unbelievable. Anyway, we started watching a movie at which point I fell asleep so we called it quits haha. I had to get to bed in order to be fit for sunday: taiko day!


So sunday was taiko day! We had a performance at an elementary school summer festival do, and it was to be Gerrie's last performance so it was special! We spent the whole day practicing and then headed to the school, where I found out it was going to be outside, in the sweltering heat! grr.. our outfit is black trousers, a black shirt and a special vest thing so it wasn't like our clothing was airy! haha. Anyway, the performance went really really well, it was undescribably fun! (is that even a word? anyway...) My friend Maarten came, my tutor Erika, Gerrie's tutor, our teacher Nagai-sensei and another person from the international student center, they all came to watch, sitting in the front row haha.

Anyway, like I said, it went really well, you can all be proud ;) We left soon after for our bye bye party. It was at a local izakaya, which was a really cool place might I say. The decoration was very unique, and the food was great. I had another go at some sashimi (don't get jealous you know who you are!) and I had a Kamimaze drink (vodka, shouchuu and something lemon I think). I just had to have a try, with a name like that. It didn't affect me much, and it wasn't all that nice, but I had it anyway! We also got a few more presents, a nice plaque thingy that everyone had written a message on, a head wrap thingy for taiko and a dvd with some performances, and then came the goodbye. Gerrie was a bit emotional, as were some of the taiko people. I'm still going to see them so I kind of held my distance, but I just know it's going to be the same for me in a few weeks time. Time is running out, and I'm starting to feel it, but until then, I'm going to go off to have some more fun! hahahahaha.



see ya!

Jenn