It's currently 9:33pm on Sunday night. My voice is almost gone due to yelling and a mysterious cold that is going around. My apartment is quiet right now. I can hear a girl singing a song with a guitar somewhere in the vicinity of my apartment. I feel like crap right now, but I will get over it.
Today was the first basketball game of the Matsubara High School. I was quite excited to see a Japanese High School Basketball game. It's very different from the USA. For example, in the USA, High School teams travel to each other's school gym to play. However, in Japan... 12 teams participated in the day long tournament.
The set up was fairly simple. The limited space, and horrible building layout of the Japanese schools made it difficult to find a place to watch the game. Luckily, I was able to go to the "coaches" area. Actually, I don't know if it is really called the "coaches" area, but that's what I'll call it for the mean time. :)
The day started off by me waking up feeling like a piece of crap(sorry I couldn't think of a clever word). I met my co-worker (the basketball coach) at the train station by my apartment. He picked me up in his cool van. We drove to the high school which was about 1.5 hour drive. 1.5 hours, mainly due to the horrible road conditions and overall crappy layout of streets here. :) We arrived at the gym and I started to warm up with the kids. I was doing a passing drill and getting them pumped up for the game.
The game was excellent. At half-time Matsubara was up 52-20. Which was quite ridiculous. I didn't think that they would destroy the other team so bad. The other team made a small but uninspired come-back late in the 4Th quarter. They scored a lot of garbage time buckets, sooooooooo, they managed to make the score look close. I was quite impressed that we managed to pull of 90 points. YAY!
After the game we watched the following 3 games. My co-worker had to referee two games so I hung out with the students while he was busy.
So you are probably wondering why I titled this blog post "language is overrated"? Ok, you probably aren't wondering that, but just start wondering about it now ok! :)
Well, first off, when I started helping out the basketball club, I was hesitant. Mainly because I would have to commit so much of my own time to help. But that was obviously selfish of me to feel that way. Everyday, after the kids destroy me in basketball practice, I am happy. And they aren't my English student, I'm not teaching them how to say "hi, how are you". I'm not helping them learn how to pronounce the letter "A". Actually we can't even talk too much because my Japanese ability is garbage. But, I've learned these past few weeks that in fact, language is overrated. We don't even speak the same language, but together we were able to attain a goal! Sports is almost like a language. It can make you feel horrible, ecstatic, depressed and overjoyed. I love sports. My students are making my time in Japan absolutely worthwhile! I hope you can understand my logic here. Anyway, I gotta go since this post has officially gone on too long. I'll be back soon... enjoy the pics and video...comment please! :) take care
peace
vince
Today was the first basketball game of the Matsubara High School. I was quite excited to see a Japanese High School Basketball game. It's very different from the USA. For example, in the USA, High School teams travel to each other's school gym to play. However, in Japan... 12 teams participated in the day long tournament.
The set up was fairly simple. The limited space, and horrible building layout of the Japanese schools made it difficult to find a place to watch the game. Luckily, I was able to go to the "coaches" area. Actually, I don't know if it is really called the "coaches" area, but that's what I'll call it for the mean time. :)
The day started off by me waking up feeling like a piece of crap(sorry I couldn't think of a clever word). I met my co-worker (the basketball coach) at the train station by my apartment. He picked me up in his cool van. We drove to the high school which was about 1.5 hour drive. 1.5 hours, mainly due to the horrible road conditions and overall crappy layout of streets here. :) We arrived at the gym and I started to warm up with the kids. I was doing a passing drill and getting them pumped up for the game.
The game was excellent. At half-time Matsubara was up 52-20. Which was quite ridiculous. I didn't think that they would destroy the other team so bad. The other team made a small but uninspired come-back late in the 4Th quarter. They scored a lot of garbage time buckets, sooooooooo, they managed to make the score look close. I was quite impressed that we managed to pull of 90 points. YAY!
After the game we watched the following 3 games. My co-worker had to referee two games so I hung out with the students while he was busy.
So you are probably wondering why I titled this blog post "language is overrated"? Ok, you probably aren't wondering that, but just start wondering about it now ok! :)
Well, first off, when I started helping out the basketball club, I was hesitant. Mainly because I would have to commit so much of my own time to help. But that was obviously selfish of me to feel that way. Everyday, after the kids destroy me in basketball practice, I am happy. And they aren't my English student, I'm not teaching them how to say "hi, how are you". I'm not helping them learn how to pronounce the letter "A". Actually we can't even talk too much because my Japanese ability is garbage. But, I've learned these past few weeks that in fact, language is overrated. We don't even speak the same language, but together we were able to attain a goal! Sports is almost like a language. It can make you feel horrible, ecstatic, depressed and overjoyed. I love sports. My students are making my time in Japan absolutely worthwhile! I hope you can understand my logic here. Anyway, I gotta go since this post has officially gone on too long. I'll be back soon... enjoy the pics and video...comment please! :) take care
peace
vince
and you thought japan was technologically advanced
Matsubara High School pre-game stretch
tip-off (MHS is in the white jersey)
the literally "standing room only" crowd
to see other videos that i have posted, please click "menu" here on viddler! enjoy!!!
Hi Vincent,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your video of your students and your comments about them. I've told you before, you're a natural at teaching.
Hope you get better. Put some mentolato;)
xoxoxoxo
totally old skool! I loved the scoring "mechanism". hope you're not feeling like crap anymore.
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