Nagano Soccer Tourney

This past weekend I went down to Nagano (site of the 1998 Winter Olympics) to play in the ALT Eastern Japan Soccer Tournament. There weren't enough girls to make an all-Gunma team, so we combined with the neighboring prefecture, Ibaraki, to form "Gunmaraki." We had never practiced together as a team, so we spent most of Saturday getting to know each other...and losing all of our games. That night there was a big party and I got to meet even more JETs from around Japan. We played much better on Sunday, winning our first game and eventually getting knocked out of the tournament on penalty kicks.

It was a great weekend and a beautiful area of Japan.. hopefully I'll be able to get back down there over the winter for some skiing.

a view of the mountains from up near the boys' pitch.. I accidentally deleted the pictures I took of the girls' pitch, so try to imagine a few half-sized fields at the bottom of the super-G
(the Nagano area is extremely mountainous, so instead of weaving the highways around the mountains, there are a series of tunnels that burrow straight through... one of them is more than 4K long!)
the lodge where the Gunma teams stayed.. I took this picture from the edge of the girls' pitch, right behind the hotelthe Gunmaraki girls soccer team!
the Gunma boys... they were awesome! after a close final, they came in 2nd in the East and will play in the Saitama World Cup Stadium during the All-Japan Tournament in January!