Koshien!

Even from America, it's easy to see that baseball is HUGE in Japan. The past few years have seen Japanese players on MLB All-Star teams, as Rookie of the Year candidates, MVPs, World Series Champions and winners of the World Baseball Classic. In fact, when I ask my students "what is the national sport of Japan?" the first answer is invariably "baseball" (which is wrong... it's sumo wrestling).

Baseball was introduced to Japan in the late 1800s and their professional baseball league got its start in 1936. However, the brightest star in Japan's baseball universe is without question the National High School Summer Tournament--usually just referred to as "Koshien" (which is the name of the stadium where the final rounds are played in Osaka).

Koshien starts sometime in mid-June as more than 4,000 high schools across Japan enter single-elimination tournaments at the local level. Excitement for the tournament swells in late-July as each prefecture holds their championship series, sending the winner off to the national tournament in August. Japan has 43 prefectures, 1 metropolis (Tokyo), 2 urban centers (Kyoto and Osaka) and one 'circuit' (Hokkaido). Each of these 47 regions is permitted to send one team to Koshien--except Tokyo and Hokkaido, which are large enough to warrant 2 teams each. These 49 teams continue the single-elimination tournament over 15 days on the sacred grounds of Koshien Stadium. Enormous "cheer teams" travel with their local ballclub and engage in non-stop cheers and formations that are taken almost as seriously as the game itself. These cheer groups are highly organized, uniformed, rehearsed and armed with limitless energy and enthusiasm (which they need to stand for hours each day in the shade-less stadium). In addition to the stress of playing in a national tournament series, Koshien is located in one of Japan's southern regions where summer temperatures are usually in the mid-90s. At the end of each game, the teams bow to each other, sing their school songs and one group tearfully packs up for home... where they will immediately begin training for next year's tournament (sports are a 12 month/year commitment in Japan).

Koshien engages Japan like nothing else. People who are not regular fans of baseball (or any sport, for that matter) crowd around the office tv at lunchtime and track the tournament in the daily news. Everyone seems to know the tournament standing at all times and tracks their local team with amazing dedication.

...at this point you may have lost track of what's happening here, this is merely the high school baseball tournament. I can't imagine any other high school sport that captures the same number of passionate fans as Japan's Koshien tournament (even high school football in America doesn't dominate the attention of an entire nation). These high school ballplayers are on national television for several hours a day, replayed in the evening news and featured in the national newspapers. It's one of the largest professional baseball scouting events in Japan (for MLB scouts too) and for many of these students, their make-or-break chance to play professional baseball (Ichiro and Matsui both famously left their mark at the Koshien).

The big news is that a Kiryu high school will be the team representing my prefecture, Gunma-ken, and people are pretty excited about it. Although I don't know any of the players, one of my students from last year is on the cheer team and it's exciting to root for a hometown squad in an event like this.

If you can read Japanese, the Asahi newspaper provides running coverage of the tournament. Otherwise, I'll update after the tournament and let you know how Kiryu made out.

a year gone by

Today is the one year anniversary of my first full day in Kiryu, but I'm having a hard time articulating how I feel after a year of living in Japan. I'm experiencing that mixed sensation of "time has passed so quickly, but the beginning feels so long ago" which comes standard with any interesting phase in life... but I wish I had something more profound to say. Shouldn't I feel changed somehow? wizened?

The truth is that I feel mostly the same.
...my palette is more sensitive to sweets and I've encountered more types of seaweed and mushrooms than I could have imagined, but I still get a little bit too excited about colored markers/pens and stay up too late every night.

...my Seinfeld dvds still top my "most played" list and my homepage is still espn.com, but I have a handful of new stamps in my passport and 3500 pictures from my travels and school events.

...spending my first Thanksgiving and Christmas away from home made me feel like my childhood was over, but shouldering the tears of un-returned teenage crushes and joining 4-year olds crawling in the dirt to find bugs made me think that childhood is never over.

...at this time last year I was literally trying to find the summer festival, but this year I'm trying to sir up a fan base to come watch me participate in a festival activity.

I'm not sure where all of that paradoxical babble leaves me, but I've really enjoyed this past year and look forward to the next. My dad and brother will be coming to Japan next week, then I'll be coming home to L.I. at Christmas time. I'm excited to see family and friends (and to eat bagels and Antons)... to see the ocean.
So thanks for keeping up with me on this little adventure. I hope the year has treated you well and that you'll stick with me for round two.

In the past month...

...I finally got a membership at the video rental place and started to watch Japanese dvds on my new entertainment center--a new tv and questionable dvd player (my laptop won't play the region 2-type dvds found in Japan). Many Japanese video stores are organized into categories like "action," "drama," "new release," "television," "Audrey Hepburn," "Robert DeNiro," etc... any system that you could possibly imagine, but never alphabetic order. One shelf in the "comedy" section reads like this: Kindergarten Cop, Zoolander, Adaptation, Bringing Down the House, Twins and the Austin Powers series. Needless to say, I can never find what I'm looking for.

...my digital camera died. Sad. Plans are in motion to replace it sometime very soon.

...I signed my family and I up for the まゆ玉ころがし大会 (silk cocoon rolling contest) at Kiryu's summer festival on August 5th. We won't actually be rolling a silk cocoon. Instead, I've started to build a giant "cocoon" made from paper mache on a bamboo frame, 2 meters long and 1 meter in diameter. It's huge. Click on the Japanese link to see some pictures and get an idea about what we're getting into... should be interesting. We'll be wearing team tshirts and dazzling all of the people in Kiryu with our spectacular performance as foreigners in a festival event. Since you won't be able to watch us on local tv, I'll be sure to post a ton of pictures after the event.

...I said "see you soon" to one of my schools at the junior high and kindergarten levels (I'm not scheduled very often at the elementary school and my departure is below almost everyone's radar there). The teachers aren't amazing at keeping the students up to date with things like this, so many of my junior high students were caught off guard by my "sayonara speech" before the summer pep rally. I received a stack of unbelievably sweet letters and have gained a few e-mail buddies... it's so hard to leave the kids. Hopefully I'll be able to visit every now and then.

...we received the replies to our pen-pal letters and I learned that New York is famous for the following things: bagels, apples, New York City, beaches, garbage on the side of the road, welfare and taxes, and money. I also saw phrases like "he's a total hottie" for the first time in ten years. Whatever their content, the letters absolutely thrilled my students and they'll be writing back as part of their summer homework.
(some of these students specialize in looking disinterested when I take pictures, but it has nothing to do with their pen-pal letter excitement!)

...I've had to say goodbye to some really wonderful people, especially one headed back to Australia and one to Canada. My stay in Gunma won't really be the same without them around. I'll miss them so much.

To end on a happier note:
...they're just so cute!