Saturday was Green Day, a national holiday named for an old emperor’s love for nature. I spent it and Sunday playing ultimate on beautiful Awaji Island with Tako Ferry, a team of random foreigners out to have fun despite the overseriousness of their Japanese competition.
We lost both our games on Saturday by one point, that point having been scored in the last fifteen seconds of the game. We won our first game on Sunday, and lost to my old Kyoto University team in our fourth game, to end up in tenth place out of sixteen teams. Not bad for learning everyone’s names ten minutes before our first game.
What we lacked in athletic ability (I am convinced we only lost because we were out of shape, not because our frisbee skills were worse than the other teams), we made up in spirit. We cheered every team with enthusiastic renditions of their names, complete with dancing. Our warm down run included songs and army chants. We invited all the teams we played plus some to our beach barbeque. If there would have been a Spirit Award, we would have won it hands down.
The beach barbeque was a great success. We had the beach to ourselves and found a nice partially lit pavilion to roast our meat, fish, and veggies. The Purple Team (Ryukoku Daigaku) came out to join us in drinking, wading in the freezing water, and tossing around on the beach. It was great fun. And somehow, we managed to be in bed by 1am, giving us plenty of time to rest before our 9am game the next morning. Perfect.
This was my last ultimate tournament in Japan. It is sad, because as soon as I leave, there are three more tournaments that my team will go to. I would have loved to be able to play with Tako Ferry again, because they are all crazy fun people, but alas, it is not to be so. Good luck to them, and I’m off to stretch my poor legs.
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