Today I slept in nicely until around 8:30, and then got up to get cleaned up and make breakfast. Today I had no real plans other than watching my high school’s basketball team play at the nearby Akashi Nishi school. Before I left for the game I was doing laundry, cleaning the house, and listening to Lenny Kravitz. Somebody knocked on the door, and I figured it was Jane from upstairs coming by to say hello.
Instead it was a wiry Caucasian guy with glasses. He said hello and asked me where Jane lived – except he asked me in Japanese. I smiled and told him that she lived upstairs, in English. He kind of figured out that I was indeed a foreigner like him, and so we chatted for a bit. He had just gotten the apartment number wrong. Later he came back down because Jane wasn’t there. He seemed a little nervous, but a nice enough guy.
I went over to catch the basketball game just before lunchtime. I’d never been to Akashi Nishi high school before, but the layout is generally the same as any other Japanese high school and I had no trouble finding the gymnasium. I stuck my head in one of the doors, but I couldn’t I.D. my team among all the teams present. I started to walk around the building when the two captains called my name and came running.
They were surprised to see me – and pretty excited, too. We went inside and they showed me where the best seats were. I went up there along with the third string basketball team members, and we cheered the team on to victory.
The other team didn’t stand a chance. We kept our first stringers in for three periods, but by then they had a forty point lead, so they put in the second string guys. I was impressed with how physical our team was. They outmuscled the other guys and had no problem getting under the basket for rebounds. A couple of times their players would end up on the floor. Probably the other school is a bit more academic, though. They probably speak great English.
After a thorough victory I congratulated the team and went home to have some lunch and do some studying. Around six o’clock I heard from Kuniko – she invited me to head over in the evening to spend some time this weekend. I packed up a few things, and headed her way. I stopped on the way at Ito Yokado and got her a package of her favorite cookies from Australia – Tim Tams. An hour later I was walking through the station at Shin-Osaka.
As I walked through the station a group of men in black suits came out of the bullet train section and hurried across the terminal to get in a limo. They moved so fast that I figure it was somebody important. The only guy I would recognize is the prime minister, and it wasn’t him. I tend to see a lot of famous people (famous in Japan, that is) in Shin-Osaka station.
It was good to see Kuniko again. She was exhausted from working six long days in a row, so we took it easy and watched some TV, caught up on each other’s week, and went to bed early.
