Daily Life 6: Baseball gloves


As I said in this other blog post, "We will write about these topics in the coming days."



Looking out our window in Kyoto
As we’ve been finding out, they have 2 main sports that they play here in Japan – soccer and baseball.  At the Kyoto Gosho (Emperial Palace ground by our house), I often see soccer teams and baseball teams doing jogging practice there, running around the walls surrounding the emperor’s grounds.  They have 3 baseball fields inside the Kyoto Gosho grounds, and they are always filled with people playing or practicing baseball.  Even early in the morning at 8am when I go jogging, there are people on the baseball turf.  They are crazy about it here.

So, Ben and I decided that we wanted to get into it too, and decided to find ourselves some gloves.  
Inside the Gosho grounds
All the stores here around Kyoto are small privately owned shops with one owner and maybe a couple of staff.  These stores are smaller than the average one bedroom apartment.  It’s also very common that stores are so small they don’t even hire any staff. The owner is the only one who works there.  It was one such sports store that I stopped in at to look for a used baseball glove.  The manager unfortunately didn’t have any used gloves in the store, but he went up the stairs in the back of the shop, (probably to where his private home was on the second floor) and came back with one very old glove that looked like it hadn’t been used in 20 years.  He said it was his own glove, and he gave it to me.  

One thing I’ve really come to respect about the Japanese people is their generosity.  They are always giving gifts and going way out of their way for other people.  It's like these kinds of acts of service are just ingrained in their culture. 
Riding bicycles in the Gosho
with Kailey's parents

After some further searching around Kyoto on my bike, I found another small sports store of the same type.  The manager was the only one who worked there.  He was so pleased to sell me a really nice used leather glove for the equivalent of about $30 canadian and he gave us a ball for free.  That’s Japanese generosity again.  It became Ben’s glove. 


 We’ve been playing catch regularly now at the Kyoto Gosho grounds on one of the baseball pitches there.  I’m actually surprised at how much I love throwing the ball around.  We had one of Ben’s friends come out with us one day to play catch, and he was able to teach us a thing or two about how to throw.  


He had played baseball at a very high level for 9 years and he throws like a professional pitcher so it was pretty cool.  My throw improved by 10 times just that day!  
Riding bicycles in Gosho
If you want to learn how to throw the ball a great distance, or learn how to throw it hard and fast, it has very little to do with the power of your arm.  It has everything to do with the form of your body. 







Playing catch has now become one of our favourite pastimes. 
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Daily Life 5: Japanese Family over for Dinner<<<< Next: Daily Life 7:Bike Accident

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Completely Different Post: Japanese Restaurants display what?!
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Ben and Kailey lived in Japan not too long ago and also visit Kyoto every year.

Ben is developing a Japanese Practice site. It's current main functions are:
1. a Flash Card system that features a leveling system where you must answer correctly and "level up"to gain new cards, receive money and buy new decks - anime decks included!
2. Fill in the Blank system where you can choose to focus on particle practice or verb practice etc.
Japanese Practice Blog is here. Check out the Japanese Practice site here

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