As I said in this other blog post, "We will write about these topics in the coming days."- visited our Canadian friends James and Audrey in their town,
- hosted a Japanese family for dinner,
- bought baseball gloves and started regularly playing catch
- Kailey played piano for a Japanese wedding
- went to "Jidai Matsuri" or Era Festival
- went to Kurama Fire Festival
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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
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.
Daily Life 5: Japanese Family over for Dinner<<<< Next: Daily Life 7:Bike Accident
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Similar Post: Daily Life 7: Bike Accident!
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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