Basketball Club

Well it has been an eventful last few days in a rather uneventful kind of way. On Friday morning i had a change of heart against Kendo. I know it seemed like a great idea to embrace the culture, do something new but seeing the Kendo when i went swimming with my family really put me off, yes, i am afraid of being whacked with a stick. The uniforms seemed so heavy and it really just wasn`t taking my fancy at all. I thought i had better get in quick and say so because i don`t want to miss an opportunity and end up doing something i don`t want to do, therefore, i wrote down to join the basketball club. Perhaps a rash decision as i don`t particularly like basketball all that much but i need to live with my decisions and this is taking it to the extreme. So on Friday after school, i started basketball. Here is Mel thinking, `Oh how sweet to have cute little clubs that everyone joins to have fun together, this is so cute i am going to have lots of fun in my club out on the court. Playing scrap matches and all will be good fun.`

I WAS SO WRONG! Club is perhaps the most serious thing i have ever got myself into! We have a change room and a club room with shrines and white boards covered in statistics and uniform racks and you name it, we have it. There are about five senpai in my club, then myself and three other year twos and then a whole heap of new first graders who i spend most of my time with because i am new and they are new, yeah. If you walk past a senpai, you have to walk bent over double like you have a stomach ache and same goes if you go near a teacher. We learnt all the ropes, like what to say when the senpai do certain things and we got out onto the court and we have this massive warm up training and special little chants and it is so so serious.

They are good. Very very good. Luckily two of the first graders are new to basketball aswell so we suffer together. We do our own little thing which is still hard enough. We train every day for two hours after school, so from 4.30 until 6.30 and on the weekends we get to the courts which are at school at 7.15am and we start training officially at 9am but we have to set up and lay out things for the senpai and clean up the courts and all crazy formal things like that. So yes, start at 9am and no joke, we don`t stop until 1pm. We did get a three minute break but we weren`t allowed to sit down during it.

I am sore, yes, actually very sore. But i need to pull through with this, its a challenge and i just need to take each day at a time. There is no one to prove anything to except to prove to myself that i can make it through. There is no pressure on me to get good or win or look good because when it is all over, that i quite irrelevant and extra pressure such as that is unneccessary, i came to Japan for Japan, not to be on the world`s greatest basketball team, that was just an added extra.

Right now i am taking advantage of free time which is quite nice. My family life is going great, they are all so lovely and talking in Japanese around the house is actually getting good, i can hold good conversations now, about things regarding home life of course! Also, my time-table is being changed so it isn`t so boring. We had a little altercation with school, i have been sitting through lessons and not understanding a word of what is being said and i got pushed a bit too far by one of the teachers but because of it i got to speak to Yumi Sensei and now we are going to take out some of the lecture style lessons and fill them with art, traditional Japanese calligraphy and P.E which should be great fun.

Well, i will post again if i survive this week`s basketball training, i think i heard something about a day off soon! But of course, that could just be my imagination talking...

Thankyou for your comments, again, i absolutely love reading them and in two weeks time i will post pictures!