Well, two down and two to go. We are still on the long road to Top League promotion, by beating Chugoku Electric 80-5 in Hiroshima on Saturday.

The game was scrappy, not helped by the steady and increasingly heavy rain. We started well and never really let CE in with a chance of winning the game, using patient buildup to put on three quick tries. The first especially was well-worked, we got the ball for the opening kickoff and CE didn’t touch it again until after we crossed their try line four minutes later. However we slackened off after about 25 minutes and let in a soft try as the game ambled to halftime.

After half time we put on a few more tries but then let our discipline crumble, not helped by some ludicrous refereeing. As we attacked the CE line, rucking it up until we were about five metres out, the ref penalised and sin-binned our veteran lock for rough play… the guy concerned is the least likely player to get sinbinned for rough play, and it wasn’t for a punch, rather for throwing an opposition player out of the way. This is BTW par for the course when he’s hanging around the wrong wide of the ruck. In any case, the ref’s heavy-handedness didn’t help matters, as there was another dust-up a few minutes later, and the rest of the game turned into a wet, cold mess.

The good news was that the game was in Hiroshima, one of the more pleasant places to go for an away trip… once you get there. The problem is that while Hiroshima Airport is only an hour and 15 minutes from Tokyo by plane, the airport is an hour from town. It makes Narita Airport look handily located (anyone who has the misfortune of flying into or out of Narita will know exactly what that means!) and adds an unnecessary time lag to travel. Anyone who has suffered being on a plane with me knows how much I hate airports… the trip back especially was very annoying, as  our plane was delayed by 15 minutes due to snow, which meant more time aimlessly waiting around an airport (my idea of transport hell). Though having said that, the snowstorm itself was great, very pretty. I took a couple of pics with my phone, none of which  were very good, but this pics of a car outside the terminal building gives you an idea.

So, Hiroshima. The team management picked the right hotel for this trip, the Tokyu Inn Hiroshima, which apart from having a great food spread is right near the city’s main tourist attraction, the Peace Park and A-Bomb dome. Not much shuts up loudmouth rugby players, but a walk around the dome, lit up at night and eerily stark against a steel-grey sky, does. Very imposing and moving. Oh, and the hotel us also right by the main shopping street in town, the covered arcade, which has scored of great Hiroshima yaki restaurants. The foreign players and staff had yet to experience the Hiroshima style, so we hit the four-storey Hiroshima yaki restaurant tower, hard. About half an hour after we confidently walked in, we were stuffed to the gunwhales, and walked home much slower than we walked there. The seafood maniacs ripped into the local oysters, the meat lovers the beef and pork versions, and me the negi (spring onion) special. Although my darling hates negi, I was safe to eat lots of it last night J With luck the pics I took will show up… and would you believe there was a pic of one of our players on the wall of the restaurant, from the last time we played in Hiroshima several years ago? Amazing coincidence.

So, tummies full and with the right result on board, we come home… big game next week against World, the first of the two hard games left to get promoted. Will let you know how it goes…

 I don't much talk about food on my blog, but seeing as the Japanese are such gourmets (yes, really) I guess I had to eventually. Just thought I'd lob in some pics and blurb about two great, although not very healthy, feeds I've had lately...

This is gold number one, the "Wasabeef" potato chips. I don't usually eat potato chips, but as many of you know, I do like a bit of a spicy treat. Japanese snack food tends not to be very hot, but there has been a boom in spicy stuff lately, including hotter spins on old favourites such as this one. Suffice to say it is a tasty combination of wasabi and beef (hence the daggy name) amped up to the level (five times hotter than normal, hence the big 5 on the bag) it should always have been (IMHO).  If you're in the land of the rising sun, make sure you get some of these next time you're at a combini :)



Part two of this post is another Japanese culinary classic, ramen. Yes, while ramen may have originally been from China, the Japanese have made ramen their own, every region has its own variety and spin on the basic idea of thin wheat noodles. On Saturday a mate and I chowed down on some Kumamoto (on the southern island of Kyushu) style ramen in a ramen bar in Shinjuku. Here are the glorious pics as of 7.53 PM on Saturday 15 December, as two cold and hungry guys prepare to unleash on an unsuspecting bowl of ramen

This is R's, perhaps the classic ramen, with the simple one-two-three of sliced pork, bamboo shoots and spring onions. I went for the charged version:

Note the spicy sauce, a close relative of Korean gomchujan I believe (perhaps with good reason. it's not far from Kumamoto to Korea, a quick drive up the highway and then an hour on the ferry to Pusan), bamboo and crispy cabbage.  Mmmmmm.

Next photo as of 7.59 PM on Saturday 15 December:



Damn! I missed half a mouthful of the spicy sauce! Must have been my mouth burning that did it ;)

Keep well and eat well all!

G

just a quick work word... as in, about the team...

the news is not good. While we beat previously unbeaten NTT last weekend, we had to thump them and then hope that others results went our way to have any chance of coming first in the league and getting the easy route to promotion. Unfortunately the boys made hard work of beating NTT, almost losing it when NTT went ahead with 11 minutes to go and then again three minutes into injury time. But for once the ref played the injury time he said he would, six minutes, and we surged down the field, got the penalty and with it the win.

So it looks like we're going the hard road to promotion, having to win four tough games in a row. The games are stretched out from 6th January to the beginning of March, so the team staff and players get no Christmas/New Year holiday and if we go all the way, no off-season either. But such is life in the fast lane, and I'll keep you all posted...

mmmkay, I've found something to write about other than how the team is doing (not good enough) and the weather (now very bloody cold). Seems I'm to go under the knife, as they say...

however rest assured that it is not serious. I have what is called a pilonidal cyst, or a hair granuloma (the Japanese is the same so I can't tell for sure. For you anoraks out there, the Japanese word for it is a 毛巣洞　もうそうどう. none of my co-workers had heard of one before). Basically it is a large (2cm long by nearly 1 cm wide) lump on my backside that has been there for goodness-knows how long because I didn't notice it for ages. It is almost certainly just a pocket of hair and other gunk that has built up under the skin, about halfway between the bone and the outer skin, and could quite safely be left well alone. Then again, if it got bigger it could cause more problems, and as it seems to almost reach to the tailbone, now is a good time to have it taken out.

Now, in the sense of Jan 22nd, when the op is scheduled for. In true Japanese style, what is a relatively simple op (cut slot, take out gunk bag, sew it up) means a week in hospital :( ostensibly this is because of the risk of the wound re-opening when I sit down or stand up - vaguely convincing - but I'd rather be getting out sooner... my usual jiggliness and inability to sit still (anyone who has sat next to me in a uni lecture/movie/on a train will attest to this) will probably stress the wound anyway. Either that or I'll turn lumpy and spend the week asleep ;)

But the fun part (well, almost...) of it is the scans I've had so far. In rough chronological order, I've had

MRI
ultrasound
buttocks X-ray
chest X-ray
lung tests (peak flow meter etc)
blood tests (six vials of blood! not fun)
urine tests

Just hurry up and cut me open already!!!

The good news is that my darling C has been looking after me very well, coming to the hospitals with me every time and helping out with everything. I'm so lucky, I don't know what I'd do without her support :)

FInally, the other good news is that this is light on the pocket...  all of this has cost a total of (including three consultations) about 10 000 yen, or $NZ115. Props to the Japanese national health insurance for subsidising this (although having said that I have shelled 145 000 yen in premiums this year). Not bad going for the test cost I reckon... now I just need to get myself a Sayama Clinic hospital point card, and I'll be able to get a free flu shot next winter :D

Keep well all!!!

It's been an up and down couple of weeks on the rugby front. Apart from NZ bombing out of the World Cup AGAIN (did we get done over by the ref? did we make poor decisions close to the French line late in the game? did injuries nobble our backline? yes to all the above, but it's time to get over it anyway) the team here suffered a shock loss last weekend, 3-20 to Yokogawa Electric... YE has never been known as a strong team, but on the day they had too much guts for us, our boys folded after our forward leader limped off in the first minute. Gutting. The aim this year was to win every game in the league to speed us to promotion, but this is now in jeopardy... we have to hope that Yokogawa loses at some stage and cream every other team we play.

We took the first step to that goal yesterday, beating JAL 47-20 at home in Sayama. The margin should have been much wider, but poor decision making and errors at key times (perhaps there is a lesson for our boys in NZ's failure...) stopped us from scoring more tries. Still, we'll take the bonus point win and confidence boost. Although Yokogawa won easily yesterday, there was good news in promotion rivals Tokyo Gas going down to surprise packet Suntory Foods... things are back on track, we now have to hope that Yokogawa falls over soon... I'll keep you posted!