Big in Japan

Japan is incredible! I had a great flight over, as I met up with some of the South Africans in Dubai and we flew over together. We got over the 7hr time difference pretty quickly since we arrived at the hotel at 8pm and hadn’t slept much in the last 24hrs. We took about 3hrs to navigate ourselves from the airport to our hotel using the Japanese metro and trains. The people were all very friendly, smiley and happy to help us, even if they could not speak English at all. The Japanese kids giggle and clap when you say hello to them, I think they think English is pretty cool!? We have a noodle bar across the road from our hotel, so that is where I had my first bowl of noodles with pork for 300yen (~R30) for dinner. The next day we planned a little trip to Nara, an ancient city just outside Osaka, with temples, shrines and ruins.

We had a “lunch box” to eat, which is like a plate with dividers and has little servings of different meals inside them – mine had rice, chicken, pasta, salad and soup. You also get served jugs of water or green tea throughout your meal and always get topped up if you finish your glass. We walked through this really cool forest, garden type area with lots of stairs and lanterns on the side leading to the temples. There were deer everywhere and always very keen on trying to get food from you. They’re considered to be quite sacred in their culture, as they apparently protect the temples and have been around for a long time (according to Lonely Planet Guidebook). The temples are just like in the films and really fascinating, with written prayers everywhere and lots of water fountains to drink from. I paid 500yen (~R50) to go into one of the biggest temples - to see a huuuuge statue of a Buddha. You could light incense and buy some wooden planks to write prayers on them and leave them at the base of the Buddha if you wanted. It randomly started pouring with rain on our walk home, so we had to take shelter under a roof and then continue our way in drizzle. I also got bitten by a leach for the first time and freaked everyone out a bit. Our hotel had both South African teams in them and I stayed in a room with 7 people, 1 shower, 1 toilet, 1 table, 1 fridge and 1 stove. We named ourselves “the family” since we had an older couple who pretty much sorted our meals for the first two days and greeted us with rooibos tea first thing in the morning, while the rest of us just smiled and were grateful. 

My bed, along with two others, was a futon on the floor – which was actually suuuuuper comfortable. The humidity and crazy hot temperatures are not felt in the rooms or trains etc since Japan is pretty jacked up with aircon. We also had slippers at the entrance since in Japanese culture, you’re meant to take off your shoes at the door and then put on the slippers for the house.

Saturday was our scheduled practise day at the fields, which took us an hour to get to, with 2trains and 1bus, and 430yen later. The fields were in amazing condition, with perfect grass and astro to play on. The opening ceremony was a bit later and we blew our vuvuzelas as we watched drums being played and Japanese women dance for us. 

We got some pretty cool tournament bags which had a free Frisbee in each and a cool Japanese fan thing. Sunday we got up quite early to go support the South African open team (men’s team) in their first game against Singapore, which they won 17-10. We played our first game against Holland and lost 17-7. That’s pretty much how the rest of the week went, getting up really early and only returning home at dinner time, while either playing our own games, supporting the open team or watching amazing games between countries like USA, Canada, Japan etc. We either had one or two games a day and would have to warm-up and play in really hot and humid conditions, often leaving us completely drenched in sweat before we even started playing. I got burnt quite a lot since the sweat would just rub off the suncream during our game, and so I landed up with a red forehead and nose, and a sock tan on my legs.  Trying to buy packed lunch for ourselves for the field proved to be quite expensive...R16 for 5slices of bread, R30 for 4bananas, R13 for one large apple...And I thought Europe was expensive! Most evenings we spent just eating dinner and falling asleep at around 10 or 11pm before we had to be awake again around 6am the next morning. One evening we had team drinks at a bar and another evening we had the Frisbee party which was very sweaty, but a lot of fun since we could finally all wind down and have fun. There was an official “trading jerseys” evening where you could go and trade your extra kit with other countries. I traded my SA shorts and 2shirts for a Swiss and Canadian shirt, with Singapore shorts = very happy! Over the course of the tournament, we played USA, Hong Kong, France, Philippines, Japan, Russia, Finland, China and Columbia. Some were actually quite close but the speed and fitness of most of these teams was insane. I managed to score a goal for our team in the Japan and China game, as well as assist two goals in the Finland and Columbia game. I also got voted MVP female for our China game, in which I then won Baijiu, a Chinese liquor which was 56% alcoholic...I took one sip and thought I was going blind! On the finals day, our team won the Spirit award for having the best spirit throughout the tournament, when different teams rated us at the end of each game. 

Was pretty epic to stand up there and get awarded this after losing every game, yet still being positive and fighting hard, and walking away with an AMAZING WORLDS MEDAL to conclude our worlds experience! :)