Family Videos

I had an off day today and some youtube videos that I can relate to:

This describes my parents dieting....my dad used to do this with cookies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGWUswIQ020

this is my mom and dad on vacation in Hawaii at the Maui Invitation last year. They stayed an extra day without us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=469GeeqVumY

I have heat!!!!!

Shige our trainer just knocked on my door and came in to translate my air conditioning/heat unit. The only thing I understand on it is the temperature. It is a number that is in Celsius. I just push up on down on it to set the temperature and thought this was all I had to do. It got rather chilly this weekend here and I put the temperature up quite a bit, but it didn't seem to get warmer. I now know why, but this weekend I had to fill the bathtub with warm water and let the humid warm air circulate throughout my apartment to warm up. It worked quite well and worked as a humidifier, but it only worked for a short while.

I am excited that I now have heat as it is starting to get colder over here now. Of course getting colder the first of November is a lot better than how early it gets cold in South Bend and compared to South Bend - I doubt it will ever get cold like that here!!

My computer is broke

My computer is broke. I am borrowing my teammate Chris'. Things have been good here. We are currently number one in the league at 7-3. We leave tomorrow for Fukouka. It sounds funny and is an 8 hour bus trip away. Bus leaves at 7:45, so that will be exciting.

Speaking of exciting. Right now I am looking at Honeymoon spots (Hope has left this task to me with only a few paramaters. The paramaters are a lot easier than her dream engagement so I should be alright) While I am checking out honeymoon spots, I am talking to Hope on skype as she gets ready for work. We talk every morning as she gets ready for work. It is always night for me 14 hours difference now with the time change. So I talk to her from 8 to 10 my time.

She has a lot of things to do in the mornings. It's like watching a behind the scenes episode of an American Businesswoman as she has a fantastic job at Bayer Healthcare in South Bend. (Yes, she turns off the camera for all the parts rated more than PG....guess I'll hafta wait until I'm married for that version) Many mornings she gets up even earlier and does P-90x!! She works really hard at everything she does and I really admire her for that. I help her in the mornings with her makeup and everything (haha...yeah right!!).

I will get a computer soon. Hope is coming out on November 21 and I am pumped!!! It will be our first Thanksgiving together and it just so happens to be in Japan. We are going to try and cook a Thanksgiving meal with what we've got here. It will be tough with a toaster oven, a foreman and two burners on a grill, but I think we can do it. I will let you know how it goes. I am really excited to see her though as it has been 2 months since we have seen each other, even if we see each other on Skype every day and it is tough to be away from someone you love like that for that long. I definitely look forward to her coming out!!! She is staying for about 5 days and it will be quick, but fantastic. We will probably celebrate Christmas in there as well.

So right now I am talking to Hope on Skype, researching Honeymoon spots (it's a surprise and I will be the only one that knows until I tell Hope at Brunch the day after the wedding...so don't ask....but advice is welcome!!), and watching Barnyard (such a great movie...one of Cody and I's favorites!!!) What a life I live...haha.

Will update soon. We were 1-1 this weekend. Here are some pictures.

http://topics.shiga-saku.net/

First Road Trip

We had a two game preseason road trip. We started out on Monday morning and got onto our team bus that is painted out and decal ed so that anyone within a one mile radius knows the Shiga Lakestars are on that bus! It's pretty sweet. It's a nice charter bus and good thing because we spent a lot of time on it.

Evidently it is Silver week here which is a vacation week for all of Japan. They have National holidays a lot here because otherwise people will not take days off. They work incredibly hard here. The front office of our team works incredibly hard and almost lives there. Our promotional manager Buchi had actually been at the office 5 days straight before we had our press conference last week.

Anyway, everyone took vacation. I mean everyone. Our 4 hour bus ride took us about 5 and a half. We got to the gym 45 minutes before the game started. We played like we had just gotten off the bus 45 minutes before. We didn't hit many outside shots and they hit all of theirs. We lost by about 15. Then we had what was supposed to be about a 4 hour bus ride to the hotel for the night. It was about a 5 hour ride. We got into the hotel at about 12:30.

It was a really nice hotel. It had a big bed, but not much else to the room. Then, it had a toilet that looked like the air force one of toilet. You could warm the seat and use the spray that would clean you instead of wiping. That had different pressure settings and everything for it. I opted out of all of them and tried to guess left or right flush for #1 of #2. So I went to sleep that night and then had to get up at 8:30 for breakfast before shootaround.

Then after shootaround we came back to the hotel for a little while before heading to the game. The game didn't go real well. I didn't play well, but ended up with 17 points. We lost by about 20. We are still in preseason form for sure and have a lot of things that we need to work on, but that is what the preseason is for. Then after the game we supposedly had a 6 hour bus ride. The ride ended up being much longer than that. I'm not sure how long but I'm going to guess about 9. It was a long time. I read an entire book on the way up on the bus trip and on the way back watched Braveheart and the Bourne Supremacy so I was very productive just in different ways.

Thanks to everyone for the emails and messages on facebook!!! It has been so good to keep in touch with you and I appreciate it so much!!

Who Wants to be a Millionaire In Japanese

So I've been busy with practice and everything here, but I just wanted to write a quick story. We had our first practice game against KCC - the best team in Korea and lost by about 15. They are very good. Their center Ha played for the Trailblazers for quite a while - he is 7"3. He dunked once and he lowered the goal in our gym. (Our gym that we have to tape down the lines to be able to play in it. I always go around and look for where the shortest spot of the 3 point line is. It's like finidng the dead spots on your home court)

We play them again on Thursday. They are good, but we should be able to do better. So my main reason for writing tonight. As I write I am talking to Hope as she gets ready for work and watching Who wants to be a millionaire in Japanese. It is hilarious. I thought it was slum dog millionaire the first time I saw it. Then I realized that the answers were in Japanese and it wasn't. (I was kind of upset - thats a great movie!!)

Here is the highlight of this episode so far. The guy went and took a 50/50. The crowd cheered. I have no idea why. Then he said one thing in English - he said final answer. The Japanese Regis Philbin took a 500,000 yen check ($5,000) and ripped it up very dramatically. I waited and waited to see this guy's crushed reaction - and then...it went to commercial. America has influenced everywhere!!!! Then they came back and he had gotten it right. All that drama for a correct answer - some Japanese millionaire torture for you there.

Preseason Training Camp

Our training camp is somewhere about an hour away from where we stay. We are staying at a bed and breakfast that literally looks like just another house along an offroad, but it is nice. We had weightlifting this morning for about 2 hours because we had orientation with our strength coach for a long time. The weightlifting isn't really anything too strange. It is not as tough as the St. Vincent's workouts I was doing with Greg all summer, but they're good enough. Then we had lunch.

Today at lunch I decided that if I eat outside of my apartment the rest of the time I am here I am going to use chopsticks. It has been pretty interesting so far. I am not that good. Not good at all. All the Japanese players laugh at me when I try to pick up something like a piece of lettuce and right as I am about to eat it it drops to my plate again. Hunger is the best motivation for learning though. I am nearly always hungry and so it motivates me to learn quicker how to use chopsticks. For someone that wanted to go on a diet but didn't want to stop eating. Buy them chopsticks. Take away everything else and they will take a long time to eat or just get frustrated and stop eating. I will get better at it.

Then we hung out in our little bed and breakfast here. I am rooming with Bobby Nash and he speaks good Japanese because his mom used to so it is interesting when he actually know how to talk with people here. After we went to practice.

Today's practice was just over 2 hours. I finally made it all the way through practice. My ankle hurt like crazy and I am still not at full speed, but I finally made it all the way through. The trainer here is really good and has been giving me ultrasound, stem and massage between every workout. He also has me doing about an hour of rehab everyday to get the strangth back in my calf and ankle.

Tonight's dinner was really good. We had fish, chicken, salad, meatballs, rice (of course), green beans with sesame, lots of different fruit (oranges were the only thing I knew but I ate all the different kinds), and miso soup. After dinner I had treatment again.

Now I am in the room with Bobby and there is some Japanese game show on. It is not like you would think of a Japanese game show (not wipeout). Here is my guess at what it is - except its in Japanese so I don't know for sure. It is these kids that are in asked academic bowl type format. It is a tournament to get there and it is so serious. The losers cry. The winners cry from being happy. The highlights of the kids as they get introduced are of them putting library books away and studying in school. It is unreal. I have no idea what is going on, but I can't turn away.

Well, I'm going to watch one more episode of this Japanese game show and go to sleep. Hope all of you have a great Friday. It's been great for me as I am finishing Friday here.