Biei, Hokkaido - Oct. 6, 2013

More from Hakodate, May 2012

Brothers at scenic spots around Hokkaido, about 2005

These first two were taken by my husband, near Niseko somewhere:

Five-colored Lake Onetto:

At Japan's highest mountain pass:

Photos? - Hakodate, May 2012

I'm thinking of dusting off this blog and posting some photos now and then.  Testing...
These are from Hakodate, in May 2012.

Hakodate's varied past -- Christian church and Buddhist temple.

Spring flowers in the temple grounds.

Garden Flowers and Fruits 2010

I am making preparations to start covering more topics from my hobby, family history! In the meantime, here is another project I've been working on...

Nearly all the flowers and other plants of note that appeared in our garden during the previous year, in a slide show:

http://s1128.photobucket.com/albums/m498/KDixit/Garden%20flowers%20and%20fruits%202010/?albumview=slideshow

The slide show is arranged from spring (April, here in Hokkaido) to the beginning of winter (December). [UPDATE: it is arranged in alphabetical order, for some reason.  I will try to fix it.]  I don't know many flower names, and enjoyed looking them up for the slide show! Please comment if you know any flower names that I missed - I would like to learn more :)

Most of them were planted by our landlords, and appear year after year!! A few are wild, and I planted the annual vegetable plants (potato, tomato, green chili). Also, a few things did not get photographed (by mistake), like asparagus and edamame (beans), and in other cases the photo quality was too poor (a few flowers, but not major ones). Our garden does get very overgrown each summer, since I don't have time to weed much, but anyway, what work I do manage to do is very enjoyable and educational (for me as well as our children, though the education for them comes mainly at the dinner table, as they don't like to help with gardening)!!

Nearly 5 years on...

Was thinking about this old post today:

http://twentyyrs2.blogspot.com/2006/08/komadai.html

That was the legendary face-off in Koushien between two high school pitchers, Yuuki Saito and Masahiro Tanaka. 12th graders in high school at the time, Tanaka (Maa-kun) went straight to the pros, and Saito (though he could easily have gone pro then) decided to go on to college baseball at Waseda Univ.

Now, nearly 5 years later...

Maa-kun has been (and still is) an extremely popular and successful young pitcher for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. We still love him up here in Hokkaido, and Fighters fans enjoy seeing him as the opposing pitcher when the Fighters play the Eagles.

Yuuki Saito kind of disappeared from the public eye for a while while he played college baseball (it is not followed here on the scale that pro baseball and the Koushien high school tournament are). He recently finished college, and was signed to our team, the Fighters, over the winter!! Although he was the pitcher opposing the Hokkaido team in Koushien 5 years ago, Fighters fans have been very excited to get him on our team. He is getting a lot of interest and press. He is still referred to as the Handkerchief Prince, although I think he has grown out of that stage of his life and probably wishes he had a different nickname. However, he puts up with it gracefully.

My husband took one of our neighbors to see him pitch in a Fighters game today, and we won. :) Today's game wasn't against Rakuten, but at some point we will be sure to see another Maa-kun vs. Yuuki Saito face-off!!

Here's to Maa-kun and Yuuki Saito, two nice young pitchers -- glad they are both doing great, 5 years after they were catapulted to national fame in Koushien! :)

Fine

We are fine, and safe up here in Hokkaido.

Still very worried and stressed out about people down south, esp. in Iwaki-shi which it seems is being overlooked still. Last night on the news they said they have many faxes from people in Iwaki, and read out several, including one from a mother of a 1-year-old with a 40 degree fever, and a 2-month-old whose life many be in danger from lack of milk. Sekkaku iki-nokotta no ni.

As far as our lives up here in Hokkaido, we are conserving kerosene (heating fuel) and gasoline, and while I noticed a few blank spots on the supermarket shelves, they appeared to be mainly very random items - probably just certain specific items whose production or supply chain has been disrupted. Similar items right next to them were still fully stocked.

Studious children

I was riding my bike to the pool today, and while walking my bike up a narrow sidewalk (with woods on one side and a guard rail on the other), I came across three small children (around age 7, two girls and a boy).

As I walked past them, they gathered around me as though they expected me to talk to them. Two of them were holding simple study materials, like kids' math workbooks from the 100 yen shop. I said, "Oh, have you all been studying?" (it was a weird place to study - just along this random road, not near any houses... they brandished the workbooks as though they were taking a survey and wanted to ask me something!)

girls: "... could we ask you a question? blahblahblah.... (unintelligible)" (this was all in Japanese btw)

I leaned down closer, to hear their question. "What?"

girls: "How do you say 'uta' (song) in English??"

me: "What? Buta? (pig)?"

girls: "No, no, how do you say 'uta'?"

me: "What??? Futa?? (lid)?" I was not trying to be funny... just couldn't hear them so well!!

girls: "No, no, UTA. UTA."

me: "Oh! *Song*" (I said it with my real accent, not katakana)

girls: "*Song* Song... song... (they copied my accent as best they could) ... (one girl pointed to the other) She was trying to sing an English song just now, but she couldn't remember it."

me: "Oh - Was it... Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream? (singing)"

girls: "No, no... "

me: "Hmmm... was it... Twinkle, twinkle, little star? (singing)"

girls: "That one, that one!"

me: "Shall I sing it for you? Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are, ... (etc.) "

girls: "Wow, sugoi!! cool! (etc.)"

me: "Well, bye-bye, good luck with your studying! You are all very studious. Bye-bye!"

The little boy had been standing back a bit throughout all this, and as I started to push my bike away, he started to cheekily and loudly try to sing Twinkle twinkle, as it had sounded to him with his little-boy mind. "CHINKO !, CHINKO !, ..." (chinko is a little-kid's word for Willie, wee-wee, in other words pe n!$ ) (trying to avoid weird googling here...) The little girls started to laugh.

me, stopping and shouting back: "Noooooo!! Aaaaaa!! Not Chinko! Twinkle... *twinkle*!! It means kira-kira!"

girls: "Oh, that's why it's Kira-kira, hikaru!" (the Japanese version of Twinkle twinkle)

me: "Yes, yes!! Twinkle, *twinkle*.. NOT chinko!! Well, bye-bye!"

In the park

Walking Toby in the park this morning between 6:20 and 6:30, we met...

1) First, as we left the house, a shock for Toby! Our neighborhood cat, a white cat with a red collar, was hiding under our car. Toby recoiled in fear and disgust! Brother Jiji has named the cat "Somersault" for some reason, so we all call it that in our family. p.s. now he insists that the cat's name be spelled "Summersalt".

2) In the park, the unfriendly man with his amazing and cute frisbee-catching dogs! Two active border collies, both black with white paws and chests.

3) The friendly older lady gathering greens for her rabbit (I used to wonder if she was gathering greens for her own table...)

4) Another friendly old lady with her old dog, Choro. Choro is a raggedy-looking, fairly big, 15-year-old white dog, maybe an Ainu-ken (Hokkaido-ken)? Choro has a very large lump on one side of her neck. Kind of antisocial (Choro, I mean), but at least she is finally used to us now. The lady on the other hand is super friendly!

5) An old man, Choro's friend, who often walks past the park on the sidewalk along the road. This man always carries dog snacks (it would seem), so old Choro perked up when he passed by this morning, and trotted quickly across the park and out to the sidewalk to see her best friend. Her elderly owner followed slowly behind (Choro is usually off her leash).

6) The sporty-looking professor who lives across from the park, brushing his dog Bau. Bau is a Corgi and is an outside dog (lives in a doghouse) - he used to get alarmed when we walked by his house, and would bark at us. For a year or more he has not barked, and recently we met Bau up close for the first time. He seemed so happy to see us, and rolled onto his back! This morning we met him for the 4th or 5th time since then. Toby completely ignores Bau, and tries to stay away, because Toby is only interested in dogs he doesn't know well. Toby *loves* to meet dogs he doesn't know, but after 2-3 meetings he has no use for them...

7) A girl in Jiji's 5th grade class, getting ready to jog with her father. She is a tall girl, probably just 1-2 cm less than Jiji. Also her kindergarten-aged brother was hanging around with her. They also live across from the park.

All this was just during the 10 minutes we were out (before 6:30 a.m.), in a small park near us!

-- Not seen today, but often seen in this time bracket....

- Mei the police dog. Very big all-black German Shepherd (cross?), looks like a bear or a black wolf. Scary-looking, but very well-behaved, and has a cute name! She is often found training in the park. Toby used to be terrified of her, but has improved recently.

- Boys of various ages practicing basketball, jogging, or pretending to practice soccer. Usually in pairs or singly. The soccer boy is a grade-school kid who is often found at this time with a soccer ball and some mini-cone things, but he just seems to stand around...

Interesting questions

Yesterday I spoke with some students in a special education class. I did my usual self-introduction spiel, with pictures of my family and hometown. Then the floor was opened for questions from the students. Usually when this happens in a regular class, there will be either silence, or attempts by friendly students to ask very standard questions, or a class clown or very good student asking a couple of standard or sometimes humorous questions - such as, "What music do you like?" etc..

The special education students were allowed to ask their questions in Japanese, and I was very surprised by the large number of students who immediately raised their hands. The questions were very different from those in a regular class, too... just off the top of my head, some of the questions I was asked were (here translated into English):

* "How did you feel when Michael Jackson died in America?"

* "Were any of your family members injured in the terrorist attack on America?"

* "Do you know the Gundam character named ---------?"

* "Did you hear about the murder of the ALT L------ H----- in Tokyo?"

* "Did you buy Michael Jackson's Thriller?"

* "Do you think President Obama is a good person?"

* "What was the first tourist area you visited in Japan?"

* "What place do you like most in your home state in America?"

* "Power Rangers are also popular in America. Did you like them when you lived in America?"

Love, love HONDA!

Our (beloved) Honda Odyssey had an oil leak, and with new winter tires needed and "shaken" (expensive car check) coming up soon, we decided to find a new car...

My husband looked on Yahoo and found a used car at an official Honda Used Car Dealer, very close to us. We went in and decided on it immediately (that was in late Nov.).

This past Saturday, we went in to pick it up, and say goodbye to our old one. :(

The new one is 10 years old and has about 83,000 km on it, but that is a lot fewer km than our other one had when we bought it. And the dealership fixed it up - it's SO clean and beautiful inside, and they did various work on it, that they say is worth up to about $2,000. We spent less than $4,000 on it anyway, so we thought this was pretty nice of them! It won't need a "shaken" until March of 2011, and it came with winter tires that are still useable for one winter.

Also, they quickly and easily arranged a car loan for us, which is a much better deal than our credit card, and when our insurance decided to get a bit difficult about the age of the car, they easily arranged insurance for us, too! This was all done so naturally and nicely, without any ho-humming or even the slightest weirdness about us being an all-gaijin (foreigner) family.

We came away feeling like we are really valued customers, even though we are just these random people that walked in and took a cheap older car with an accident history off their hands. They have already sent us a postcard with a photo of the whole dealership staff smiling and making peace signs, and also an elegant thank you card with a hand-written letter of thanks. And the car comes with a one-year warranty!

The only slight problem in all of this is that it will be very difficult now to avoid letting them do our "shaken" in Mar. 2011, even though it will probably be about $500 more than our local Idemitsu gas station, with whom we have built up a nice relationship over the last 1.5 years.

Anyway, we really liked doing business with Honda and I am so impressed with how seriously their company takes things like customer service & the reputation of their products. And they have a great attitude towards international communication, too (fitting for a huge international corporation). Yay HONDA!! (p.s. I come from a family of Honda-lovers -- my dad & his brother, both in the U.S., have been driving Hondas exclusively for more than 20 years!)

Garden record 2

Planted this year (stars are ratings for how happy I am with it):

- ***mini tomatoes, medium-sized tomatoes (like large mini-tomatoes) and orange medium sized tomatoes. Not bad, but still not as prolific as the ones the landlord had planted the first year we lived here, that I did not tend or tie up at all!

- **daikon. Small but edible. Handier than buying a large daikon and having most of it go to waste.

- ***fresh coriander (cilantro). It does very well here (surprisingly!) when planted in the ground, and in fact, seeds in last year's spot have grown up just as well as the small plants I bought this spring! Both are very tall and healthy, and I let both go to seed. Next year I may not buy any small plants, and wait for these seeds to sprout.

- **cucumber. Only two cucumbers have grown so far. Quite yummy.

- *pumpkin. The small plant I bought is growing alright, but no sign of anything pumpkin-like. Last year I tried seeds from a packet, and the plant never grew more than a few inches. The previous year we had a big pumpkin plant, with many pumpkins, but that plant had apparently come up naturally from veggie kitchen waste that the owners had buried in the garden. It seems that is the way to do it!

- ***green onion. Nice little green onions are growing in the green onion patch. They are smaller and lighter in taste than store-bought ones. Useful for all kinds of cooking.

- ***green chili. Very nice, strong plants this year. Lots of chilies! I put most in the freezer.

- ***potatoes. Plants looked healthy this year. Haven't started harvesting yet!

- *raspberry plant that my friend bought last year. We are supposed to be sharing the raspberries, but so far not many have grown. Another friend has a very healthy raspberry plant of a different species, with larger raspberries, and it is always sending out little shootlets, etc... I want to get a part of that one!

- ***spinach. This went well for a while, and I put some in the freezer and used some for salad. After a while I lost interest in weeding that area, and who knows how those plants are doing now.

- ***edamame. Just started harvesting 2-3 days ago. Going well so far! This kids like this with dinner.

- a small basil plant. This never really did anything useful.

- broccoli. Planted from seeds. Some leaves came up, but no broccoli at all! Caterpillars ate most of the leaves - maybe that was the problem.

- gobo (burdock root). I have no idea whether this even sprouted. I haven't been able to find it.


Things that were planted by our landlords before we moved in - these things seem to grow automatically year after year:

- **asparagus. I usually freeze them so they don't go to waste. They lose there fresh texture, but are still good for putting in coconut curry, wrapping with bacon, or whatever!

- ***chives. Yummy and grows automatically.

- ***Chinese chives (nira). Useful for coconut curry, nira tama (like an omelet with nira and other things), etc.! These plants grow up by themselves very healthily.

- *grapes. Didn't really tend them at all this year. At least one bunch of green grapes is visible.

- **parsley. These plants follow some unusual biennial system, where they alternate between a low, parsley-like shape and a tall, spindly shape. They don't mind being covered with about 3 meters of snow for 3-4 months! The snow is deeper there because all the snow from the roof slides off into the backyard. We have to put wooden slats up to protect the 2 windows back there, and the first winter the pile of snow reached as high as the bottom of the 2nd floor windows! I actually love parsley and used to eat everyone's parsley for them when we went out to dinner, when I was a kid. Unfortunately no-one else in my family loves it, but some can take it or leave it.

- **fuki. Butterbur, or something like that. We don't really do anything with this, but this year our next-door neighbors asked if they could come and harvest it early in the summer, so they did. They seem to have made several different dishes with it. It's sort of like rhubarb, I think.

- **strawberries! This year I discovered these for the first time - a few small strawberries were growing in a quiet corner. Small but sweet and yummy. Only 5 or 6 strawberries, though.

Big 100 yen shopping trip!

I went to a big 100 yen shop today -- a different one that is a little further away than my normal one, so I enjoyed walking around on the various floors and getting this and that! 100 yen is about 85 cents, I guess, or around 50 p. I got (at 100 each, plus 5 yen tax):

1. a set of 3 sports-themed rocket pencils, each with an eraser shaped like a basketball, baseball, or soccer ball (for the kids)

2. an apple scented "nerikeshi" - a large, soft eraser, in a case decorated with apples (for the kids)

3. two packs of large lamune candies, each with a small plastic toy (I *love* lamune -- when we came back to Japan, I used to get a pack of lamune just about every time I went into any kind of shop. )(this was for me, but I gave 2 lamunes to each of the kids)

4. a set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads

5. a set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads

6. one more set of 3 black hangers with swivel-heads (this was my official reason for going to this shop, since we needed these and they aren't available at our local 100 yen shop)

7. a sleek and super-modern-looking blue and silver solar-powered calculator, for son no. 1

8. a red decorative hole-punch (makes a heart shape)

9. an orange decorative hole-punch (makes a teddy bear shape)

10. a yellow decorative hole-punch (makes a star shape)

11. a green decorative hole-punch (makes a tree shape)

12. a blue decorative hole-punch (makes a large circle)

13. a pack of 3 rolls of yellow vinyl electrical tape

14. a pack of 3 rolls of black vinyl electrical tape

15. a roll of larger black vinyl electrical tape

16. a small green "cracked glaze" ceramic bowl decorated with a gingko leaf, to match the one my husband bought the other day -- useful for dipping sauces for shabu shabu, zaru soba, etc.

17. a colorful set of 3 packs of gummies - orange, grape, and apple flavored

18. a pack of 2 plain lined notebooks, for son no. 1

19. a B5 sized dark-grey plastic ring binder, for son no. 1

20. a clear plastic 30 cm ruler, for son no. 1

21. a set of two plastic lids for use when microwaving soups, etc... one large, one small

22. a larger domed-type lid, for use when microwaving plates of food - it is cutely decorated with pictures of various types of kitchen implements

23. a pack of two small sauce holders for use with bentos - one is orange, and one is red, and they're decorated with pictures of apples and oranges

24. a black stop-watch with neck strap (this was 150 yen)

25. (this was 150 yen) a large round sock-drying hanger, that you can hang on the laundry poles outside -- it's blue and white and has many laundry clips for attaching small things

26. hmmm... I know there were about 6 more things... a tape dispenser for use with packing tape and the like - to make it easier to tape up boxes. I used to have one of these in England, and they are a great help!

27. a small spray-can of pet smell remover

28. a large, furry, green polka-dotted, bone-shaped stuffed toy for little Toby. He used to have one just like it, and enjoyed snuggling with it, until he ripped it open and tore out loads of stuffing. I had kept it to one side and meant to mend it, but as they are only 100 yen, decided today not to bother!

29. okay, I'll have to go downstairs to check the rest.... a soroban! a large, black and tan colored, wooden abacus. I have always wanted to learn how to use an abacus. I don't see them used much anymore, but when I first moved to Kyushu, Japan, 16 years ago, they were still used a lot by shopkeepers. Now with my 100 yen abacus I can start learning!

30. a pack of 3 different colors of iron-on patching material. Black, blue and white. My jeans are always getting holes in them, and instead of buying new ones I've just been patching them. Must go and search for new ones soon. I looked all around England when we were there for Christmas, but unfortunately all the shops were selling hip-huggers only, and NO, I cannot wear hiphuggers!!! Muri!!! (impossible!).

31. Did I miscount? I looked all around but couldn't find anything else...

So, you can see that 100 yen is a wonderful idea in theory, but in practice you have to be careful not to go crazy with a big, 3300 yen (30 dollar or 15 pound) shopping spree!!! Well, on our budget this is the only chance I have to get that nice "shopping high" that many women love so much... ;)

Only in Hokkaido

A few days ago, as I was walking through a supermarket parking lot with my shopping...

Thinking to myself, "Oh, it's so springlike today! It's warm - I don't need to zip my coat up. The sun is shining! Spring is coming! What's that in the air... oh, it's snowing, too... well, anyway!!"

Things were looking really good, that day and even the next. A lot of roads and sidewalks were clear of snow, and I had switched from boots to sneakers. But unfortunately, spring has now gone away and we have had 3 days straight of snow, more and more each day. This morning I was out clearing snow from in front of the car, up to a foot deep in drifts. Everything is white again. It looks just like we've gone back to January. But not to worry! It can't be too much longer until spring, now!

Funny kids' language

I love the way my kids speak in Japanese now! They sound just like elementary school boys in Hokkaido. This is not the same as the Japanese you will learn in a textbook. Sometimes they say things I have never heard of!

I cannot translate for "sense", so I will only translate for meaning - sorry, but this means this post will not mean much to anyone who cannot speak Japanese...


Dio (now age 12, in 6th grade):

- speaking to his younger brother: "Sassa to ikeya, mireya!" (Quick, go and look!) - he said this so quickly I didn't get it at first (and I had never heard of this -ya), but brother understood, so I was surprised!

- when dismayed or sympathetic: "Arama..." (Oh dear...)

- after asking Daddy if he ever looks at Mommy naked (Daddy said sometimes), and asking Mommy if she ever looks at Daddy naked (I said I try not to): "Eroda! Futaritomo eroda!!!" (accusatorily) (sexy! both of you are naughty!)

- when told he cannot do something because of such-and-such reason: "Ii-ssho betsuni" (It's okay isn't it)

One of my Hokkaidoian friends who is my age heard him saying "Ii-ssho" and so on, and was happy that he is speaking in Hokkaido dialect (-ssho instead of deshou), and asked him if he ever says "Namara". Apparently when she was younger it was a trendy word for "very". I had never heard of it, but he said a couple of the boys in his class (a bit rougher boys?) do use it. After that conversation, he suddenly started using it now and then, too - a bit of posing? Like, "Namara hayee" (really fast), etc...

- To me when I was in his classroom and he wanted me to look at his football robot: "Mite mina." (have a look)

- When I mistook "Tonkatsu" on a bento-shop menu for something else, and asked the girl at the cash register if it was chicken - Dio said quickly, "Tonkatsu-tte kaiteattara, futsuwa tonkatsudesho?" (well, if it says tonkatsu, it usually means tonkatsu, doesn't it?) ...


Jiji (age 7, in 1st grade):

- "UssSO! UsSO ja nee ka kore!" (No way! What a lie!)

- (last year, learned in kindergarten): "Daamenanda, damenanda, sensei ni yuccharo" (in a singsong voice, "that's bad, that's bad, I'm telling the teacher!"). When he first told us this it was garbled and we couldn't make out what he was saying, but when we asked him about it he said he didn't know the words, but it is what people say just before they go to tell the teacher! So we worked out what he was saying.

- "SuggE! SuggEE kore wa!" (Wow! This is great!)

- to his big brother when big brother is posing: "Kakkou tsukeruna." (quit posing) He was trying to shout something like this down from the chair lift several times, when he saw Dio just nicely practicing his snowboarding turns, down below.

Anyway, I just get a warm and happy feeling when I hear them saying these things. It is just so cute that they have learned to talk like school-age boys. Dio gets plenty of practice in "official" or "adult" Japanese from Kumon, anyway (he takes "Japanese" for foreigners, mostly targeted towards teenagers or adults, not kokugo - the poor thing has to read these endless example sentences about "Smisu-san" - Mr. Smith - and his friends, who are visiting Japan for business and tourism. I think they are trying to make the foreign students feel more connected by putting plenty of nice foreign characters in the stories and examples, but it gets a little wearing because it is about a world of Tokyo "fresh-off-the-plane" Anglo-Gaijin that my son knows nothing about! Complete with sharp-looking noses and friendly Japanese helpers... he keeps plugging away, though - maybe it is entertaining for him to read about the adventures of the hapless adult gaijins... ?).

To-by!

This is Toby.
Also Toby with his biggest brother!

He's our new baby, and is now 5 1/2 months old. He is a really good boy, who tried his best to hold in his peepee and poo until he is able to go outside. One thing that really surprised us is that he slept through the night on his very first night here! When we got up in the morning, he was quietly sitting in his bedroom area (a large cage under the stairs, where he can see through the door into our bedroom, and see us sleeping!). He had a habit of biting or nibbling at our fingers at first, but he seems to have learned not to, now. When we let him run around the house, he gallops (like a horse) around and around the table, and the children enjoy lying down in his path, so that he jumps over them. He's a Jack Russell Terrier, and we got him in early August, when he was almost 3 months old. The poor little guy had to wait in the pet store for us for 2-3 weeks, while we sorted out a problem with the paperwork and changed our guarantor for renting the house, since our old guarantor would not sign the paper for us to get a dog, although we had assumed that she would. We had already found him and put a small deposit down on him, and we didn't want to give him up, so we did a rush job and found another guarantor (our old guarantor had been asking us to find a new one, anyway). He waited in the pet shop throughout that process.

Our favorite song to sing to him is "To---by!" This is modeled after a song that is famous here, called, "Yuu---ji!", which is sung by a man who is apparently like a Japanese version of Bruce Springsteen. This song "Yuu---ji!" is from the 80's I think, and seems to be about a past friendship with a man or boy called Yuuji. This song is now sung at our pro baseball team's games, whenever one of our players (named Yuuji) comes up to bat! My older son goes around the house singing this song... "Yuu---ji! ..... kaeritai, kaerenai... dadada,dadada, etc..." "I want to go back, but I can't go back, .... "

Komadai

Pictures: Saito (3rd from left) with his Waseda teammates; Tanaka (at the right, wearing a cap) with his teammates, listening to their coach.

Well, I wanted to say what happened to the Komadai High School baseball team in the end. Last I mentioned, they were going into the semi-finals. They won their semi-final, and were up for the final, for the 3rd year in a row!

The summer Koushien tournament starts with 49 teams -- one from each prefecture of Japan, except for Hokkaido and Tokyo, which are split into two sections and field 2 teams each. It is a single elimination tournament. Each prefecture has its own tournament earlier in the summer, in order to choose the team that will represent the prefecture. It is a very big deal just to make it to the main national tournament, which is held in the Koushien Stadium near Osaka. A friend of mine has fond memories of her high school team getting into the main tournament, in her Senior year. I think they lost in the first round, though.

Each year, of course, two teams from Hokkaido go to the main tournament, but historically they have not done very well. It was well known that Hokkaido is weak in Koushien. No-one expected a Hokkaido team to be able to win, until Komadai came along. Two years ago they went down to Osaka and won the whole tournament. The people of Hokkaido were overjoyed... Hokkaido's time has come!!

Last year, they won the whole thing again. This is a pretty rare occurrence. Wow... go Hokkaido. Up against the strongest high school baseball teams from Osaka, Tokyo, and all over the country.

There were those who could not stand to see Komadai having all this success. Parents of one of the 2nd string players complained that their son had been hit on the head several times by a coach, with a slipper. For a couple of days we all waited as the High School Baseball Federation determined whether they would be allowed to keep their second trophy. They were allowed the win, but celebrations in Hokkaido afterwards were muted. It was a real shame that that parents had to choose the moment of their glory to make the problem known. People all over Hokkaido were robbed of the chance to celebrate Komadai's second consecutive win. According to this Wikipedia article on High School Baseball in Japan (which has a section on Komadai's wins), it was the first time since 1947-8 that a team had won two years in a row.

Komadai then withdrew from this spring's Koushien (a separate tournament), after busy-bodies reported that they had seen former team members drinking and smoking underage in a pub. It was hard being the top team in the country for two years in a row.

Against this background, they made it (with some come-from-behind victories) into the final, for the 3rd consecutive year, in this month's summer tournament. Their opponent in the final: the team from Waseda University's attached high school. This is the top private university in the country, Japan's equivalent to Harvard. Their ace pitcher, Yuki Saito, looks very refined and well-brought-up, and wipes his brow neatly with a handkerchief, to the delight of moms around the country. Apparently his handkerchief has been featured on daytime TV, with people oohing and aahing over how it is folded, etc. His top pitching speed is not far off the top professional pitchers in Japan. In fact, in just 7 more months he will probably become a professional pitcher -- many of the top players are recruited straight out of high school. I still remember seeing the press conferences for high school star Hideki Matsui when he joined the Japanese league, still wearing his black button-down military style high school uniform, looking a bit awkward, quite thin, his face covered in zits. He has sure grown up. Godzilla!

Back to Saito. The final proved to be a battle between two great pitchers. Yes, we have our own ace, too. Masahiro Tanaka -- so calm, but the TV announcer said he looks like he has fire beneath the calm. He led Komadai to their championship last year. He is not from Hokkaido, and who knows why he chose to come here for his high school pitching career. He will also most likely be turning pro in 7 months.

The final was on a Sunday, starting at 1:00, and the pitchers held the score to 0-0 through the first 7 innings. In the 8th inning, each team scored one run, and they went into the 9th. Around 3:00, I got off work downtown, and walked to the main intersection, which was blocked off so that people could watch the game on a big screen. There was a brass band of some kind, and maybe a couple of hundred people were watching the game. Komadai batted at the top of the 9th inning, and we scored no runs. This left open the possibility of a Sayonara run by Waseda in the bottom of the 9th. I left and headed for home, knowing that the game would go into extra innings if Komadai held Waseda.

The streets were pretty deserted, as everyone was home watching the game. I heard a shout go up from an apartment building as I walked past... maybe another run?? No -- I got home and it was still 0-0. The two aces pitched inning after inning, with no more runs scored, until the 15th inning began. I heard the announcers saying that this would be the last inning, and wondered if the two teams would share the championship. It seemed highly unusual, though.

The 15th inning ended, with the score still 1-1; "The game is finished with a tie of 1-1, and there will be a rematch tomorrow!"

The players looked pretty happy after the game (no crying, as there usually is after Koushien games, from both the losing and winning teams). The pitchers looked tense, though ... they would have to play the following game, too. They had pitched 165 balls for Tanaka, and 178 balls for Saito. See article here. There were no "backup pitchers" who could take over the next day. For Saito, the rematch would mean pitching (whole games or nearly whole games) 4 days in a row, and for Tanaka, 3. About 50,000 fans watched the game at Koushien Stadium.

I heard that most of the rest of the country, including the TV announcers, seemed to be rooting for Waseda. They must have tired of always hearing about Komadai, Komadai, from way up there in Hokkaido, and Saito was a fresh face (clean from his handkerchief).

The next day, Monday, the game again started at 1 pm. A lot of the ladies in my office were watching the game online, or listening to it on the radio. Komadai tried hard to come back in the last inning, but they lost 4-3. See article here. In a fitting ending, the very last player to come up to bat was Tanaka, standing in the batter's box facing his rival, Saito.

I am so impressed with Komadai, just for making it to the final, and forcing a replay (the first one in summer Koushien since 1969 -- and at that time, the teams had to play 18 innings before a replay would be declared!). Only one team in history has ever won the summer Koushien tournament 3 times in a row, and that was in 1931-33.

Garden record

Picture: Edamame, corn, and a neighbor's house.

We live in Hokkaido, in the north where there is snow on the ground about 4 months of the year. People really get excited for spring and summer here! In the spring, everybody gets busy cleaning up and planting flowers. Summer activities include camping and going to a beach packed with beach bars decorated to look like somewhere in Hawaii or Jamaica, I guess.... pineapples, large signs for Jamaican rum, surfboards, and so on... it looks cool, not dorky, because it has all been homemade by bonafide alternative types, with dark tans, cutoffs, piercings and so on!

Well, my main summer activity now is gardening. We're renting a house, since last year, and when we moved in last year I was too busy with moving and then it became too hot, so the garden got really overgrown. As I fought my way through the plants later, I little by little discovered cherry tomatoes, pumpkins, big purple grapes, parsley, and lots and lots of shiso (a herb used with sushi and other cooking). There was a veritable shiso field in the lower garden. I don't really use shiso, so I gave a lot away and then in the fall pulled out all the plants. They come back up in the spring, anyway, so no harm done. The kids loved the grapes, I made a couple of pumpkin pies, and we ate fresh cherry tomatoes all summer. I didn't use any store-bought tomatoes for 3 months, which was great since tomatoes are about 4-5 medium ones for $3 here. These things had all been planted by our landlords before they left the place in the spring. They are an elderly couple, and moved to a condominium somewhere - we have never met them. I called the real estate agent one day to suggest that we send them some of their produce, but he said we didn't need to, and I didn't want to complicate our relationship, since they seemed to prefer to go exclusively through the agent.

Well, this spring I planted:

2 cherry tomato plants
daikon seeds
carrot seeds
pumpkin seeds
corn kernels
edamame (beans)
some new flowers, like cosmos and morning glory (there are already tons of bulbs, flowering bushes, and other flowers that come up anyway)
cilantro (fresh coriander) -- 3 small plants and some seeds
basil seeds
spinach seeds
a small field of potatoes (may queen and danshaku) in place of the shiso field
my friend bought a raspberry plant which will live here, and we will share the raspberries.

Here are the results so far:

Tomatos -- one plant died, the other got shaded over by fast growing plants and I had to move it. It gave us today its biggest harvest so far: about 7-8 small cherry tomatos, nothing special in terms of flavor, either! Last year I would go out every three days and come back with a large mixing bowl 2/3 full of delicious cherry tomatos - this was from plants that had no care whatsoever, and were just lying all over the ground. Will try again next year, with more plants from a different supplier.

Daikon -- nice looking, and I pulled out two of the biggest ones yesterday to give to the neighbors. About 2 inches thick and 8 inches long.

Carrots -- I didn't thin them properly, and there are too many small carrots growing in one place, so none of them seem to grow. I have yet to see one even as long as an inch. They smell like carrots, though!

Pumpkins -- I left just the healthiest two sprouts standing, and for some reason they are not growing taller/longer than 6 inches. There have been a couple of flowers.

Corn -- some sturdy looking corn stalks with nice waving leaves. Some flowery things are coming out of a few of them, and pollen comes off them when the stalks are shaken. Hopeful here!

Edamame -- coming along nicely, with plenty of beans. The beans are still too skinny to harvest.

New flowers -- Nothing so far... but there are plenty of other flowers, anyway.

Cilantro -- the 3 plants grew very big, but I should have harvested the leaves earlier, and frozen them. I waited too late and they changed shape. Then I harvested some, and the taste was wrong and seemed bitter. Now I'm letting them go to seed, in the hope that we'll see something next year... The seeds I planted have grown into small, feeble-looking plants that will hardly come to anything.

Basil -- this was in a container, and I didn't do the drainage part right, so the whole thing had to be scrapped.

Spinach -- these were used and added to salads as babies, and then the plants got strangely tall and scraggly. I harvested some more the put them in the freezer. Will try a different type next year.

Potatoes -- great! We have just started eating the new potatoes, and gave 1/2 a shoebox full to the neighbors on either side, along with a daikon. They look just like storebought potatoes, but in all different sizes, and they taste extra yummy! I have dug up about 1/5 of the patch.

Raspberry -- looks so-so, and about 30 raspberries grew. I suggested to my friend that there were too few to use, and we should let them fall and hopefully more plants would appear next year. The ground is so fertile here, and we have an amazing variety of plants, many of which seem to have sprung up from last year's fallen seeds, for example there are plenty of shiso plants and also sunflowers this year!

Also found and used this year (I didn't plant these):

Very vigorous parsley -- several feet of snow were no problem to the parsley plants, which defrosted nicely and started growing and growing!

Grapes -- some are growing, but they are not ready to harvest

Asparagus!! -- I didn't notice it at all last year, so was shocked one morning this spring to look out the window and see asparagus coming up. There is quite a bit in the freezer now. I've let two of them grow big and go to seed. When they grow big, all those little things at the top turn into little branches, and grow out away from the main stalk.

Some kind of nira thing -- nira is a green plant related to chives or garlic. We used it for a while, but then I got nervous about whether it was really an edible nira plant or just some inedible nira-lookalike.

My friends and neighbors have taken some shiso -- I am making sure there is a lot less than last year, by pulling up the larger plants. It smells nice to walk through a shiso field, but it is a pain because in the fall the plants all go dry and crackly, and then you have to pull them up and dispose of them somehow.

All the flowers are lovely! We saw the early-mid spring flowers for the first time this year, and the summer flowers are much more visible too, since the place is not so overgrown. I've heard that the owner really looked after this garden, but after they moved out last year, no-one did much with it until September and it was hard to see what was what! In the late fall, all the wilted or dry plants need to be cut down and thrown away, or they turn into a big mess under the snow. Plants which stay through the winter need to be supported with bamboo poles and little net dresses, so they are not damaged by the weight of the snow.