Although most of the Ibaraki soccer players abandoned the team to go on a canyoning and rafting trip, we were able to get a core team of 11 players to go to Nagano last weekend. Moreover, despite the odds and a succession of bad luck, this turned out to be by far the most fun tournament I have gone to.
Here's a re-cap, that will be published in Ibaraki's newsletter,
Let's Ibaraki.
Despite having no subs and two lady players, we didn't win a game. But, we did have one helluva an adventure. Car break-downs, military rescues, car crashes, mythical beast sightings, a reworking of the Seven Dwarves, bad jokes, worse farts...ah good times. If you’d like to hear about the soccer team’s epic journey to Nagano, read on.
Although I wasn’t happy about it, I agreed to leave for Nagano at 4:30 am. Justin reminded me (several times) that it was crucial we leave at said un-godly hour. After three hours of tortured sleep, thanks to the even more tortured, laryngitis inflected cries of the rooster across the street with no sense of time, those in my car woke at 4 (okay 4:15) and made it out the door by 4:30 (okay 4:40). We arrived at the 7-11 meeting spot at 4:45, and I let out a victorious, hahaha, because it seemed we had arrived before Justin’s car.
The breakdownTurned out that the people in Justin’s car had in fact not overslept, but rather Justin’s car battery was dead. I didn’t have jumper cables, and neither did Andy, who we met at the station, so we decided to ask the nearest gas station for some. Well, the nearest gas station was closed at a quarter to 5. Okay, we thought, someone can ask in the 7-11 for cables and someone can run across the street to the military base and ask for them there. Meryl’s conference (with the two young J boy clerks) went something like this:
Meryl: I need to find some jumper cables because my friend’s car battery died.
J boys: Ah, jumper cables.
M: Yes, jumper cables.
J boys: Eh, jumper cables?
M: Yes, jumper cables. My friend’s car battery is dead so we need to jumpstart the engine with jumper cables.
J boys: Ah, jumper cables. Where can you find jumper cables?
M: Well, that’s what I’m asking you.
J boys: Hmm…let’s see. Maybe you could try a gas station.
M: We did but it was closed.
J boys: Yes, all the gas stations around will be closed now.
M: So you don’t know where we can get some jumper cables?
(Silence. J boys shift their gaze from floor to ceiling, left to right)
J boy 1: Jumper cables?
M: Yes, jumper cables.
J boy 1: Maybe I have some?
M: Really? Where?
J boy 1: Sitting in the car right there.
So Meryl finally ended up scoring us a pair of rather wimpy looking cables from one of the 7-11 clerks, who said we could borrow them, but he added that he didn’t know how to use them.
The Military RescueMeanwhile, Andy had returned to the 7-11 parking lot with a military official in his car. This army gent had much more convincing looking cables, so we decided to use his instead. However, he insisted that he come along. We thought it would be fun to show up at Justin’s with a military dude with a huge knife in his belt, but we were a little worried that by abandoning his post he might leave Japan open to all sorts of unforeseen peril. In the end we decided to risk Communist invasion in order to jump Justin’s car.
The Second BreakdownOnce we got Justin’s car going we returned the military official, but decided to hold on to the cables from the 7-11 clerk, just in case we needed them. Turns out we would, about 5 minutes later. Shit, we all think. Not off to a good start.
Eventually Justin gets a new battery and we set off for Nagano for real.
We arrived 2 hours late, but just in time to get three of our players off to ref a game before our first game in half an hour. The game that these three were refereeing went into overtime, which meant come game time for us, we were three players short. Our officials told us we needed to start anyway. We tried to tell them, we only have 11 players and 3 of them are refereeing a game because you made them, so we can’t start until they get back. The pushy refs said, no you’ll just have to start with eight players then. We said, that’s crap! No way! They said, fine, here’s three random players, use them. (Whistles blows) Now go!
So there we were starting off our first game with two girls, only 6 or our original 9 boys, and 3 random dudes. We eventually got our own guys back, but unfortunately didn’t win the game.
The Third BreakdownAfter the first game it turned out that somehow James’ shoes had been rubbing his feet wrong the entire game, and now his feet were like, literally falling apart. He had to miss the second game to get them put back together, and we were stuck playing with another random player, who turned out to be an alright guy, but random nonetheless. And so we will contribute our second loss to James’ absence.
Games 3 and 4 were played. Goals were scored. Our team, more and more resembling the Bad News Bears, held it together enough to walk off the field and immediately head for “refreshments.”
The Seven Dwarves…Plus FourBefore the big party Meryl and I got our guys pretty drunk by hustling them at a clever dice game, 7-11-or doubles. Also, after drinking a couple beers herself, Meryl re-Christened the team a la Snow White. This was done because after 30 failed attempts at naming the original Seven Dwarves, Meryl gave up and decided to come up with her own names. There was Sleazy (Andy), Crappy (Meryl), Lopey (April), hmm…can’t seem to remember the rest, but eventually everyone got a new name.
After waking up Yoshi and Murata, we got the whole team on the dance floor. Surprisingly, Bert, the only non-drinker, was by far the best dancer. The dude’s C-walking abilites would give Usher pause. After a couple hours, everyone (except Peter a.k.a. the Predetor) went back to the rooms to drink more and crash out.
At some point during the night Aidan decided to leave the room (not exactly sure why he did this). Anyways, he soon found himself locked out. After pounding repeatedly on the door to no avail, he eventually gave up and decided to rest his head in the other room. However, due to Justin’s frightening snoring (that Aidan said could be heard down the hall), Aidan was unable to sleep. Tired and annoyed, Aidan decided he would see if anything was still going on at the party downstairs. Boy was there ever! Peter was still cruising around, by himself (apparetly all his prey had escaped). Finally, the boys put their heads together and decided to see if there was an extra key at the front desk. Sure enough, there was!
The next day we all fought to keep the stomach bile down as we hobbled up and down the field. Actually, we played surprisingly well considering our state and managed to come painfully close to winning.
The Mythical BeastAfter losing our fifth and final game our hearts may have been a little low. That was until The Beast arrived. As we lay splayed out on the grass by the sidelines someone directed our attention to the highly curious, downright mythical looking creature that was working its way over to the soccer pitches. None of had any idea what this animal could possible be. We grabbed our cameras and pondered: half-man/half-leprechaun? (wait, no, that’s Enda) half-koala/half-horse? half-sealion/half-ferral hamster? half-mermaid, half-unicorn?
It turned out to be a wild, Japanese mountain goat, but I swear it was the craziest looking mountain goat I have ever seen.
Burnt, broken and bandaged we drove back to the hotel to shower and head back to Ibaraki.
The Car CrashAs I was turning into the hotel parking lot my heart sunk when I realized that my vehicle, The Vanimal, had been struck. The perpetrator? A dumb motorcyclist who was paying more attention to the silver skulls dangling from his jeans than to the road. An ugly battle ensued and basically we both walked away pissed off.
All was not lost though. The car ride back turned out to be incredibly edifying. Among other things, most of which were probably too cerebral for Let’s, we learned that there is no Irish equivalent for “red neck.”
The End
