Friday, August 1, 2008

Day 5, Friday Aug 1st – 7 days until the opening ceremonies

This morning I woke up at 6am, not because I wanted too, but because I had to pee, I think that’s the worst thing in the world, when your having a great sleep and you have to wake up to go to the bathroom. Oh well at least I fell back asleep, and actually stayed asleep until 9 – which is a new record. Anyways today was pretty much the same as every other day, I woke up, had some breakfast, and watched a movie – Transformers! GREAT movie, go bumble bee go! After watching the movie we headed off to practice.

Today’s practice, like every other practice we’ve had so far was short but intense, and with each day that passes we just try and push the intensity even more! Practice runs around 1hour - 1hour and 15min. We normally do some drills to warm up for about 15-20min and then we get right into randori after that we finish with about 20 throws. Also in today’s practice we had some of the Budo University players come out to train with us –Mike asked a couple of his friends that he knows from when he went to school here to come out to practice with us, so that was great. Although these players are not the top players in Japan, they are still great training partners for us to work out with. In Japan just the average Joe is still a great work out partner!

During my last round today I had my first injury of the trip – I was fighting a player from the Swiss team, and he went in for a Sumi(a throw), but a very poor entry and his knee ended up smashing into my chin, which not only made me see stars but split open my chin a bit, at least it as the last round for the morning. After Practice I was glued back together by our physiotherapist. Nothing too bad, just a little war wound.

Today for lunch we had some noodle soup, which was a nice change up from all the deep fried food and rice we have been eating. I really don’t know how they live so long over here on these diets; students pretty much live on 711 stores over here! Where everything is already pre-packaged, easy but I don’t know how healthy it is for you. The Japanese population also eats a crazy amount of rice. Whether its breakfast lunch or dinner they eat rice! And pretty much everything is deep fried! On top of that they hardly eat any veggies, and well fruit is so expensive I now know why people give oranges as gifts here. If you think we have it bad in Canada, think again. 4 apples cost about 12dollars, I won’t even get into how much oranges are, I saw a fruit “basket” for sale, which was around 200$ it consisted of some oranges, a couple apples, a grape fruit, and some other fruits. I think it would cost maybe 20 dollars at home, compared to the 200$ here in Japan.

Anyways after lunch I took a nap because I was pretty tired still. When I woke up we listened to some stand up comedy from Dane Cook.. so funny!! And then went for a 5km run as our 2nd workout of the day, after our run for some relaxation we sat in what they call a “bath” which is basically is – just a big hot tub without the jets, to let our muscles recoup a bit from the soccer and all the running we had done in the last couple of days. As for ping pong well we played a little bit after our run, I have only managed to beat Fraser once out of the million times we have played, I beat everyone else but for some reason Frazer is the man. For dinner I had some scrambled eggs and bread. We actually met a new BUG at dinner tonight - the massive Beatle, kinda looked like a dung Beatle, but WAY BIGGER!! anyways we have pics!! It has this massive horn type thing on its head, and actually flys.. either way it was a pretty crazy looking bug.

After dinner we were suppose to play some poker but everyone is to scared to play me, or at least thats what im saying. Anyways we just hung out in our rooms, not much to do around here, starting to get bored – but the week has defiantly flew by! A couple more days and we will really know whats its like to be an Olympian. Olympic village here we come.

1 comment:

Karissa said...

Haha! Your dorm has become The Beetle Haven!