SOFTWARE, JAPAN, SELF-ACTUALIZATION AND

So I’m going to interrupt my bento countdown to bring a special post.

A couple of months ago I discovered, on a local city government’s website, that an outdoor basketball court was at some park about 20 minutes away.

Most of last year I had been traveling 1 hour every Sunday to meet a co-worker at one of the best basketball courts in Tokyo. However, that particular weekend he was busy, so it worked out well that I had just read about that court close by. Although it was hard to find, the trip paid off because the basketball court was new and quite nice.

A couple weekends later I again traveled to the court to play ball (before it got too cold to play outside regularly). This time though something very fortunate happened.

Somehow the stars aligned and I arrived at the court right when 9 guys were trying to break into teams to play 4 vs 4 (one guy sitting out). 4 of the guys made up one group of friends, and the other 5 were a different group. The group of 4 asked me to join to play full court, which I eagerly agreed (in my broken Japanese response).

During a break between games, those 4 Japanese guys started asking some basic questions (which to me, being asked anything in Japanese is not really basic - but rather like a challenging mid-term exam). After some back and forth, rewording, and their occasional English vocabulary tossed in the mix (they could not speak English, but they understood a fair number of words), we managed to find a couple interesting similarities:

1) They all lived about 20 minutes from the court, and in the same city that I did (although on the other side of it).
2) It was their first time to ever go to that court (and my second time)
3) They were all the same age or one year different than me!

When we finished playing a few games the “captain” of their 4 man team asked me if I was interested in joining a team he was going to start. After a little thought, I agreed. The opportunity to learn Japanese and have fun playing my favorite sport seemed quite promising, so I exchanged emails with them and then went on my way back home.

Not long after, the captain of the team, Takumi, sent me an email inviting me to play ball again. I agreed and was surprised that the next time there were about 10 guys in his group.

Since then, they’ve reserved a gym on a couple occasions for us to play ball at (get out of the freezing cold air), which is something I alone would have been unable to do in Japan. And Takumi even went so far as to get everyone a team uniform. In fact, here we are in uniform after playing for about 2 hours at the gymnasium.

Although this might not seem that interesting to many of you, I dare say this event may have created the second most important social circle in my life here in Japan - friends.

Now, just a couple months after that one chance meeting on a new-found court, my social life has went from the textbook exchanges with postal clerks (which I couldn’t even get right) and restaurant staff to something that has meaning and sustenance.

Doors have opened. There is still hope for me yet.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 9:00 am and is filed under life in Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.