Tennis and Onsen

I was able to wake up later than usual, but then there was a lot of noise in the morning so I really woke up earlier, but just didn’t get up until later. I mean like 6am early too. But I think I managed to fall back asleep for a few more hours. Today, we went to a few places after our sandwiched breakfast, we got ready and we went driving in the countryside and then Seisen-Ryo which has famous Ice Cream in the area. We went to “san bun – ichi yuu sui” which is a place where the spring water is divided into three areas. It was interesting driving around the countryside. It was really nice to see and very scenic. There was this one area of the countryside that reminded me of Lord of the Rings, where there is a big forest behind a large open grassy field. Really cool, that I made EK stop in the middle of the road so I could take a picture of it. It’s a good thing that there weren’t many cars, so I was able to get a good quick snapshots of the area. After this little excursion around the area, which took about 4 hours to go through, we went back to an area near the house where there was a tennis court. But as we were trying to park EK bumped into the wall with his tire in front of about 15 people. That was very embarrassing for me since I was sitting in the front seat. I wanted to crouch down and hide.

We played some tennis against another teacher and EK’s dad and lost badly. I mean really bad. We only managed one game in two sets. That’s only one out of thirteen. But it really was EK’s fault because he would swing and miss the ball completely. They only hit it to him because they knew he couldn’t hit it back. How embarrassing. We managed to get that one and we celebrated like we had just won the championship at Wimbledon or something like that.

Then we rested in an onsen, which is a hot spring in Japanese. It was nice and relaxing even though it’s very uncomfortable. I don’t really like hot springs and neither does EK, so it was just awkward just to begin with. We kinda stayed longer than I thought we would have, but that’s because I wanted to make EK suffer a little bit for boasting how good of a player he was, but really couldn’t prove it when it needed to be proven. What a punk ass, he told me that he could even beat me, but I really couldn’t imagine it since we played and I beat him 6-1. He won the first game because I wasn’t playing seriously. But I guess still embarrassing for me.

After the nice long bath, we hung out in the room where people could just rest and relax. It was a nice big tatami mat room. We enjoyed some drinks before we started to get ready to go back to the cabin. EK got a call from his friends back in Tokyo and I had a chance to talk with them. It seemed pretty cool and they seem nice. After this, we went home.

We were getting ready to have another big feast. So we had to drop by the grocery store to get some rice. There was a lot of food again and it was good because we were hungry. The dinner was delicious and had more of the things that were concrete to make me full. We had a nice pork that was really incredible and yakisoba that was nice too. We had a conversation about what kinds of meat do Japanese people eat. I have determined that they eat all kinds of meat except for dogs and cats. I mean I learned that they eat whales, dolphins, eels, horse and other meats. Some they eat raw too, which is something that is beyond my comprehension.

On to another note, EK wasn’t satisfied that I could beat him in tennis and he wanted to challenge me to another game so he could feel confident in himself again. He thought that because he won last night that he would be able to beat me in regular chess. But this time the rules are something that I know and something that I think I have an advantage over him. We played the version of Chess that most people are familiar with and I whooped EK’s ass in 4 moves. Thanks David Ly, Helix High School Grandmaster Chess Champ, for teaching me the move, and it worked perfectly. So he was put to shame again since I did it so quick and it was decisive. He was quiet for rest of the evening… hahahaha. Damn I’m evil.