The Tajima Ultimate Frisbee tournament was a really interesting experience. There were plenty of good times and some less good ones too, making for a really diverse and challenging weekend. Originally I had planned to head up to Tajima on the Friday night as I couldn't make it to the tournament on time on Saturday morning by train. Thankfully though, my team mate Makoto kindly offered to give me a lift on Saturday morning, which meant I could attend a Sayonara party for some local JETs on Friday night. In hindsight I probably should have gone up to Tajima, haha, as the party was a nomihoudai and although I kept it quiet, I didn't particularly feeling like playing frisbee on Saturday morning :)

I met Makoto at just before 8am in Himeji, only to find that he wasn't feeling great either, hehe. We headed up anyway though, arriving in Tajima at around 10am. We joined up with the rest of the team, some of whom we hadn't seen for a couple of months! My friends Matt and Clay were there, along with Makoto, James and Tisha and three of Tisha's friends - an Australian and two Japanese girls I didn't know. James was team leader, thanks to being an experienced Ultimate player who had played in the national championships in the US. So naturally, he was pretty good, haha. Once we were all together, he did some basic training with us and gave us some much needed tips, especially so given that we'd never practised together :)

Our first game was in the late morning, and we won it easily. Although I was pretty happy about that, I couldn't help but feel a bit frustrated about the game itself. Thanks to being one of the less experienced players, I hardly touched the frisbee and on the few occasions that I had the opportunity to, I made a few mistakes. It was understood that some of us on the team were inexperienced and that we would make mistakes, but I still felt bad about it. I suppose that's why I've always preferred non-team sports - at least if I play badly by myself, I only let myself down :) Silly attitude? Perhaps.

Our next game was in the mid afternoon, and ended up as a very satisfying draw. It was a really fun game, actually, against one of the hardcore Japanese uni teams. So we were pretty happy that our little rag-tag bunch had been able to draw against them! In fact, they were very lucky to even draw against us, as it was only a somewhat tenuous and extremely lucky last second score that saved them from losing. Our draw was made even more incredulous when that team somehow went on to win the tournament, hehe - our almost-victory-ending-in-a-draw became a whole lot more rewarding :)

The final game of the day was another easy win against another Japanese university team which consisted of a heap of very good individual players who just didn't work well as a team. After that game, we all headed to a nearby sento to grab a nice refreshing bath. I was extremely grateful that we didn't have to play any more, as I was absolutely exhausted! I'd been like that all day though, mind you, including being very surprised when I found myself unable to run any more just 10 minutes into the first game. Normally I'm able to play for at least an hour before getting to that point. I suppose it was the combination of heat, humidity and altitude, although the Sayonara party the night before and generally being tired for a couple of months beforehand didn't help either, haha. Still, the sento helped a lot, and hey, that's life I suppose.

At night we had a big barbecue where all the teams cooked up heaps of meat and veges and drank beer. Noice. I spent quite a while chatting to the Japanese girls on my team, Tomi and Ukon, and found that my Japanese has finally become basically conversational - wheeeeee! :) I'd taken some fireworks up so we set them off, went inside to the 'dance floor' for a bit and then finally all headed to sleep in our 'Team Room' (lol) at just after midnight.

We woke up to absolutely oppressive heat on Sunday morning, but still managed to drag ourselves out of bed and down to the field for our first game at just after 9:30am. Although we didn't have James or Tisha, who were running a bit late, we smashed through our first game on our own. It was quite nice, actually, as the frisbee was shared around a little bit more :) James arrived about 2/3 of the way in and shouted tips from the sidelines, mainly the fact that I had my arms too high when defending. Helpful, but hard to take on board in the middle of an intense game, hehe.

Anyway, the rest of the afternoon was pretty good. We lost our second game to a team of really friendly and skilled Japanese uni students who ended up coming third overall, I think. Mid afternoon it actually started to rain and we played our final game in a nice, cool downpour. It was against a team of my friends, including Ewan. We ended up winning the game, mostly because the other team was just playing for fun and had been drinking since Saturday morning, haha. So overall, we ended up coming 5th! :) After that it was the final, the closing ceremony and then the long drive back to Himeji. I was really tired and headed to sleep almost as soon as I got back, hehe. It was a great weekend but the large amount of really tough exercise in the crazy weather conditions hit me really hard, and took several weeks to recover from, haha. That said, I think I'll still do it again next year!