Japan Swim 2009

I had heard that a new 50-metre swimming pool had opened in Hamamatsu and finally had a chance to see it about a week ago. Here's the outside of it:
Actually, there is a 50-metre pool as well as a 25-metre pool and a diving area...very impressive. Here are two shots from inside:
Ayako and I just had a look around. Unfortunately, the pool is a bit of a ways from our house and it's not that cheap to swim, so I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to go for a swim there. They did get to host the Japan national long course championships for the past week:
There were even some national records broken including the women's 200 breaststroke. Rie Kaneto broke the record and it's 15 seconds faster than my fastest time, so I was very impressed:

Soccer game in Toyota City

On Sunday, I joined some other teachers from Aichi U. (Simon, Angus, Mark & Chrsitine) and went to Toyota City (north-east of Nagoya) to watch a professional soccer game. The local team, Nagoya Grampus (genus of Orca dolphins) was playing the Urawa Reds from Saitama. Here's me next to Angus and Mark outside the stadium (which was used in the World Cup 2002):
There were long line-ups for food and beverages but we were able to stop a friendly beer and snack vendor:
We arrived an hour and a half early, but since we were in the cheap seats, it was already almost full and so our seats were pretty high up:
Here's some shots of the action:
Nagoya was outplayed in the first half and Urawa Reds scored near half time:
Here's some more action:
Here's Angus getting a close up view of the gamea and Simon cheering:
And here's Christine and Mark studying the game intently:
At half time, we were able to spot the mascot for our side, which was a cute Orca with a bow:
Fans were divided into home and away sides. Both teams had red as their main colour. Nagoya fans seemed very friendly in their light red jerseys:
They were also very supportive, although quiet as their team wasn't playing so well:
The Urawa Reds had a much darker colour of red on and they seemed more intimidating. We think that their mascot is Che:
Here's a short video of the crazy Urawa Reds fans in action:

Even thier signs and banners seemed scary:
Although some banners were a bit amusing to me:

While both teams' fans would have special cheers that they would do, they seemed like they would take turns in cheering - very considerate they were. Here's a shot of two guys with drums who were starting off the cheers for our side:
The second half of the game was fairly calm, except for the end when some players got a bit excited after a player was injured:
In the end, the Reds were too strong for our side (they actually won the Asian Champions League in 2007) but it was still a fun experience for me. Hopefully I'll see some more games in the future.

Neighbourhood cleaning

Spring has come, and so has neighbourhood clean-up time. Ayako and I were up early to go help our neighbourhood clean a local community centre. The cleaning was to begin at 8:00 a.m. so we got there 5 minutes early. Our neighbours, however had already been cleaning from 7:45. With so many hands getting to work, everything was finished by 8:10. I heard that we'll be doing some beach cleaning at the beginning of June.
After that short warm-up for cleaning, we drove to the south part of Tenryu River to help with cleaning the beach with some friends. Along the way, we could see many other neighbourhoods doing some cleaning as well. Here's Ayako getting ready to work hard:
We walked towards the beach and found lots of garbage along the way, including TVs, fridges, rice cookers and many shoes:
About 20 people came out to help pick up garbage. Here's a shot of some of them carrying a large fridge off the beach:
I was able to take the last picture from a small lookout. Turning 90 degrees gave me the next shot of the walking/bicycling path that runs along the beach ('hama' in Japanese) through the pine trees ("matsu" in Japanese). Thus, the name of our city, Hamamatsu.
Afterwards, we gathered at Mike's for a BBQ lunch and enjoyed talking and eating together:

Princess Parade 2009

For the third straight year, Ayako and I visited the Princess Parade (& festival) in our local town. It was a cloudy & cool day but we could still rode our bicycles there. Just by our house, there is a small playground where the cherry tree was in full bloom and so we could get a nice picture of it:
On the way to the festival, there was a pretty peach tree that was also in bloom:
Here's a shot across the river looking at the main festival area with the cherry blossom walking path behind it:
And here are some photos on the walking path with cherry blossoms making a wonderful canopy over the path:


And here's a close-up of some sakura flowers (cherry blossoms):
We had a little picnic while we waited for the parade to come by our area:
And finally the parade came by:
Here's a picture of this year's princess dressed in orange:
I don't think she's as pretty as the princess from two years ago but at least she's much prettier than last year's princess. We had hoped to ride our bicycles around town so we could watch some more of the parade but it started raining and so we headed home early. Oh well, at least we could get to enjoy most of the festival before the rain came.

Photonics class party

On Friday night, I had another farewell party for one of my company classes. They all work for Hamamatsu Photonics, which I recently wrote about when I went to the Photon Fair. This class had the highest level of English compared to my other classes, so we could have some good discussions in class. I taught them for two and a half years and they'll be another class that I will really miss teaching. Anyway, here are some shots from the night:


I hope I'll get a chance to meet with them again in the future sometime.

Trip to Irago

On Wednesday and Thursday, I got to start my new job by going on a trip with the first year students in my department (International Communication). We had an hour bus ride down to the tip of the Irago peninsula, where we stayed at a hotel that had a great view of the surrounding area. Here is a shot at sunset from inside the hotel:
I got to listen to many speeches and presentations. Luckily, I didn't have to give any. It was a good opportunity to meet the other staff in my department as well as some of the students. On the next day, I went up to the roof of the hotel to see the wonderful view:


Here's a photo of my two co-workers, Carrie and Siân:
It was nice having a relaxed atmosphere for my first few days of work. On Tuesday, I'll have to actually do some work when I start teaching classes.