Beach Ultimate in Akashi

A few weekends ago (June 13-14) I road tripped with a fellow Tottori JET to Akashi--about a 4 hour drive--to play some beach ultimate. The group was pretty similar to the people I played with in Awaji in April; lots of JETs from other prefectures, including Tokushima on the smaller island of Shikoku and Fukuoka, which is pretty far west on the island of Kyushu (in contrast, Tottori is on the northern coast of the southern part of Honshu, Japan's main island).

Saturday's play saw us all mixed up on different teams in a Hat Tournament (where you decide teams by drawing names out of a hat--in this case, we drew our team assignments out of a hat when we registered); most of the teams in Japan are colleges, so I got to chat and play with a handful of guys and gals around my age. I helped carry my team to a 5th-place finish out of some dozen teams. We spent Saturday night in a ryokan, a Japanese-style inn where you sleep on tatami floors with futon mattresses; all 10 of us shared a room together, which made it pretty fun, very nostalgic of sharing cabins at summer camp--thankfully there weren't any big snorers.

Rising Tide!

Sunday we played together on our own team, complete with spray-painted jerseys one of the guys had made. We played hard and well, and wound up finishing 8th out of some 26 teams or so; with a better format or seeding, we could've easily been in the finals though, since we only lost to the eventual champions. Altogether it was a great weekend that left me really excited to play more ultimate! I've only got one more tourney here (and can only make part of it), but I'm looking forward to playing some more once I'm back in the US.