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.

Visiting in Iwami, Adventuring in Hyogo...

Sailing the sea of Japan, departing from the Port of Iwami-cho.

The waterfront is often very rocky, but it makes for some great formations.

They're big on squid here. This guy spins and air dries the scallywags.

They sell squid ink (or maybe octopus ink) ice cream. Tastes just like Vanilla, but...

...it blackens the tongue.


Later, we went to the beach, and got to catch a beautiful sunset (as well as throw the frisbee around, which was much needed).

On our way to Takeda castle...but somehow we wound up lost. Adventure, huzzah!

Aha! Found it!




There's many a great view to be had from this mountaintop castle.

Here's the layout of Takeda castle. Totally worth the trip.

Travels to the Beach

Beautiful Kozomi Beach.

Sea Urchin? But she's too far away!


Apparently you can break 'em open and eat them! How cruel. Also, it's a lot of work crushing that tough guy shell to get to the sensitive urchin interior, and there isn't much to be had for it.

I have a waterproof camera. Whee!

This weekend I went to the beach for a party there--one of the Japanese girls who is apparently pretty good friends with a lot of the JET guys invited a bunch of people to the beach to camp out. There was a pretty good mix of JETs and Japanese, so it was nice to have some new people to talk to and to work a bit of Japanese practice in there. Fireworks were lit. We camped out (despite the rain. Tottori just dealt with the remnants of a typhoon) and the next day it cleared up a bit and we spent most of the morning and afternoon on the beach. I finally got to bust out my disc and throw for the first time in a month or so, too, which was remarkably liberating despite my being terribly rusty/out of shape.