New Years in Japan

New Years, or Shogatsu here, is the most important holiday throughout the year in Japan
One webiste said "Years are traditionally viewed as completely separate, with each new year providing a fresh start. Consequently, all duties are supposed to be completed by the end of the year, while bonenkai parties ("year forgetting parties") are held with the purpose of leaving the old year's worries and troubles behind."
Pretty much everything shuts down from the 1st-3rd of January and people spend the time with their families. 
On New Years Eve night exactly at midnight the Buddhist Temple bells are rung 108 times - according to Wikipedia it is to symbolize the 108 human sins in Buddhist belief, and to get rid of the 108 worldly desires regarding sense and feeling in every Japanese citizen. Japanese believe that the ringing of bells can rid off their sins during the previous year"

Then on the 1st - 3rd the thing to do is to go to a temple or shrine, I guess the Meiji Shrine in Tokyo has millions of visitors during these 3 days. 
Today, the 31st, we went into Tokyo and even though it wasn't the 1st yet the Temple that we went to already was preparing for people with food stands lined up outside. 

 So what do you at a temple you ask? There are many things - from offering prayer to recieving good luck.
1) Get as close as you can to the altar and cast coins or paper money. Then you clap your hands, as to summon the gods - and offer your prayer. (If you are at a local shrine where there is less money you put money into the box of offering, pull the cord to ring the bell, clap your hands to summon the gods and offer your prayer)
2) Another custom will give you a fortune. After paying a small fee - the equivalent of $1 or $2 - you shake a small box containing bamboo sticks. When one of the sticks comes out you read the number engraved on the end of it. Next to the sticks are many boxes, each with a fortune corresponding to the number on your stick. So you find your number and choose your fortune. (When we did this we had a little trouble finding the corresponding box as the numbers were Japanese characters and then when we did find it out fortune was of course in Japanese - more than likely it says we will get rich :) )
Once you have finished reading your fortune you can either take it with you or tie it to a branch/wire nearby

 
3)   Another thing you might do for good luck involves buying a little amulet/trinket which are said to carry good luck for one year. At the temple/shrine there is also a place to dispose of your good luck charm from the previous year and after the holidays they are ceremoniously burned.

Hard Off?

What if I told you there was an arena here called Hard Off - what would you think goes on there? If your three guesses had to with: balls, getting down and dirty and an 18 yr old age limit, 2 of your guesses would be correct - it has to do with a baseball stadium.

A couple weeks ago we played up north in Niigata. As we were driving to one of our games I saw a sign for Hard Off stadium. I had to admit I chuckled a little to myself as I didnt see that one coming. Here in Japan there are a series of stores with the ending of 'off.' Hard Off, at least to me, has to have to most interesting name of the group but others include Garage Off, Off House, Book Off, Mode Off and Hobby Off. All are 2nd hand goods stores specific to a certain type of good and the stores are quite large (as an example hard off sells hardware, book off sells books, dvds, cloths, purses, sporting goods) We actually got a lot of Mylas b-day presents at Book Off and saved a lot of money.
If we need something these are the stores we will probably look to first. They are great stores and seem to have most everything but I have to say the names are a little eye-catching.
Its probably a good thing that the Hard Off stadium is a baseball stadium and doesnt have anything to do with the bj basketball league I play in.
I can see it now.....tonights matchup at Hard Off features two greats from the bj league -
now that might need an under 18 warning :)

Tokyo Midtowns Lights and Illumination Show

I forgot to include these 2 videos with the last post - these are from our trip into Tokyo in early December to look at the Christmas lights.
These 2 videos are from Tokyo Midtown - their lights and illumination show

Christmas!

Merry Christmas!!
I hope the holidays are going great for you and you're able to spend some quality time with family. Here we have just put Myla to bed and are getting ready to put the presents under the tree and some cookies (or other sweets) out for Santa so he will be good to us this year :)
You may be wondering if they celebrate Christmas here and the answer is yes. Christmas here though is very detached from God. Christmas means presents and reindeer and Santa, but not much more. We have been told that many Japanese people don't believe in any thing, any God, or if they do most people are not Christian.
The Japanese culture, at least from what I have seen so far, is a gifting culture. Many fans give gifts to players after the games here (I have been lucky enough to be on the recieving end a few times - please see the next post about what fans gave us for Christmas), and I think it is a common thing to give a gift and not just for Christmas. Here though the Christmas music started on the 1st of November. We practice in a public facility. The arena we use has three courts on it and we only practice on one of them. During practice, or probably the whole day, they have music playing softly through the speakers and since November 1st the Christmas tunes have been going steady. Hard to have a bad day with the Christmas songs to brighten the day.
I would have to say though that it isn't quite as big here as it is in the states. Many stores carry Christmas stuff, but it will be only one tiny section in a store rather than a whole area devoted to it. And we have been able to find some houses with Christmas lights on them, but they are quite scattered and few and far between. We did make it in to Tokyo about 2 weeks ago though to see two different mall's Christmas lights (Roppongi Hills & Tokyo Midtown) - it was pretty cool!
This is the first time in 4 years though that I have been off the 24th and 25th and we are fully enjoying spending these two days together. Hope all is well where you are and Merry Christmas.

Gifts for us from fans

We are lucky...we have some great fans. Here is a picture of some of the gifts they gave us after the games on the 22nd and the 23rd of December. (I am even missing a very nice Christmas stocking that one of the fans gave). I guess I do have to be honest - some of this was for Katy and me, but a lot was for Myla - she's a lucky girl :)

Earthquake

     Last week there was a 7.3 earthquake to hit off the coast of Japan. I think the news made it seem a little worse than what it was though. Here by Tokyo the earthquake we felt was in the 3's or 4's someone said. Those numbers dont really mean a whole lot to me yet, but I am beginning to understand the scale a little. I just hope we dont have to understand the force of a 6 or 7. The earth quake was way in the north, of the coast a ways, and 22 miles deep underwater. There were tsunami warnings (3 feet in some places, 1.5 feet in others) for the northeast coast, but here in Tokyo we didnt have to worry about that. So far we have probably felt 20 or more little earthquake during the night or some during the day - lasting only a few seconds and not very strong. The earthquake last week was a little different. I was in the locker room after practice and things started to shake a little. I thought it was just another little one, but the intensity picked up and it kept going. The bench I was sitting on was moving and the room was visibly shaking. Out in the gym there was a badminton practice going on and they quickly hurried all the people outside. My coach said he was standing by the glass entry/exit doors and quickly got away from them in case they were to shatter. The earthquake probably went for 15-20 seconds. That may not seem very long, but count to 15 seconds in your head - now imagine everything is shaking and you have no control/cant do anything to stop it. It feels like much longer believe me.

     Being from WI, were not really used to the earthquakes (the California boys said the happen much more frequently out here too) nor did we have a plan of what to do in case a big one were to hit and all power were to go out.. We now have a plan on what to do to be prepared just in case - where to meet, extra food and water and how to try and get a hold of family back home. It wasn't that bad of an earthquake and I think it was a good thing it happened.

Whats in a name?

Here in Japan the league I play in is called the bj league - for Basketball Japan (not other things). Next year for the 2013-14 season there will be an expansion team from the prefecture (state) of Nara. Part of setting up a team is to decide what name your team will have. Here is how this team decided to choose their name.
(this is part of an article taken from Japan Times)

"Nara nickname revealed: The Western Conference's next expansion squad will be known as Bambitious Nara, it was announced on Friday before the Osaka Evessa-Shimane Susanoo Magic series opener in Kashihara, Nara Prefecture.

Bambitious Nara will enter the league for the 2013-14 season along with the Aomori Wat's.

Nara Prefecture is known for having deer, especially as part of the history of Kasuga Shrine. As noted on Wikipedia, "the path to Kasuga Shrine passes through Deer Park (in Nara)." The entry added: "In Deer Park, deer are able to roam freely and are believed to be scared messengers of the Shinto gods that inhabit the shrine and surrounding mountainous terrain. Kasuga Shrine and the deer have been featured in several paintings and works of art of the Nambokucho Period (1336-1392)."

In the 1920s, Austrian writer Felix Salten penned a book that was translated into English as "Bambi, A Life in the Woods." It was made into a Walt Disney Studios film in 1942. Bambi, a strong, cunning deer, remains one of the most well-known animals in popular culture around the world, with Salten's books being translated into a number of other languages.

With that in mind, the team created its nickname, combining Bambi and the goal to "be ambitious.""

observations 1

There are a lot of things that are different here and I will try to give some quick observations of things I notice that might not be long enough for their own post. (These are from an American/foreigner's perspective and no disrespect is meant at all - this is just the way I see it 1) for a woman's voice the desirable characteristics seem to be high pitch and nasaly, where the higher pitched your voice is and the more nasaly it is the more attractive you are. Sometimes voices - especially with people on radio and tv - are hard to listen to because of this fact. 2) In Japanese "hi" means yes. So if someone asks a question a normal response would be "hi." For an English speaking foreigner this leads to some pretty funny telephone conversations. Think about when you are on the phone how often you say yes, uh huh, yep, yeah or any other similar phrase to mean yes. Now put your self in Japan next to a Japanese person talking on the phone where every yes is "hi." The first phone conversation I heard I almost started laughing as it sounded like the person was talking to 16 different people but only long enough to give a greeting. "Hi" "hi" "hi" "hi" the next phone conversation you have tell the person you are talking to you learner some Japanese and say "hi" every time you would say yes and see what kind of response you get :)

Trip to Akita (Northwest Japan)

Last weekend we played up in the north of the main island of Japan - in Akita. Last year when the team made the trip they took the bus and different people said the trip took between 8-10 hours. Luckily this year the team decided not to take the bus but rather the bullet train - or as it is called in Japanese - Shinkansen. The bullet train only took us 4 hours.

The bullet train has seats sort of like an airplane but with a little more knee room, and you can get up and move around whenever you want. They also have a snacks cart that comes through every so often and offers snacks for purchase. And if you happen to be able to fork over the money for a first class ticket they have a first class cabin. We just saw it through the window and it looked pretty nice.
The tickets for the bullet train for our trip, there and back (round trip) costed 35,000 yen - so with the exchange rate that would be $425.
If your wondering how fast the trains go they can reach speeds of 240–300 km/h (149–186 mph) and they have plans to increase speeds on one of the routes to 320 km/h (199 mph).
Last weekend we played Akita and they are near the top at our conference. We played a great 1st half the first game, but then it seemed like we got content and stopped moving and attacking the second half and ended up losing. In the second game (we play Saturdays and Sundays here) we played a lot better and played solid the whole game and ended up winning.

Been a while

Well...its been 3 months since we have been overseas and I am now putting up our first blog entry. Nice work self. Hopefully it wont take me 3 more months to do the next.

This year we decided to go to Japan. We are living outside of Tokyo about an hour or so by train, by car its..... a lot longer - but the wonders of driving here will be another post. We are living in a state (in Japan it is called a prefecture) called Chiba. Hence the name of our team - the Chiba Jets. The city we are living in is Funabashi and even though it is in another state and a ways outside Tokyo, it, in a way seems like it is all one big city. There isnt much seperation, if any, from one city to the next and when you go from Chiba to Tokyo (which is also a state - and a city) there is a little sign that says now in Tokyo even though the buildings havent stopped or there isnt any break.

Our city which is located to the east of Tokyo has a population of somewhere around 610,000 people. Not small, but when you consider it is part of the Tokyo metropolitan area which has a population of 35 million it seems like a drop in the bucket.
It took us a while to get settled in but we feel we have now adjusted and are enjoying our time here.
Happy Thanksgiving to all the people back in the states and if your out for Black Friday doing some shopping have fun and try not to get run over.

Sidewalk Sweeper (Living in Austria)

This post goes along with the last one. This past week the work crews came around to our neighborhood and picked up all the rocks that they had put down in the winter (over here they don't use salt, or a salt/sand, or a salt/sand/rock mix they put down straight rocks). One of the guys here was saying that they pick up the little rocks and save them over the summer to be used again next winter. To pick the rocks up though, they don't use a lot of people with brooms and shovels instead they have mini street sweepers that fit down the small sidewalks that do the work for them (granted there is a person with a shovel to get the few that the sidewalk sweepers miss). The street sweepers back home are some big machines, where these little guys will fit right down the sidewalk no problem, and they aren't intimidating if they are coming right at you from 10 feet away.
When they pick up the rocks it means that spring is for sure here (and it has been beautiful out), I just hope mother nature doesn't pull some WI weather stuff and send some more snow this way.

Snow - Salt right? (Living in Austria)

This is an old entry that I had written and forgot to post online. Its a little late and irrelevant, but it shows a little more into what living in Austria is like.

For the most part of this winter we have enjoyed warmer weather and very little snow (the exception being the last 2 weeks where it has been very cold and the last 5 days where it seems to have snowed every day). With the multiple days of snow there was a lot of shoveling that needed to be done and, you would think, salt needed to be put down so people wouldn't slip. Well, over here they do it a little different. Instead of having a big bucket of salt and walking around and throwing it down to melt the ice/snow, they have little "trucks" that they drive around on the sidewalks that put down rocks. The rocks aren't very big, maybe the size of a dime, but I guess they are supposed to help give you traction while walking on a slippery surface. I am not certain what they put on the roads but my guess is that it would be the same thing. Then once it gets warmer they hop in the little machines and come around and pick up the rocks to use again for the next. I dont think they work quite as well as the salt we would use back home, but it seems that they have a pretty slick system and if nobody falls and gets hurt it must be working.

Living in Austria - Autobahn

Here in Austria the highways (autobahns) are the easiest way to get from one place to another. Unlike back home in WI though they are not free. Here you have to pay a sort of toll so you can use the highway. But, unlike driving to Chicago there isn't nice little booths with friendly people that glady accept your money, over here you are supposed to buy something called a Vignette to put on your window. The Vignette goes on the windshield (either behind the rear-view mirror or off to the side on the upper right or left corner of your windshield - so it doesn't obstruck your view while driving) and is automatically read when you go past certain points (cameras on the highway).
The prices for a car:
10 day pass is: 7.70 Euros
A month pass is: 21.80 Euros
A year pass is: 72.60 Euros

It is possible to get to places without using the highways but it would take a lot longer, especially as there are a lot of tunnels that go through the mountains instead of going around or over them. (I think that is why you have to pay to use the highways here because of the cost to build them - they have to recoup that money somewhere - and I am sure a tunnel isnt cheap to drill)

Living in Austria - that pile stinks

This post has to do with one of the business parts of the day. I'm not talking about the one where there is a boss or you have a desk or a cubicle, the business I'm talking about has to do with reading a magazine/doing a Sudoku, possibly having some really good ideas, or maybe even just relaxing. Yep I'm talking about the business of #2, numero dos, nummer zwei.
Over here the toilets are a little bit different than the ones back home and in the spirit of trying to share what life is like over here I wanted to make sure I didn't leave anything out. In the picture you can see our lovely "toilette" (pronounced toy-let-a). You may notice that there isn't a little handle that you push down to flush. Instead the flushing mechanism in on top of the toilet. The toilets here are like back home in a way, where if you push the lever/button all the way down the toilet will flush with a lot of water. Well, this isn't always necessary, so when you push down on one side of the button and the toilets starts to flush you can also push down on the other side to stop the flow of water. Seems simple enough but I think it is a great water saving idea.
Aside from the this the toilets are pretty much the same, except for one major difference. The bowls. The bowls back home are filled with water, and describing the process aside, whatever you did flushes down in the water. Over here - not the same. The bowls are not filled with water almost all the way like they are back home. There is a ledge that catches whatever you deposit.
Have you ever walked past a fresh pile of dog poo out in the open? It stinks, and you are roughly 6 feet above it, now try sitting 6 inches above it. And then there is the problem of getting what rests on the ledge to actually go down. Have you ever stepped in dog poo and then tried to wipe it off? Not the easiest thing in the world if you don't have water. Same deal here. The ledge is without water and so your business sometimes gets stuck...not streaks, but the piles; and unless you have a toilet brush handy you're better think quick...dook and dash (like dine and dash) or find some way to get it to go down.
Being the reader-of-this-blog-loving-person that I am I will give you some tips if you ever find yourself in Europe at business time.

1) You can put a couple strips of toilet paper down which will act as a barrier on top of the ledge and send what is supposed to go down where it is supposed to go. (this however doesn't alleviate the smell.

2) The better option is to push the flush button as you go (remembering that you can stop the flow of water as well). You can still crack the magazine, think, or work on that Sudoku but this way you can do it in a non-terrible-smelling environment (the people after might thank you as well :) ).

Sledding.......For Real

What do you do if you are by the Alps, but shouldn't ski as it could be really bad for your job (ex - hurt your knee or break your wrist)....GO SLEDDING!
Last week on Monday a teammate and I drove 2hrs45mins to a sledding hill - Wildkogel am Bramberg. It might sound kind of crazy but this place was cool. When we got there we rented sleds, and the sleds aren't your average plastic sled you can get at Walmart, or a saucer or inner-tube; these were the real deal. They were made out of wood and had metal lining on the two rungs that made contact with the snow. Then there was a woven net that you sat on and you had a rope to hang onto that could help you steer. - we asked how much it would cost to buy one of these sleds new - 140 euros (thats like $190)
To get to the top of the hill (mountain) we took a gondola up. Once we got a ways up we thought this was going to be awesome because the run looked so long and it turned out we were only halfway up the hill. At the top of the mountain we could see so far and see many of the different alps and we could barely see the houses at the bottom - which was awesome because we knew we were going to get to ride a sled the whole way down.
The sled run was 9 miles long (14kms) and the internet says it takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour depending on your skill level and how fast you can go. We did it twice. The first time it took us closer to an hour, especially as we stopped halfway down for a little break to warm up (they had a hut/bar/small restaurant halfway down that you could stop and grab something to eat/drink and warm up). Because we both didn't bring super warm boots and winter clothes - we had basketball shoes and thin winter coats- we took advantage of this. (And before the second run we stopped at the restaurant at the top of the hill and grabbed a hot chocolate and warmed up our toes).
The first run may have been a little slow and with a couple crashes into snow banks, but after we warmed our toes up and it was time for the second run it was game on and we hauled arse. The second time down we passed other sledders and even a lady on skis-we for sure made it down in 20 or so minutes. And the cool part about the 2nd time down is that we did half of it at night with the lights on. The run we did is actually the longest floodlight toboggan run in the world and we wanted to make sure we experienced that night aspect of it too.
I can't tell you how fast you get going but there were times where we were cruising. It was so cool....I definitely recommend if you get the chance to do something like this to do it!; and I am hoping that I will also get the chance to do it again.

Katy at home

The apartment here in Austria has a been a little quiet the last 1.5 weeks as it has just been me here. Katy flew home almost 2 weeks ago with Myla and spent time at home visiting her and my family.
Even though Myla was only 3 months old when she flew on the plane, Katy said she did really good. She only had one meltdown and that is because she was really tired. Otherwise, when she was awake she was people watching and flashing that bright smile at anybody who stopped to say hi. (I think she really likes to be where there is a lot going on so she can see whats happening). When you get on a plane and see a baby you get a little worried, at least I do. But Katy said that the other people on the plane really liked her and had a lot of fun with her.
While at home Katy got to see a lot of our families and many people got to meet Myla for the first time. Myla got to meet many of her cousins and had some fun playing with them. Katy said they were pretty busy while they were back but said she really enjoyed the time with everyone!
They fly back this week and I am very excited to see my two girls again and give them both big hugs. Two weeks doesn't seem like it would be that long, but it felt like it was a long time and it will be good to have them back.