07/06 - School Spirit

Here we go Rikkyo!

Show your school spirit; do it 

for God and country


Today I went to watch the Rikkyo University rugby team play. I have wanted to watch them for a while, since I work at the school and because I played University rugby myself. Unfortunately, the team plays and practices at the University's other campus, in Saitama, which is not very close to our campus which is in Tokyo. I planned during the week to go to the game, which was a good thing because getting there from where I live was a real pain in the ass. It did allow me though, to take the bus in Japan for the first time. I actually took two busses to get there.

I have to thank my lovely students Naoto and Toru, who are both mature students who do not actually attend Rikkyo University, but take my class during the last period of the day in order to improve their English. I have to thank Naoto because he went to the effort to print off a bus schedule for me and highlight the busses I could take from the nearest station to the rugby field. I was blown away by how nice that was. He brought it to me on Thursday and I couldn't believe it. Toru, tried to help me with some directions too, but I am thankful to him for teaching me some new Japanese vocabulary which will help me describe how I felt when I boarded a bus for the first time in Japan.

After spending a lot of time playing around on Google Maps hopelessly, I finally had to just get out of my house and take the two busses I had looked up and hope for the best. None of the directions I could find were particularly clear, even with the aid of my printed off bus schedule. I ended up having to run towards the station to make sure I had enough time to find the right bus and get on it before it's strict departure time. I asked a bus driver when I got there and found the bus. I got on, after running in the baking sun and humidity and the bus was so hot inside I thought I was going to faint. I don't think I've ever felt such heat and humidity in my life. Toru had taught me the Japanese word for "humid" after I taught him the vocabulary in English during a one-on-one lesson I had with him. It is "mushi atsui", which sounds great when you say it in a overheated. exasperated voice. The translation is the best part though, as it means something like "steam heat" or "steaming hot" and the same term is used for saunas. Toru drew a picture of steaming vegetables in the kitchen in order to explain to me what the real meaning was. When the bus driver turned the bus on I was extremely relieved that an air conditioner immediately started kicking out cold air right above my head. It was a true thing of beauty.

After finding a second bus when I got to Shiki Station, I finally got off somewhere in the region of the rugby field. I definitely felt like I was in the middle of nowhere. After starting to walk in the direction I thought was best, it was the first time since getting to Japan that I really felt I had little idea how to get home. I was surrounded by rice fields and pretty rural looking things, although there were still some shops and convenience stores here and there. I eventually asked for directions and got some half decent ones, then decided to jog to the game, since I didn't have a lot of time to spare. I ran quite a ways and again felt a feeling of relief wash over me when I saw the sports complex. It had the Rikkyo logo on it and was pretty impressive. There was a baseball field, tennis courts, an artificial turf football field, an archery space and of course a rugby field. I started watching the rugby game just a couple of minutes late, with Rikkyo down by a score of 5-0 to Sophia University, another university based in Tokyo. Less than a minute after I started watching, Rikkyo scored and took the lead 7-0. Then I noticed they had a sin-binned player return to the field and they never looked back. They ended up winning 78-5. An absolute trouncing!

The level of play was pretty good and I was much more impressed with Rikkyo after I realized that there whole team was comprised of freshman players. The other team had a mix of upperclassmen and freshman, but other than in the scrum they were no match for Rikkyo. A lot of the players were quite small, but everyone played very fast. I thought the rugby was quite reflective of how the Japanese National Team played when I watched them a few times this summer, with very speedy backs. The only negative is that the teams were a little undersized, with only a couple of props that were big fellas. My old rugby coach, boss and good friend Kaz will be happy to know that the scrum half play was superb. He may have mixed feelings about my opinion that teams like UBC and UVic would be pretty competitive, maybe even better a lot of years, if they played University teams here. You never know exactly how they'd stack up, unless somebody comes over on a tour, Which they should definitely do!

Some interesting aspects of the game were that Rikkyo changed there jerseys at half time, going from red to yellow, neither of which are the school's traditional purple. After the game, both teams bowed to each other, as well as to each other's benches and each other's fans. It was a lot of bowing. Then the Rikkyo team were all given sheets of paper with their names, hometowns and positions on them and introduced themselves to the crowd. Some of the introductions were very funny and got big laughs, but I could only understand bits here and there. The funniest thing I understood was when one player announced his position as "Lock-o-manic-o!", a mix of Lock and maniac. There is always a lot of ceremony after rugby games, but this amount was unlike anything I've seen before.

Before I left I checked out the Rikkyo American Football field and saw some of the team's helmets. When I was checking it out, a player from the team who was working out popped his head out of the adjacent gym and yelled "It's FOOTBALL field!" as though I was looking at it and taking a picture because I had no idea what it was. Little did he know how much of my life I have spent around football fields.

On the way home I met an old guy at the bus stop who had seen me at the game. We chatted rugby and he asked me about playing in Canada. He assumed I was a lock because I am tall for a Japanese person, but I told him I was nowhere near the height of our Locks in Canada. He worked as a translator for Electronics Instruction Manuals, so his English was very good but at times overly formal. I thought it was really funny how he told me he thought it had been an even match and Rikkyo were lucky to have won because the other team's scrum was superior. I laughed and told him that you can't be lucky to win when you outscore the other team by 73 points.