Tennis

Today I played tennis for the first time in years. Last weekend I had seen Yagi, Kim, and Kimino heading out, and they had invited me to join. I didn't get many details, but my impressions of high school club activities (practice every day until 6, spend weeks learning every small part of every movement) made me wary. They planned to start going on Saturdays and Sundays. I made sure it was okay if I went only occasionally, and they laughed. I should have realized who I was talking to: high school teachers hardly ever get Saturdays off, so they won't be able to go every weekend, either.

I bought a racket at Osada (the closest we have to a Wal-Mart), got my two-liter bottle of water ready, and set off with Yagi at around 5. She was late on account of badminton practice, of which she is the new coach and which she had forgotten about. Practice was at the tennis courts in Izuhara General Park, a place in Kuta I'd never heard of.

The first thing I noticed was that the court surface was sandy turf, not paved. The second thing I noticed was that, though there were about eight people there, nobody was lined up for the kind of formal drills I'd expected. Four were playing doubles, and the other four were just hitting back and forth to each other, practicing.

Yagi introduced me to the teacher, Nishigami. He looks like he's in his mid-30s (which, based on my experience with apparent age among Japanese people, means he's probably ten years older), and he's very nice. Though he's apparently the main teacher, I quickly discovered there wasn't any structure to speak of. He gave advice to people along the way, but so did several others. Everyone seemed to be helping each other out.

Anyway, Yagi and I met Ms. Noguchi and started hitting the ball around. Ugh. I knew how to make contact, but that was about it. I played with Mom, Dad, and Heather one summer about nine years ago, and never got far beyond slapping the ball over the net. Trying a full forehand was, to put it lightly, awful.

After watching for a few minutes, Nishigami came in and gave us each some advice. He explained basic forehand technique--turning your wrist as you hit it gives spin, but that's tricky, so lay off that for now; rotate your body with your arm; keep the face of the racket perpendicular to the ground as you make contact. He was careful not to blow my mind with too much tutelage in one session, and I made some decent improvements just from what he told me.

I introduced myself to a few of the other players, but didn't stand a chance of remembering all their names the first time around. I contented myself by learning Nishigami and Esaki, a funny guy who studies Korean.

Afterwards, the three of us went to dinner with Kim. We ate at Otako, a tonkatsu restaurant I'd been to with Aaron and Evelyn last year. In most restaurants in Izuhara, you feel like you're eating in someone's living room. I'm pretty sure this place is the lady's living room. It's run by a sweet old lady (I think I heard she's in her 80s), and the food is cooked by Esaki, who might be her son. We got a table and ordered bite-sized katsu and chijimi. It was delicious.

Seated near us was a pair of guys enjoying their after-work dinner and beers. The drunker (and, thus, less inhibited) of the two began talking to me. He asked the basic questions: where I'm from, where I work, how old I am. When he asked my name, I responded as I always do in Japan: first with the English pronunciation, and then the Japanese pronunciation, which makes the as sound like Spanish, removes stress from the syllables, and turns the m into a slight moo. He promptly called me "Adamo," which got the girls rolling. I laughingly and politely corrected him, but he got it wrong again. His friend, having been trying to restrain him since his first question, finally succeeded, and the two paid and left.