Rememer that whole hospital thing?.....Yeaaaaaaaaah.....

So I spent the whole day with our team trainer at the hospital, getting xrays, ct scans, an EKG, blood tests, lung capacity tests, etc. Only to get a call tonight from the club saying that I can't have surgery because the insurance runs out after the season ends. So I'm shit out of luck.

This is after I first found out that I needed surgery last November. I talked to the team and decided to play through the season and have it after the season. Now the season is over and they're asking me for rent (after telling me the whole season I can stay May for free) and telling me I can't have surgery. Up to this point the LakeStars organization has been pretty good. I've certainly enjoyed my time here, and while there have been a few minor complaints, it was overall pretty good. But this last month the team has gotten super sheisty.

I don't know what to say. I guess I'll be coming home next week. Now I have more time off, not sure what I'll do. On the positive side I won't have to spend $600 for rent and $1000 for the surgery....

It's interesting, fans often get upset at professional players because of a perceived lack of loyalty when the player chooses to sign elsewhere for more money or elects to have surgery or not to play. I've been guilty of this myself many times; I still hold a grudge against Alex Rodriguez because he left the M's (to clarify: I don't blame him, I just hate him. Hey I didn't say it was rational). Now I promise never to make that mistake again. Professional athletics is a shady business, teams abuse players bodies and then dump them.

In my case, I had a conversation with the team where I said I would play out the season and then get surgery in the offseason. They said the insurance would cover it, they even said I could stay for free in May (to be fair, they said these two things at separate times). It sucks for me, I could have had the surgery done with now and been feeling better than the beat up feeling I have right now.

Sitting here in the moment, I'm upset cause I won't be getting surgery. I'm upset at my team for playing with me like this. Maybe it sounds sappy but I hope this doesn't sour my experience in Japan. I've loved living here, hopefully these last shitty memories don't skew my overall time here. Guess we'll see.


On the plus side...SEATTLE!

And then I found out I'd be in a Japanese hospital for two weeks

Last time I wrote I wrote about not knowing my immediate future and whether or not I would get surgery here in Japan. Well the past 12 hours have cleared that up. Within the past 12 hours I have discovered that I am now scheduled for surgery on May 1 (that's Friday...it's Tuesday night here), I have a rare disease that affects one out of a million people (Dysplasia Epiphysealis Hemimelica) and that I should expect to spend half of May in a Japanese hospital taking drugs from people with whom I have no means to communicate (other than charades).

Oh and if I don't want to pay any rent for May (you know, when I'm spending all my time in a Japanese hospital) I have to have all my stuff out and packed before I go to the hospital. Only problem is that I go to the hospital Thursday morning. Wednesday night I have a team banquet, and Wednesday during the day I hope to go to Kyoto to get some books for my medically-induced Japanese immersion tour. I also have to go the eye doctor and get some contacts.

So I went from having no responsibilities to suddenly having too much to do. Good thing I thought ahead and packed up a bunch of stuff on Monday! Oh wait. No I didn't do that.

So it's entirely possible this is my last post for a while. I may have time to write one more quick one. But be warned, the next post may be all in kanji. I hope I don't lose my English when I'm in the hospital!

Season over

Well it came down to the final weekend. We were two games back with two to play, traveling to Okinawa for a match-up with the best team in the league. Unfortunately we couldn't get it done, losing on Saturday by 5. It was a close game, a few shots didn't go in and we ended up on the wrong side of a 78-73 score.

Having had our season unceremoniously ended the day before, we came back on Sunday for our last game of the season. We were spent, having invested so much in the game we lost the day before. I guess the best thing you can say about Sunday's game is that nobody got hurt. We had a few scares but nothing serious. Oh, and Ray managed to pick up his only technical of the season with less than 2 minutes to play in the final game of the season. Sucks for him but funny timing for the rest of us.

Turns out the team ahead of us, Fukuoka, won on Sunday. So even if we had overcome the odds and defeated Okinawa twice we still wouldn't be in the playoffs. That's not much consolation, however.

Well now the season is done, I'm not quite sure what is going to happen. My parents are still here for a few days. We still are on the payroll cause we have a booster end-of-the-season party (name changed from the previous name: Playoff Send-Off Party) on Wednesday. After that we are finished with our obligations.

I'm not sure when I will be returning Stateside. I had planned on staying in Japan and getting knee surgery, but after saying I could stay for free in May my team is now asking me for rent money. I'm talking to them, we'll see what happens. My surgery is set for May 16, if I can get it moved up I will certainly stay and have it done. Insurance pays 70% here, and considering I don't have insurance in the States, that's not such a bad deal. If I can't move the surgery up and the team is still making me pay rent, I'm not sure what I will do.

At present I am unable to say with any certainty what continent I will be on 10 days from now. I suppose I can say with 100% certainty that I won't be on Antarctica. So there is that. But yeah, who knows where I will be. So now it's back to the weightroom to get ready for next season.

Some pictures...

These are borrowed from the blog link I posted earlier.

Game pictures...

So for those of you who want to see some game photos, my coach recently told me about a Japanese blog with a lot of photos of LakeStars games. I guess it's is all about the LakeStars. Anyway, here is the link.

For those of you who want the URL: http://topics.shiga-saku.net/

Some cool photos on there of the last couple games.

Sakura

Springtime in Japan is awesome. Really great weather. Japan has a very similar climate to DC, so the winters are bone-chillingly cold and in the summer you can go for a swim without jumping into the water. The sticky humidity here in Japan made for some interesting practices, especially when you add in the fact that there is no air conditioning in the gyms. But having extreme weather in the summer and winter brings some advantages. Spring and fall are absolutely gorgeous. Just today I made guacamole and sat out by the lake under the sakura in the 80 degree weather.

I had never heard of Sakura until I went to school in DC. Washington is pretty famous for it's cherry blossoms, drawing more than 700,000 visitors a year to the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Basically, I thought DC had some kickass cherry blossom trees.

Until I came to Japan.

The sakura here in Japan are phenomenal. They are ubiquitous, and their size range is much more variable than the DC trees. I have seen trees twice the size of the biggest trees I saw in DC. The sakura also are very special to the Japanese people, so there are a few traditions that go along with them. The most famous tradition is called hanami. It boils down to sitting under the sakura and drinking beer. The second part of the tradition is that the girls of the group prepare a picnic. My kind of tradition!

On our last off-day, Ryan (other tall white guy), Mike (red checkered shirt), Su (red track jacket) and myself traveled to the Kano river in Kyoto to...look at sakura and drink beer. Mike's girlfriend came along with some of her friends. So the girls made (great) homemade Japanese food and we hung out on the river all day. It turned out to be a pretty nice day if you like 75 degree weather without a cloud in the sky. Everyone, with the exception of Su, made the mistake of wearing jeans. It was a bitterly bitched about point all day.

The next night I went to this famous bhuddist temple in my city called Miidera. About 7 times older than the United States, Miidera is set on a big mountain overlooking Lake Biwako. It's about a ten minute bike ride from my apartment. I hadn't been there yet, but during Sakura season it's free. They also illuminate the Sakura, so it's a pretty sweet place.