baths and baseball

The Grand View Hotel sits on the top of a mountain overlooking the ocean and the only thing separating the hotel's outdoor onsen from the sea is the distance between the two. I hadn't even heard of the place until this weekend when a friend of mine mentioned it and since I was in the mood for onsen anyways I decided to go check it out. It's always nice stumbling across new places to explore, especially after believing that everything exciting in the area has already been scouted out.

It had rained earlier that day so the sky was hazy, the humidity low, and the temperature was perfect for an afternoon bath. I hadn't been there long before a father and his two young sons joined me in the onsen. In Japanese, the father began urging his sons to introduce themselves to me so that they could practice their English. Pretending like I didn't understand what they were talking about I continued to gaze out into the ocean like I had been doing before they came. Their farther persistently pushed his children to say something to me and after about the fourth time I turned to them to say hello.

We spoke for about 45 minutes and the father asked me the all the standard first time questions that people tend to ask : He wanted to know if I had a Japanese girlfriend, if I went to McDonald's in Japan every week for lunch and dinner, If my father had a gun, and other questions of that caliber. As I was leaving he told me that earlier that morning his Chinese fortune said he would make a new friend before the end of the day. He was certain that this person was me. He told me his phone number and even introduced me to his wife once we made it back to the lobby. He wants me to come over for dinner sometime and enjoy his wife's cooking. I told him that it sounded like a great idea.

It's softball season in Nagashima and Curtis just recently joined out office softball team. A few guys in the office gave me a hard time for not joining myself, but I stood firm and said that I was more interested in celebrating with the team after the wins then actually playing in the games. We played our first game last week and lost something like 10 to 1.

Actually, nearly 1/2 of our team are also members of the volunteer fire department and recently they have been busy with training camp. Surly, when firefighter training is over then the town office team will dominate the league! Also, if you think that our team uniforms look familiar then you are correct. However, rest assured that our uniforms are not New York Yankees knock offs. The "N" stands for 'Nagashima' and in Japanese, やくば　（Yakuba) means town hall so the "Y" stands for 'Yakuba.'

I worked out with Billy today and I still feel the burn. I'll keep you posted. Thanks for reading and good night.
Spencer