I didn’t get a chance to play a match in the first tournament here in Karuizawa. The way these tournaments work is that if you have a world ranking then you are basically guaranteed a spot in the tournament. If not, then it’s a gamble. If you do, however, have a national ranking then that helps. I have neither, so my entering these tournaments is an even bigger gamble. And this is just for the qualifier to the tournament. If you win a few matches in the qualifier, then you’re in the actual tournament, or what’s called the main draw. Luckily, though, the tournament next weekend, which is in some place an hour’s bus ride from here, still has spaces available in the qualifying draw so I think I should have a better chance of getting into that one.

Still, coming here has very much been worth it, even for the tennis. Although I haven’t played any matches in the actual tournament I have gotten to practice with a few Japanese guys over the last couple days. And since the main draw begins tomorrow, the players who automatically got into the main draw have arrived and practiced yesterday and today. If you get into the main draw automatically that means your world ranking is relatively high, and if your world ranking is high that, as you might guess, means you’re very good. So just watching the main draw players has been enjoyable. Two of the guys who are in the main draw are from Taiwan and I spoke with them some this afternoon after I overheard them speaking Chinese. I hope to get to know them better this coming week and the next week as almost everyone, myself and the two Taiwanese included, will go on to the following tournament in the next town. I’d like to hear what they have to say about mainland China and some of the issues that come up over there.

One funny thing about tennis here, and I found this as well in China, is that just because you play tennis or are watching tennis from nearby doesn’t mean you can’t smoke. In China, I played a few times with a couple high-school aged guys (I say “aged” because they no longer attend school but, instead, only play tennis) whose parents came out to watch and smoked as they sat on the sidelines. Then there was an instructor on the court beside us who took a smoke break on the bench as his student picked up the balls from the court and put them back in the basket In Karuizawa, I saw one player smoking a cigarette about five minutes before going on court to practice before his match. And then of course, there’s a designated smoking area in the viewing area situated in the middle of the complex. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anyone in the U.S. smoking in the proximity of a tennis match.

Yesterday was the finals of the French Open between Roger Federer and the unexpected Robin Soderling. In the hopes of watching the match I asked around to see if there might be somewhere in Karuizawa that would be showing the match. Some people at the tournament helped me out by writing down some instructions on a piece of paper, which I was to give to the hotel staff where I’m staying. After I gave the paper to the same woman who seemed terrified the first night arrived (she’s seemed much more relaxed since then), she made a few calls to see if anyone knew on what channel the match might be shown. She soon found out, however, that the match was not scheduled to play on TV. After saying “tennis” while making an “X” with her fingers to indicate that I would not be able to watch the match, she sent me on my way with a bag and two cookies in it, I suppose as consolation for the letdown of not being able to watch the match. As I said in my previous post, the people are extremely nice here, and this is a good example of that.

Here are a few pictures of the tennis facility and of the place where I'm staying.







There are 10 courts total with the viewing area in between. The court surface is some sort of brown clay that I've never seen before.