I left Kusatsu yesterday for Akishima, the city hosting the next tournament. I practiced some yesterday afternoon with an Australian guy I met at the last tournament and then he, myself, and another American guy practiced this morning. Thankfully, it’s a lot warmer and seemingly less humid here, which I think is because Akishima is at a far lower elevation than the mountain-town of Kusatsu. I was getting tired of Kusatsu’s rain showers that would occur just about once every couple hours. The tennis facility here is also significantly better than the last. Kusatsu only had five match courts and once practice court, all of which were in relatively bad shape.


The Akishima facility, on the other hand, has around twenty courts, all in good condition.


Like Kusatsu, Akishima’s courts are carpet, which is my least favorite surface, but I’m starting to get more used to them.

As for Akishima the city, it’s been interesting so far. It’s still relatively quiet although there are a few pockets of noisiness, specifically the game houses that I pass on my way to the courts.

I’m not sure yet if one can gamble in these places but I’ve seen quite a few people, men and women mostly in their 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, playing these games during the day and night. I walked in one briefly last night and it was the loudest, most overwhelming thing I’ve experienced in a while. In a way, it was like being back in one of the more hectic areas of Beijing.

After leaving the game room, I walked down to a manga comic book store just past the hotel where I’m staying. I find the manga style quite strange. If you just look at the covers, half of them look like relatively normal comic books with young-looking Japanese characters with those big, glassy eyes on the cover. But then the other half has that same style of animation except sexed up. Various parts of the female characters’ bodies are proportionally absurd and they’re dressed in very provocative clothing. I don’t know which demographic these things appeal to but last night the store was mostly populated by men who looked like they had just come off work and were coming by do to their regular evening browse of the manga store. Every convenience store also has a manga section alongside the other regular magazines and whenever I walk by one I see people of all ages checking out the latest comics.

That’s something strange that I’ve come across since I’ve been here. Now for something somewhat funny: my hotel room. I was a bit spoiled last week by my spacious living conditions, which included a small kitchen. My room here in Akishima, however, is quite small and without a kitchen. When I’m just in my room, I’m able to side step and weave my way around my things fairly well, but the bathroom is much harder to manage. Just picture what an airplane bathroom might look like if it had a shower and that’s basically my bathroom. And if I were about 3 inches taller I would probably have to stoop down every time I went in there. So for anyone around six feet three inches or taller planning on going to Japan, you best watch your head.

I’ve got a match tomorrow so I’m mostly going to be hanging around today not doing too much. In the meantime, though, I’ve got to figure out how to repair the handle on one of my rackets. I’m using a couple of cheap Chinese-made rackets, brand-name “Poems”, which have been fine, until yesterday. About thirty minutes into my practice session I noticed that the handle felt a bit funny. What had happened was that the staples holding the cap onto the bottom end of the handle had come loose. That problem only got worse as I hit so I now need to find someone with a staple gun. That should be a very useful word to know for the future.