http://www.flickr.com/photos/30807472@N08/
Not too much there, just some photos I never uploaded from the fall.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The swim team
As some of you already know, I have inadvertently joined a swim team. This is how it happened:
I began swimming at my local pool (Maki Akshi) in December, but I didn't really go regularly until January. Now, this pool is odd (to me, at least) because the only open swim hours are from 8pm-ish to 9:30pm, when the gym closes. This means that anyone who wants to free swim has to go at that time. This would be chaos, if it wasn't for the fact that most of the people who swim at the pool do so in the form of 'lessons,' which I'll talk about later.
So, I began going to the open swim time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. One evening, I was getting into my usual lane to do some laps, when one of the women in the lane next to me gestured that I should get into their lane. I wasn't really sure what was going on, but I joined them and soon found myself doing a workout, consisting mostly of 25's and 50's. I managed to introduce myself to them during the resting periods, and found out some of their names.
From then on, everytime I came to the pool I noticed that the same women would be in a lane together, and they always asked me to join them. One night they mentioned a 'swim challenge' and asked if I would join them. I knew it was 1500m, but couldn't figure out much else. I agreed, and we planned to meet at the pool at 12pm on Sunday, February 1st.
As I later found out, the 'swim challenge' was basically a personal challenge at a pool near Niigata city. About 20 people came out to swim either a 500, 1000, or 1500 time trial. On the way to the pool (5 of us went in one of the women's really nice cars - it had a video showing the back of the car when it was in reverse, GPS, and lots of room) the woman who talks with me the most showed me a piece of paper with everyone's name and occupation written on it. She's a Japanese dressmaker, and the other women are a school nurse and an elementary school librarian (and I don't remember the rest...). She had also made egg salad sandwiches, and one of the other women had brought homemade mochi with a whole strawberry inside.
Even though my Japanese is terrible, and they know very little English, the camarederie of going to a pool together was wonderful. We cheered each other on and waited eagerly for each person to finish so that we could congratulate them on their time. I was surprised to find that I swam the 1500 in under 25 minutes (23.46), and a little embarassed that I beat my new friend by 10 seconds. Luckily, she didn't seem to care. One of the 'challengers' who works at the pool swam in the same heat as her father, and she made a new pool record (21 something).
I'm continuing to swim and just last night joined one of the pool's 'lessons.' My friend had left a note for me at the front desk explaining that she'd like me to join the lesson (her attempts at English impressed me and made me laugh out loud) and I decided to give it a try. It turns out that the 'lesson' is basically a workout (last night's was 1650m) guided by one of the pool's staff. It was fun to do a workout with a large group of people, but as I left the pool I found out that I have to pay an extra 2000yen if I want to keep going, so I'm undecided.
I've also agreed to take part in a prefecture-wide swim meet that will take place at my pool in April. Three of the women I've met and I will swim a relay, and I have to do at least one other individual event. I'll be doing butterfly in the relay, and I think I might do a middle-distance freestyle event for my other race.
For now, I'm really enjoying being part of the 'swim team.' The people at the pool know me now and I feel like I'm part of the community. While it is a lot of time (I go Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays), I think it's worth it, both for my personal health and the insight into Japanese life that it gives me.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
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