Weekend in Gunma

This weekend started off great. Friday the Cardinals secured their spot in the World Series, and while nobody will be watching this series I sure as hell am happy for my team. It seems like every time they do well I'm somewhere where there aren't any fans. Oh well, I still represent. Oh yeah, they also won game one of the world series.

The Cardinals' situation already had my spirits high when I boarded the train bound for Ota. I was meeting my friend and coworker, Steve, to go to the Sanyo-Kobe Steel professional Rugby game. I were joined by Steve's wife and daughter and the three of us met a few of their friends. Sanyo had a few New Zealand players on its team and a lot of the people I was sitting with were the families of some of the Kiwi players and coaches. It's hard to concentrate on a game when you don't know the rules, it's even harder when there are a bunch of cute kids running around the stands playing. Needless to say I watched about half of the game, the little ones taking the other half of my attention.

Being 22 and hanging around this older crowd was different from what I'm used to. I don't have any friends who have kids. It took a lot for me to watch my language and use baby talk that afternoon and it felt awkward having conversations with adults who had settled down and were talking to me on the same level; in other words, we didn't have a lot in common. Anyway, Sanyo won and all were happy. After the game I got to meet some of the Kiwi players and they were all really nice. I felt important being associated with these professional atheletes' families.

After the game I went home and hung out for a little bit. I then got ready and headed out to Kiryu with two of the people in our group from earlier. This last weekend a few bars in Kiryu hosted a live music night with a bunch of bands and DJs and it was called Kiryu Music Fronts. It was a lot of fun and drinks were fairly reasonable. While some of the bands weren't very good, the atmosphere was great. Hopping from bar to bar, drinking gin and tonics, and listening to live music is something I enjoyed and I did it a lot last night.

I met some cool people from the area, mostly Ota, but they were all pretty nice. Most importantly I found a few spots that seem to have things going on at night, so on weekends I'll have places to go. All in all, I didn't get home until 5 am, had a pretty good drunk going, and didn't spend too much money. Time to get ready for another week of work.