Yesterday, I went to play some volleyball. Sometime 3 years ago, a group of former high school and university volleyball players got together and formed a Nagoya International Volleyball Club (NIVC). The main purpose is for volleyball of course, but other aims include getting an international community together and making some friends along the way.
One fine day, I saw the advertisement in the Nagoya Calendar newsletter and immediately jumped on it. I sent in my email, and I got added into the NIVC Facebook group.
As I went with Paul & Remy to the place, we got hopelessly lost and veered off track. We wandered around for around an hour before finding the place.
When we entered, we were greeted by Shinichi and then Tetsu, the organiser of the event. It was filled with people, probably around 30 people? Here’s the gang:
They grouped us into groups of 7 and named the teams after the nationalities of one of the team members. It didn’t matter that only one member of my team was from the UK, our team was named Team Great Britain. All in the name of fun hahaha.
Then we got down to playing. Game ends at 15 points, and the rule of deuce holds. I started to realise that this group took their game seriously. They knew the rules, they knew the rotation, and they knew strategy. We rotated positions, and took turns to spike the ball. This is a group that loves to have some good ol’ fun and laughter. There is rivalry, but it is all in good spirit. At the end of the game, you laugh off the mistakes and try harder next time.
Between breaks, it was a very cool to hear stories of people from Canada, the UK, Morrocans and Americans who came over to Japan, mainly as English teachers, but also in the technology industry. It was also interesting to hear from the Japanese themselves, where Shinichi worked at a robotics company after majoring in computer science in university.
Being the first time I had played volleyball in a long time, it was good to start the ball rolling again. They are going to have another match in 2 weeks and I can’t wait to play again! It is indeed a very good idea to organise such events to get an international community together and just releasing some steam. Yarrrrr. Watch out for the next blog post, gonna write more about Japanese aesthetics and some useful Japanese grammar.
Backlog: Using たら (if), expressing obligation and its opposite | Japanese culture class (物の哀れ、侘び寂び、雅び)
NINJA WANDERER: Tales of Travels 