Basketball is Universal.....

My long-time blog followers and loyal fans :) sorry I have not been posting recently.  I have been traveling around from San Francisco to Beijing, Beijing to Seoul, Seoul to Tokyo, Tokyo to Beijing, Beijing to Tokyo, Tokyo to New York City, and last weekend was my first weekend back in Japan since the beginning of August.  Crazy huh?  So how did I spend my first weekend back?  Well, I played in a 3 on 3 basketball tournament in the city of Matsumoto in the Nagano prefecture.

It took about 3 hours to get here on train from the Shinjuku station in Tokyo and a group of about 20 of us (3 teams entered in the 3 on 3 tournament) traveled together.  It was a great time traveling with a bunch of people I haven't met before and all of them were very welcoming.  Most of them, like me, moved out to Tokyo to work and a common interest -- basketball -- has brought them all together.  Here is a group picture of all of us.  



As we arrived into Matsumoto to play in the basketball tournament, it was quite the gathering of locals.  There were 64 teams total.  Saturday was group play where you had to be the top two teams of your group of 4 to make it into the tournament.  There were 16 groups and 4 courts.  Luckily, Taco Bell A made it out also known as Batman.  We named all our teams Taco Bell A, B, and C because a guy known as Tako organized the tournament for us.  We were the only ones that traveled from outside of Nagano to play and it was fun to be amongst so many local japanese folks.

Below are pictures of Taco Bell A (Batman), Taco Bell B (Superman), and Taco Bell C (Popeye).

Two of the three teams made it into the second day with our team easily getting out of Round 1.  Unfotunately, we met some tough competition late in the second day and came short of the championship. 

Below are more photos for your enjoyment, much more posts to come (next one will probably be about the Onsen in Matsumoto)

Take care my loyal followers.