Section 63 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 August 21 Thursday.
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Today the 85th Japan high school baseball tournament continued.
I won't say I'm exactly a fan, but I'm slowly starting to understand the attraction. It's intensely important for the kids, and the emotions of the players come through very clearly to the spectators. Furthermore, it's a knockout tournament - one slip and you're finished.
Today, Kiryu Dai-ichi beat Iwakuni 5-4 to make the best four. Kiryu Dai-ichi will play again tomorrow Friday 22 in the semi-finals, and then the finals will be on Saturday (weather permitting.) It's a pretty brutal schedule!
The city of Kiryu is in Gunma, so for me (because I now have personal connections to Gunma Prefecture) it's as close as I can get (in Japan) to a home team. The kanji (Chinese characters) for the city of Kiryu (the final "u" is long - "Kiryū") are:-
The first of these two characters means "paulownia tree" (whatever a paulownia tree is) and, if standing alone, can be read "kiri". The second character means "life" and is the "sei" of "human life," i.e. "jinsei":-
(How you put "kiri" and "sei" together to make "Kiryū I have no idea. But, then, Japanese was never meant to be easy.)
On the TV news today, the names of the two competing teams, Kiryū Dai-ichi (or, if you like Kiryu Daiichi) and Iwakuni were represented in kanji like this:-
(Kiryu Daiichi)
(note: the TV omitted the character for "dai", and the last of the three characters above is, in this case, read "ichi")
(Iwakuni)
(The "Iwa" means "rock" and "kuni" means "country" so "Iwakuni" means "Rock Country.")
2003 August 21 Friday.
Update: Kiryu was defeated in the semi-finals.