Last summer, when I was heading on to Norway after a summer of study in Seoul, my fellow passengers and I found ourselves on the plane with the North Korean national soccer team. On Monday I began a repeat of last summer’s travel and next week I’ll begin a second summer of Korean language study at SNU’s program in Seoul. When I boarded the plan from Chicago to Tokyo (where I’m now hanging out for a week before traveling on to Korea) I found myself surrounded by Japan’s national wheelchair basketball team. One of the players was in my seat when I got there, and I got to see a performance of his amazing arm strength as he proceeded to move, with the use of his arms alone, from my seat to the one behind me.
I didn’t talk to any of players and kept my Japanese language ability “to myself,” but perhaps somewhat sneakily read over the shoulder of the team’s trainer sitting next to me. During our 12 hour flight the trainer spent several hours on two tasks: 1) He seemed to be contemplating game strategy for the team by writing notes feverishly on the back of his notepad, and evaluating the performance of the team in their last game (against Germany’s team it seems, guessing from the game performance worksheet he was filling out). 2) He spent a lot of time filling out daily workout summaries for the team. The detailed worksheets he filled out had some fascinating details. Under the category for “Morning” he wrote what they had for breakfast, and had the option of putting check marks next to two options for “A stroll” (散歩) and “Stretching.” He also detailed other meals the team ate during the day, and there was space on each worksheet for details of up to 5 daily workouts or “team gatherings” (集合) which he seemed to fill up with ease.
Most interesting was the fan mail which was, of course, none of my business, but which I read along with him nonetheless (He saw me staring at the letters but probably assumed I was a curious foreigner fascinated by all the funky Japanese characters rather than actually reading them). If any of you are fans of the Japanese wheelchair basketball team you can rest easy, your mail appears to be getting read. One particularly touching letter came from a Japanese junior high school student, who was a really dedicated fan (closing her letter with “Go Japan! Go Go Go Japan!”). After seeing its somewhat personal contents, I started feeling guilty about my reading and drifted off to sleep again.