shooto in toyama

sunday i went with my kboxing gym to a shooto tournament in toyama ken. i'd also invited lindsay along so she could get a sense of what i've been up to 2 days a week for the past year. after an almost all-night saturday, we met at the gym in kameda and set off at 5:30am sunday morning. it took us 4 hours to get there because for the stretch of expressway from kashiwizaki and about 20 km's west, the road is like a constant ripple of waves one after the other after the other. so they've got half of the road on either side cordoned off and you're crawling along for a good hour. i remember when the expressway was damaged near joetsu during the last big earthquake 3 years ago...it took them ages to fix.
there was a lot of sweat and tears on sunday, as a couple of the guys lost their fights. miyazaki had his shoulder dislocated but yuusuke came out on top as usual. after the fight we drove back to niigata and all went out for yakiniku. a great day. i'm really gonna miss all of this, especially kazeta, my coach.