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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us July 28, 2005 Practice, tours and old friends Robbie Bruce Wednesday began early again, as we needed to be at the field by 8 a.m. This is because we are going on tours in the area after our practice. This is especially hard on the long-distance home-stayers, as that puts them on their trains an hour earlier, at 6 a.m. I’m thankful for my 40-minute journey. Practice was broken down into team offense, goal line defense, kickoff coverage, punting and punt defense, plus the coach introduced three new plays. It’s pretty impressive to see the amount of training we get into the limited time to practice. It seems to be coach (Charlie) Hall’s system that we’re learning at a really good level of efficiency. He also spends time talking to us about what to expect. He talks of a positive mental attitude, especially in the face of adversity. For example, we’re experiencing jet lag, heat and humidity that we are not used to and changes in the food we eat. This is a good lesson for all of us in not only playing the Japanese, but in preparation for the regular season. Whether we win or lose (naturally we want one for the “W” column) I think the expectations are to come out and make a really good showing and use this as a learning experience. If we come back and have accomplished this, we will have succeeded, win or lose. Coach Mitzell mentioned to me the other day that he thought the team was coming together, doing better as a unified group. He thinks being in a foreign country helps. Although we’re not threatened, there is definitely a safety in numbers type of feeling since everything is so alien to us. He also thinks this is a great bonding opportunity for us with Coach Hall before our regular season starts. It will help us know what to expect. When practice ended, I went over to the sidelines and was surprised to find my good friends Yoong-Yang and Haru standing there. They were the Japan all-stars who stayed with us when Japan came to Ashland two years ago. They were awesome guys, and I was so happy to see them. Haru gave me two hats, two T-shirts and towels from his college where he is still playing football as a running back (he was a linebacker in Ashland). Yoong-Yang honored me with his No. 38 football jersey that he wore when his high school won the national championship 2 1/2 years ago in Japan. It was great to see them, and I hope they can come to see our game. Right after practice we jumped on these really cool tour buses. The air conditioning feels so good. We went to Kyoto, which is about 30 miles — oops, 50 kilometers (that’s what they use here) northeast of Osaka. We took the tollway (there are not really any “freeways” in Japan, as you have to pay to drive on them) through the foothills to Kyoto. Kyoto was once the capital in the seventh century (no, I don’t know history that well — Dad looked it up in his Japan tour book) and has 1.5 million people (every city here seems to have millions of people). The city was very interesting, and there are almost 2,000 temples or shrines. We went to one of the three palaces, called Nijo Castle. Nijo was used by lords of the region called shoguns and was built in the early 1600s. Almost every room has extravagant paintings and carvings on the walls, and there were three special rooms for the ministers who reported directly to the lords. It had a lot of very interesting things that were very well thought out. For example, to protect themselves against any invaders who got onto the palace grounds, the floors were designed to squeak whenever anyone walked on them so it would warn them of intruders. These floors surrounded the rooms around the shogun’s quarters and were used to house soldiers. It also had trap doors in the ceilings so samurai soldiers could pounce on any unsuspecting trespasser (thanks for that tidbit, Mom). The shogun had a special room that was his quarters and was very cool, too. There was a courtyard surrounding his area, and traditionally, the only people allowed entry into the shogun’s area were women, since they were less threatening. We finished the tour walking through the gardens, which were very beautiful. Next we bused over to a Universal Studios type of a place. When we entered the property, one of the first spots we came to was a shop that sold katanas — samurai replica swords. We nearly emptied the place of katanas, as over half of the players bought one. Don’t worry, moms and dads, we’re not intending to carry them onto the field of play — they’re just good replicas for us to have at home to remember our trip. The studio was a huge complex that looked like a traditional Japanese village. It had a theater that showed how special effects were done and a stage with traditional samurai acting and fighting. I didn’t understand anything they were saying, of course, as it was in rapid fire Japanese, but the story was cute. The highlight of the place was a haunted house. It was really good and unbelievably scary. It had a mix of both robotic and real people in it and spooked everyone pretty good. The last stop was at Kinkaku-ji, or the Golden Temple. It is an incredible gold building setting in a forest and gardens surrounded by a huge pond. The original was built in 1397 for one of the shoguns of the time (thanks again, Mom!). In 1950 a young monk obsessed with the temple burned it to the ground, and it was rebuilt from the original plans a few years later. It’s three stories high, and the top two stories are covered entirely with gold foil (we’ll have to talk to Steve Dierks to see if they bought the foil from ESPI). It must make the building awfully heavy. After that, it was back on the buses to go back home with our host families. We’re having a great time. Tomorrow we take the bullet train to Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb was dropped during World War II. So we have another 8 a.m. start time. Until then, sayonara. Robby Bruce is an Ashland High football player who traveled to Japan with the team to play the Japanese all-stars in Saturday’s Pacific Rim Bowl. To contact Bruce, send him an e-mail at [email protected]. To comment on this article, contact Daily Tidings Sports Editor Joe Zavala at 482-3456 ext. 3020 or [email protected]. 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