Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium

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**The video is of the side of the aquarium watching the big sharks go by. I didn't think the Manta Ray's got that big, but learned something that day.


With the softball tournament over and another complete day to spend in Okinawa I was looking for something fun to do rather than sit in the hotel room and watch TV. R.J. (our left center fielder) and his wife Lauren had talked about visiting the aquarium that was down here. I had expressed interest in going and so did a few other team members so they invited us to go along with them to go and see it. Reading the information pamphlet that they had on the way up there got me even more excited. On the north side of Okinawa was a huge Ocean Park Expo that included the aquarium as well as several different things to do like museums, beaches and arboretums. It would be easy to spend a week up here and do all that this park had to offer.

Being on a time budget we decided to hit the aquarium first. This place had 77 tanks and boasted the 2nd largest tank in the world. However in their eyes this one was better as it housed both whale sharks (the largest of the sharks) and manta rays together. With the three whale sharks they are hoping to see the first ever case of captive breeding. This tank was HUGE!!! You can see the pictures on my WEBSITE After staring wide eyed at the thousands of fish in this tank we got to walk under a part of the aquarium where the whales could swim over us. It just gave us another perspective on how big these creatures actually were.

After the aquarium we ventured outside where there were more exhibits on turtles, manatees, and of course dolphins. The next dolphin show was beginning soon so we took our seats in the staging area and awaited the show. The creatures in the tanks were darker than I remembered dolphins being and soon found out that they were false killer whales (I don't remember the actual name of this type of dolphin) but they were bigger than the regular bottle nose dolphins that are typically in shows. Anyways the show was like any other with awesome aerials and humorous bits (we couldn't really understand the MC but we kind of figured it out). After the show we went to the practicing tanks where the bottle noses were held. The park employees gave a tutorial on the fundamentals of the anatomy of a dolphin in a shallow pool (again in Japanese, so we just watched and didnt really learn anything) but still got to see several more stunts by the dolphins.

Kadena Klassic

The first two days of this tournament were to find seedings for the double elimination portion of the weekend. There were 5 teams in each pool and the worst team in each pool would not be invited to the bracket.

Day 1

The team was eager and excited to get going after we had to wait all day to allow for the rest of the teams to get off of work. As we started out we were a little jittery and you could tell a little nervous as most of our team has never played in such a massive tournament. It showed through a couple of unforced errors in the first inning allowing the team from the local Navy base to score six runs. However, the nervous energy turned good for us at the plate as we tied it right back up with a few homeruns over the larger fence. The second inning brought a couple more runs and then we went to take the lead with a nine run tear that put us up for good. The final score was 22-12.

Annihilation is not a term I use often and when I do it is usually describing our victories, not our defeats. However, our second game we were annihilated. American Legion won the tournament last year and competes heavily in international tournaments all over the Pacific. So to say the least they are a pretty decent team. They're first 5 hitters looked like they could start for a college basketball team as they towered over our tallest player. They came out swinging, and swinging hard. We have never had 22 runs put up against us in a single inning and I think we were in a little shock when it happened. Honestly I didn't think we were going to get the three outs needed to end the bleeding that the first inning brought about. Thankfully every innning wasn't that bad and they only scored 11 runs the rest of the game. Maybe they let up or not, I dunno. We did manage to score 13 runs ourself which was the third most runs allowed against them in the 10 games they played. Seeing this team play gave me a good perspective of how real softball is played...Final score 33-13.
(As expected these guys went on to win the tournament. The final game's score was 40-14)

Day 2

Knowing we had already played the best team in the tournament, we knew we had a chance against the next two teams. We got the cahnce to watch them the night before and knew their defense was suspect. Our first game of the night was against Camp Schwab (Schaub, Schwaub, I dunno how they spelled it). We battled back and forth similar to the night prior and found our stroke in the third inning and took the lead for good. Final score 22-12.

Our last pool game was against an 0-3 marine team. They had good hitting the whole game but couldn't score the runs and their defense wasn't very good. Our bats showed signs of struggle as we were only ahead by one run after 5 innings. Thankfully we got our one inning of solid strokes in and went on a rampage the last inning getting our 20+ score that we were looing for. Final score 21-8.

Day 3

The double elimination team started off early against the local Shoguns. They were an older team that seemed to be pretty rusty at the plate so early in the morning. Unfortunately for us, so were we. Our demise came with a couple of costly errors giving them a two run lead as we entered the bottom of the last inning. Like the slumps we were in earlier in the year we couldn't get a hit to save our lives as we dropped the first game 10-8.
(The worst part of this game was that we could of beat these guys had we hit they way we did the nights before, but they got the better of us and went on to take third place)

The next game turned out to be our last. The team that we played was staying in the same hotel as us so we had been watching them all weekend. Unfortunately they would leave with the upper hand. Our errors and cold bats continued and frustration elevated as we couldn't get much offense going. It seemed like every time we would get a run they would get 2 more and stayed just that much ahead of us the whole game. It was a bummer to see the last out but hopefully everyone learned from it. Next year we will be back and ready to play the whole weekend......

Plane Humor

Thursday we headed out for Okinawa for the Kadena Klassic in Okinawa Japan. This is a big tournament that invites all the teams in the area (Japan and Korea) to come and play softball down there. We have been practicing for the past couple of weeks with the few new players we picked up and added to the team.

The plane ride down there was an interesting one. All of us were split up with our seating and me and John (our pitcher) wound up sitting in the back with about 50 school kids going for a trip. I guessed these students (I assume by the uniforms they were wearing) hadn't done two things very often. 1) Fly and 2) Lay their eyes on too many Americans. We felt like animals at the zoo as they all took about a dozen pictures of all of us together and of the plane while we were in the air. I sat reading (Eisenhower's biography) and my seat mate on the other side whom I guessed was the students' teacher seemed to have a mild case of narcolepsy. The entire ride she was bobbing her head back and forth like a whip at a circus. Her students seemed to love this as she kept hitting her head on my shoulder and waking up apologizing. Thinking I could use a nap myself I started reclining my seat back finding more resistance than I was used to. Right then I feel a hand scratching the back of my arm coming from the seat behind me. Apparently a boy behind me had his tray down and laying across it so as I leaned back the angle between the tray and my seat decreased and I was squishing his head. After realizing what was going on and a couple of yells in Japanese, I quickly raised back up and couldn't stop laughing for the next 10 minutes. This was the first of several funny moments this weekend was to bring......