More pictures!

Okay, I think I figured out how to make the pictures do what I want them to, although this new method takes a lot longer. Hopefully in the future I can add pictures as I go along, instead of having to do a mass update like this one.

First up in this batch is one of the pictures I took on our Sendai tour, of a path at the site of the Sendai lords' mausoleums. I like the combination of the trees and the stone path.

This is a picture of the lunch I made myself the other day. (I was really proud of my cooking, which is why I took the picture). The base is leftover spaghetti noodles from something that Kaori made, with a mixture of chicken, spinach, green bell pepper, and onion on top. It was very yummy, like almost all of the food we've had here.

Yesterday, we went to a soccer game. It was a division 2 professional game between Sendai (also known as Vegalta, which is apparently a combination of the names of two stars, Vega and Altaris) and one of the Tokyo teams (I think Tokyo also has a division 1 team). We cheered for Sendai, of course. The game lasted about two hours, and ended in a tie, 2-2. All of the goals were scored in the second half of the game, and it really picked up right at the end. Afterward, we had to walk back to a mall where we'd parked the car, and even though the rain was more like mist, we were all pretty soaked by the time we got to the mall. I was really glad to have the raincoat I'd bought at the 100 yen store the day before.

This is a picture of the loudest of the Sendai fans. They were sitting behind the Sendai team's goal box for the first half of the game, and they spent almost the entire game clapping, banging drums, singing, chanting, waving their hands in the air and/or jumping up and down. I've never seen Japanese people make so much noise. It's hard to say which was more entertaining: watching the game, or watching the fans watch the game.

This is another picture of the loudest Sendai fans, one that I took before the game started. One of the things that I found really interesting about the fans was that a lot of their banners and flags had slogans written in English. The banner on the lower right side of this picture, for example, says "Come on SENDAI light my Fire!"

This is a picture of the Tokyo fans. I could fit them all into one shot because there weren't very many of them at the game. They made a lot of noise in proportion to their numbers, though.

This is a shot of the soccer field during the game. The Sendai team goalie is on the right, dressed in pink. The other members of the Sendai team are wearing yellow jerseys, and the Tokyo team members are in green. The guy in the black shirt at the bottom of the picture is what Stephanie called a "ball boy." His job, as far as I could tell, was to catch the ball when it went beyond that barrier at the side of the field, and to throw either the game ball or a replacement back to the players, to help keep the game moving.

The other thing that really impressed me about the soccer game was how little time they spent doing anything other than playing. Altogether, there were only about 6 minutes of stoppage time. Part of that is due to the fact that each team is allowed only 3 substitutions per game, but most of it just looked to me like efficiency on the part of the players, the referees, and the "ball boys."

I think I'll try to post again in another couple of days with a description of our schedule here.