Erin Hughes.com

We had practice and a BBQ. The practice was hard fought training with a warm up team jog for a couple hundred meters followed by some stretching. Then the work began, 10 X 100 sprints. I was surprised at the fact that I could keep with Joe and had a good battle with So which he ended up trouncing me most races but I stayed with him. Practice went on as it usually does but we were missing a bunch of our forwards and that made the forward workout tough. We did a team run and I couldn't get things to click like I had previously and kept going offsides and getting in the way. ERRR! Finally we played touch and it was as always irritating I am not sure what it is about touch but it is so hard to grasp all the work we just did and having it come down to touch. Set pieces and other things do not happen all you can do is stay on a line in defense and try to go mark your man and not get caught out. Practice finished with some more calls and then A BBQ! BBQs are always a good time cause all the family members come and drink, cook, eat, talk and drink some more together. The kids who are all roughly the same age play and it is a good time for all. Wifes and kids eat free and the team sucks up the cost. It is really one of the best times to be part of the team. We had two new guys come out to training. Dan and Matt, said that they have been looking for a good social rugby team to play on for 11 months, I am sure they will both be back to play for us. On the way back Jesse saved me. As Eric and I were going up the escalator at the station a older man dressed in kinda Japanese biker styled clothes with a tan and a shaved head except a little tuft of hair in the front. Did what I can only describe as a rude gesture towards Eric. I got upset of course but he was going down the escalator and we were going up. So I let it go. But as we were sitting down to wait for the train, the guy came back up the stairs and started yelling at me in Japanese and calling me crazy which of course started me yelling back. I stood up and the guy moved on down to the other end of the tracks. Just then Jesse came up the escalator. I called him over and told him what happened he laughed. But now on the way back the guy looked at me and looked at Jesse and decided we were both a little more trouble than he was bargaining for. He walked silently past and went down to the escalator and appeared on the other side a few minutes later.

If everyone cared.... Why I hate the internet. So last night some where between reading reddit.com and slashdot.com I happened to hop on to youtube.com. I was sifting through the normal FUD when I came upon this. This video of a child who had nothing. I mean literally nothing. She lives in Loas and spent her time begging for money or food, forging for crabs, frogs, and other small insects to eat. Yes eat. Every day this is her life, and when the camera is turned off, she still has to keep going. We all know these things exist and we all know that human suffering is a fact of life. It is just heart breaking to see. I have been working on starting my own company. I want to build a company to help people protect their data and keep there services up and running. But now I know also what I want to do with the money I make. I do not know how or where .... yet, but I do know why. Because there are just too many little kids in pain. E./

I got on my bike and made my way to the station. Joffa, Dave and I all met up, and wiated for the train. While we waited for kicks Joffa and I called up team members who we were unsure about or KNEW for CERTIAN that were not comming, and harassed them. Finally we arived and started getting the field ready which was a task bordering on futility. The line painters were all getting clogged up because of all of the rain and we were having alot of trouble measuring the lines and getting things straight. Durring that time a team mate informed me that the leader of the leuge (who is also the oppositions manager) said "Agghhh its raining to hard lets just do rock paper scissors and call it a game." After hearing that in my mind the game was already won. Our forward pack was strong all game and Murray kept things constantly rolling along. Our back line was also strong even though the conditions were not perfect for passing the ball. When we were up by a good number of tries, with about 15 minutes left I got the call to go in. My tackles are still weak and from the moment I got on the field I could feel that it was a problem. The slippery conditions made it tough even with cleats to get my footing. I do not think my tackles are particularly bad it is just my anticipation of what the runner will do and abilty to react to it quickly is well pitiful. This week during my personal training time I will try to see if there is some exercises I can work on to help rectify this. I think it is just a matter of 3 things; 1. Not standing to flat on my feet 2. understanding how to read a backs moves as to where he will run

Every year, the rice has to get planted and harvested. The planting is time consuming but not so difficult. The harvesting is a lot less fun cause it is straight hardcore manual labor. This year was no different. I didn't have time to help with the planting and last year I did not help with the harvest. So this year I felt obligated to help out after everything that my father in law has done for me since I moved here. We got a late start and did not get moving on picking the rice till almost 9. By that time I was rearing to go and thinking about the fact that I had to be on the train heading back to Tokyo with Eric by 17:55. My father in law, he drives his rice cutting combine tractor, like he paid $10,000.00 for it. Slowly and carefully. That is why at about 1030 AM I was relived to see my brother in law Koji had shown up. He is my size and while he is not much for heavy lifting he does drive the tractor a little faster, like he stole it in comparison. With him behind the wheel things started to move along allot faster and by 2 pm we had finished the 2 large fields and were heading over to work on the third and forth.