Japan Trip Part 4

Next day was more of the same. We went to a family restaurant for lunch which took the while lunch period and then some. It seemed to be some Japanese franchise of Bob's Big Boy called Victoria Station. Our group was too large to sit together, which was often the case here, and I had to sit in the smoking section with other males. It wasn't as bad as expected. The reason our meals took so long was that once we finished the main dish, many of us ordered dessert and those took a long time to come out. I got a flan parfait with coffee jello. That's one of the things I love about Japan, there's melon and coffee flavored everything. Nothing like starting the morning with coffee bread. (this is not what our restaurant had but, a picture I took in Tokyo, but it gives you and idea of what they look like.)
We ended our afternoon practice because we were going to watch a earlier performance. There was a line for the shower, so I decided to try out the public bath down in the basement of the hostel. Luckily it wasn't busy nor were there any Japanese present, because I'm sure broke some etiquette rules. It was refreshing to soak in a hot bath after a workout, but the water was very hot that after a while I was sweating.

We went to another night of performances, which started slow because they featured a lot of kids teams. It picked up with team dressed in hip hop fashion, followed by one of the favorite teams of the festival, Konza Freak. They're a team from a women's college and they started off wearing yellow dresses with fairy wings, then they shed them to reveal a cheerleader outfit with pom poms. Our tickets were for only a certain time slot, so the organizer prepping us to leave. Luckily we stay until the end and got to finish with one of our team's favorites, Mai Docomo. Austin is huge fan of them, and wanted to track them down after their performance. After performing on the main stage, all the teams go to take an official group photo. After they finished with theirs we asked to take some photos with them. Their costumes are so simple. basically dress liked a old fashion Japanese blue collar worker but with happi. Their moves are fairly simple, but they all do it with such precision and to the sounds of the music, that is looks awesome. Any team that has a corporate sponsor has to be good.

Sadly, I guess the combination of the workouts and sitting in those uncomfortable bleachers messed up my left knee. I had to limp my way home after the performances. I went back to the hot bath to soak my knee and it really didn't help that much. I went to Dr. John, who gave me some ibuprofen, a wrap and an ice pack. The pain in my knee really upset me, because I worked out much harder in the weeks before the trip and on the day before our first performance it starts to hurt. I hoped it go away after a night's rest, but it actually plagued me for the rest of the festival.