World's is an ultimate frisbee tournament that takes place every four years. It features teams representing the best that their countries can offer, in five distinct groups (Open, Women's, Mixed, Open's Masters, Women's Masters) and conclusively settles world champions over a week long tournament. It can be thought of as the Olympics of Ultimate, minus the Ancient Greek prehistory, and is considered a significant deal in this burgeoning subcommunity originating in the United States.
This year's World's took place in Osaka, Japan from July 7-14. I had been vaguely aware of this tournament while I lived in the United States, but never really gave it much thought and certainly didn't think I'd ever play in it. After moving here and within a month playing in a warmup tournament to World's in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, I realized there was a very real possibility of participating at that stage. Our Hong Kong team was finalized in late March, at which point I became very, very very excited for this special opportunity.
Our team selection process was pretty interesting. A couple of the major players here organized the team and solicited interest from the entire community, including overseas people with Hong Kong ties. After they had an idea of who could come, they decided to make a men's team and a mixed team, and posted "advertisements" in a few ultimate forums to round out the team. Through this, our captain Tommy Fung actually received what amounted to Ultimate CV's, leading to our mixed team picking up Mathieu Bordeleau, the captain of the Quebec City Onyx and one of the last cuts from Team Canada. Though "Beau" as we called him has still never been to Hong Kong, he was an awesome addition to our team in every way possible. In the end, very few people who asked for it were actually denied a spot on the team. The self-selection process was very good though. In my opinion, only one player did not really deserve to be playing at that level. The teams we put out there were more or less the best teams that Hong Kong could have within the WFDF eligibility rules (with a handful of great players unable to make the trip or playing on other teams).
Anyway my excitement was hard to contain. This would undoubtedly be the highest level tournament I'd ever compete in. Made possible solely by my move to Hong Kong, this unique opportunity felt very unreal to me, with various disappointments of my American ultimate experience in my not-so-distant memory. How insanely good would the competition be? How good would we be? Could we win a game? What would be the impression of foreign teams of Hong Kong ultimate? Who would we play against? How much would I play? How well would I play?
Furthermore I was giddy for Japan. The tournament could hardly have been in a better location for me. Here was a country I had never been to, that I very much wanted to go to, and which was really quite convenient for me to get to. Were this tournament in Europe or South America, I doubt I would have gone. As such, it was in Osaka, a 4 hour direct flight from Hong Kong. I really didn't know what to expect out of Japan. I hadn't seen many Japanese movies or shows, and been exposed to little Japanese culture growing up in the US outside of sushi and Dragon Ball Z. Part of me thought it might be a futuristic society with incredible automated devices, squeaky clean metallic infrastructure and ultra polite and friendly public servants all around. Part of me drew from my Asia experience, where every towering metropolis has a much more traditional, simple substratum devoid of the advanced technology, hearkening to the rustic days of yore. Was that the real Japan? Or would it be kinda like the US? Despite a grueling schedule of 10 long games of competitive ultimate over 6 days, I was determined to see as much of Japan as I could.
That plan didn't start off so well. I flew with teammates Kyle, Grant and Kristen with a stopover in Beijing. Beijing isn't exactly on the way to Osaka, but this was the cheapest flight available, a solid 2700 HKD round trip on China Air. Our layover in Beijing was scheduled to be about two hours, but after taking a bus to and boarding our connection flight, we sat still for half an hour before they told us the plane had mechanical problems and we'd have to return to the gate. It's no fun getting off a full a plane, grabbing all your luggage, and boarding a bus to an uncertain near future. We didn't know when we'd take off and by now it was getting late. In the mass of angry Chinese passengers mobbing the airport officials, the authorities were expectedly opaque in communicating the situation and certainly in no mood to translate into English. After about 15 minutes of hopping uncertainty, I caught the time of departure in Mandarin and it turned out to be only an hour away. We reconvened and decided we had enough time for a beer. Amazingly we found bottled Guinness at a bakery.
We land in Osaka around 1am, seemingly as the last scheduled flight that night. We go through immigration, baggage and ATM hunting. We have lots of printed out information on the house/hostel in which we are staying, but we have no clear plan of how to get there. The trains into the city closed at midnight, and Kristen read up on the price of taxis on an inflight magazine: either 1700 or 17000 Yen. 1700 would be about $20 USD, which would be great. 17000 would be $200 USD, which would be unjustifiable. I had heard that Japanese taxis were famously expensive (rare in Asia) and my fears were confirmed true when the price turned out to be the latter. While we were rumbling around for cash and transportation options, China Air had unbeknownst to us provided our flight with a coach bus into the city. We discovered this and hurried on, but were told it was full. That's fine, we'll stand or something. Nope. The bus was FULL, with additional chairs brought and passengers sitting all the way down the aisle. There was literally no room for the four of us to stand.
One airport official spoke English, and so we worked with her extensively to remedy the situation. Could they call a van? Did the airport have any petty cash that would help us with a taxi? Could she drive us? Should we wait until 5am for the trains to open up? The official was pretty slow on delivering updated news, and an hour later (part of which we spent working on our throws on the sidewalk) she informed us there was no cash, but we could get a cab and they would redeem it for us. They had no forms in English, but they did have some in Chinese. We weren't thrilled about this idea, with the very likely possibility that said Chinese form would never get redeemed, and it was actually a relief when we discovered that we'd need a Japanese bank account for this to get processed. Idea nixed.
Now it was near 3am and we started really pressing on the officials. In the discussion I heard someone speaking Mandarin, asking "how many are they?" "Four," I answered. Turns out he had a car, worked for China Air, and it was essentially part of his job to drive us home. The man was from Beijing, didn't speak Japanese and only a bit of English, but we plugged our address into his GPS and fit everyone in comfortable and rolled out. During the ride, Grant asked me, "Cal, he doesn't speak Japanese right? The GPS is giving instructions in Japanese." I was aware, and just a tad worried. Turns out he could only get us to the general area of our house, the Shin-Imimaya station, but we had instructions from there and could walk. As the last people to arrive, we had previously seen emails from teammates complaining about how hard our house was to find, including one young player who gave seemed to have given up in desperation, found an internet cafe and emailed the team to go find him. We had laughed heartily at him, but as we circled around in confusion, we wondered if he would get the last laugh. The address system was so foreign, so we had no idea what 3-3-36 Ebisu-nishi really meant. Despite it being 4am, there were a fair number of Japanese milling about and I asked one on a bike to lead us to the address. He wondered about it for a little bit, then started biking away with my paper. I followed him as briskly as I could with my luggage. He pointed left, then right, as if wrestling with his own confused mental map, then ultimately led me to an intersection. There he got off his bike, shook his head in frustrated apology, and pointed at the street name. I was excited! It was the street on our address. Then I noticed it wasn't. Here I could read the Kanji. Where our address ended with 西 (west) this one ended with 東 (east). We had gone to the east version of this street. He apologized to me with a lot of short head bows, and then pointed me to the right general direction. We ended up walking back that way with some more gesticulated help and when we were finally in the right area and still couldn't find the house, the man on the bike reappeared and pointed at the correct house. What he had done in the intervening 15 minutes, I don't know, but I'm pretty touched that he decided to come back.
So I'm sure you're all furious that I've written 1600 words and we haven't gotten into game action or Japanese living. Well your fault for reading my blog in the first place. Our first game was in the late afternoon against France, and so we were able to get some sleep after our 4am arrival. The fields were in an immense complex called Sakai, to the south of the city. Navigating the metro system was quite a challenge. The Japanese system is legendarily intimidating to foreigners, with several privately owned companies operating the extensive rail system in addition to the municipally operated subway, totally 70 lines. I had never experienced a privately run system, where a company metro map did not necessarily show the lines and stops operated by its competitors. If a private company went out of business, it's stations were liable to disappear. I think during my first visit to the rail station, it took us 10 minutes to figure out where to go and what appropriate tickets to buy, and we were aided by a rare bilingual old man. Not only was the system map complicated, with too many lines for the color palette and with all the Japanese names meshing together, but that was just half the battle. The incoming trains were, similar to New York, liable to be local or express or somewhere in between. They were also, dissimilar to New York, liable to be women's only or first class (guaranteed seats).
The tournament provided shuttle buses from the nearest station, and we pulled into the massive complex seeing grass and flying discs everywhere. A soccer stadium that could seat 1000, where top games were showcased, welcomed us, followed by a fenced section of finely mowed grass fields. Our games would take place on these perfect pitches or on nearby artificial turf, which were a great change from the coarse Hong Kong fields we had trained on.
So onto the games! Our team was assembled like a pickup team, and so we had some growing pains familiarizing ourselves with our teammates, trying to figure out good strategies and lineups. The French team we faced was a polished one, that though not overly athletic, had a few stars and didn't turn the disc over against us. While stepping onto the field the first time, an intense sudden feeling came upon me. This was World's. It had arrived. I had thought about this tournament for so long, trained for it for so long, but here it finally was and the judgement would soon begin. I would have to guard some elite players and push myself through the deepest bouts of exhaustion. I didn't want to turn the disc over, I didn't want to drop the disc, I didn't want to do anything negative. I had to take deep breathes and remind myself to think positively, to not fear failure but to anticipate opportunities for success, to showcase what I could do. Those nerves were hard to settle and I turfed the disc the first time I threw it. I learned quickly that playing ultimate at this stage made a huge difference. Something about the setting, the fields, the uniforms, the officialness of it all really magnified the play. France beat us handily that Sunday. The next day, a fast and familiar Philippines team beat us in the morning, but in the afternoon we beat a decent South Africa team for our first win. Beau managed to get an unbelievable Callahan in this game, by making a layout D near the goal line that macked the disc back to the handler. He then got up, blocked the lane while his man ran behind the handler. The handler finally dumped to Beau's man, who bobbled it, where Beau scrambled and jumped to snatch the disc and land inside the end zone. Later I caught my first score by making a sharp S-cut off a turnover.
We'd finish the week with a close loss to Russia, a blowout at the hands of Japan, a decent loss against the US, a terrible game against Colombia played in torrential winds where we lost because they started first, and wins over Netherlands, China and Finland. The play was top notch and every point I played was challenging. The games were long and intense, but with only two a day, none of us ever got as sore as we normally were at the end of tournaments, although it wasn't fun being sore for a full week. Our team came together within the first couple days, both on the field and off, and aided by our Canadian imports, we were able to move the disc against anyone.
The ultimate that I took part in was the best of my life, but so was the ultimate that I saw the best I'd ever seen firsthand. USA vs Australia men's, a game that ended in heartbreaking fashion for the Wombats, was absolutely incredible. The US team was Revolver + Kurt Gibson, a San Francisco based club team that hadn't lost in two years and featuring ultimate superstars such as Beau Kittredge, Mac Taylor and Robbie Cahill. The Australian team had extensive tryouts over the whole country, and everyone who made it had to sign up to do TWO tours in the US before Japan. I saw many other notable games included the Canadian Master's Open team Nomads, every single Japanese team and seeing my college teammate Logan Rhine playing for New Zealand.
I fought the fatigue and tried to see as much of the city as I could. I ventured to Osaka Castle one morning when we had a bye, walked around the downtown area of Namba where I saw both an outdoor climbing wall over a busy street on the outer facade of a giant entertainment complex that spilled, and a "shoe kitchen" inside a department store. The Japan I saw didn't utterly shock me or seem like a futuristic society, but I did pick up some subtleties that leads to me to think that Japan is possibly unique as a modern non-Western nation. While many Eastern and otherwise non-Western nations have become well developed, few of them can boast as many indigenous ingenuities as Japan. To an extent, whether you're in Bangkok, Brussels, Boston or Beijing, if you're in a developed area, it can feel very similar. It's the same technology that has gone into the escalators and the streetlights and the computers. Many of these things were invented in the west and imported directly into these places. I have no idea how different technological evolution has been in Japan, but to me it felt different. It felt like the Japanese started engineering cars, dishwashers, light bulbs and malls, and only kept a mindful eye towards how these same concepts were developing abroad. Some of these products turned out well and became very popular abroad, with Toshiba, Sony, Nintendo, Honda and the like all international household names. This has occurred to the extent where when I see a Sony Blu-Ray player or a Nintendo Wii, it simply doesn't cross my mind that these products are Japanese. But then some Japanese products didn't leave the islands and they were cool with it. So you have all these toilets with remote controls and a dozen different settings that honestly kinda scare me. You have vending machines that pour beer for you, shopping streets giving off unique vibes, and game shows that are just frightening.
On Friday night I was one of the few Hong Kong players to attend the tournament party. The World's party turned out to be one of the best ultimate parties I've ever been to, spearheaded by an insane group of Kiwis and Australians, and a surprisingly fun Japanese open team that would have liked to have been playing in the finals the next day, but took solace in chugging sake from the bottle instead. Located in the back room of a bowling lanes complex, the setting was odd, but it may have been the most international party I've ever attended. I'd like to think that's saying a lot.
This year's World's took place in Osaka, Japan from July 7-14. I had been vaguely aware of this tournament while I lived in the United States, but never really gave it much thought and certainly didn't think I'd ever play in it. After moving here and within a month playing in a warmup tournament to World's in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, I realized there was a very real possibility of participating at that stage. Our Hong Kong team was finalized in late March, at which point I became very, very very excited for this special opportunity.
Our team selection process was pretty interesting. A couple of the major players here organized the team and solicited interest from the entire community, including overseas people with Hong Kong ties. After they had an idea of who could come, they decided to make a men's team and a mixed team, and posted "advertisements" in a few ultimate forums to round out the team. Through this, our captain Tommy Fung actually received what amounted to Ultimate CV's, leading to our mixed team picking up Mathieu Bordeleau, the captain of the Quebec City Onyx and one of the last cuts from Team Canada. Though "Beau" as we called him has still never been to Hong Kong, he was an awesome addition to our team in every way possible. In the end, very few people who asked for it were actually denied a spot on the team. The self-selection process was very good though. In my opinion, only one player did not really deserve to be playing at that level. The teams we put out there were more or less the best teams that Hong Kong could have within the WFDF eligibility rules (with a handful of great players unable to make the trip or playing on other teams).Anyway my excitement was hard to contain. This would undoubtedly be the highest level tournament I'd ever compete in. Made possible solely by my move to Hong Kong, this unique opportunity felt very unreal to me, with various disappointments of my American ultimate experience in my not-so-distant memory. How insanely good would the competition be? How good would we be? Could we win a game? What would be the impression of foreign teams of Hong Kong ultimate? Who would we play against? How much would I play? How well would I play?
Furthermore I was giddy for Japan. The tournament could hardly have been in a better location for me. Here was a country I had never been to, that I very much wanted to go to, and which was really quite convenient for me to get to. Were this tournament in Europe or South America, I doubt I would have gone. As such, it was in Osaka, a 4 hour direct flight from Hong Kong. I really didn't know what to expect out of Japan. I hadn't seen many Japanese movies or shows, and been exposed to little Japanese culture growing up in the US outside of sushi and Dragon Ball Z. Part of me thought it might be a futuristic society with incredible automated devices, squeaky clean metallic infrastructure and ultra polite and friendly public servants all around. Part of me drew from my Asia experience, where every towering metropolis has a much more traditional, simple substratum devoid of the advanced technology, hearkening to the rustic days of yore. Was that the real Japan? Or would it be kinda like the US? Despite a grueling schedule of 10 long games of competitive ultimate over 6 days, I was determined to see as much of Japan as I could.
We land in Osaka around 1am, seemingly as the last scheduled flight that night. We go through immigration, baggage and ATM hunting. We have lots of printed out information on the house/hostel in which we are staying, but we have no clear plan of how to get there. The trains into the city closed at midnight, and Kristen read up on the price of taxis on an inflight magazine: either 1700 or 17000 Yen. 1700 would be about $20 USD, which would be great. 17000 would be $200 USD, which would be unjustifiable. I had heard that Japanese taxis were famously expensive (rare in Asia) and my fears were confirmed true when the price turned out to be the latter. While we were rumbling around for cash and transportation options, China Air had unbeknownst to us provided our flight with a coach bus into the city. We discovered this and hurried on, but were told it was full. That's fine, we'll stand or something. Nope. The bus was FULL, with additional chairs brought and passengers sitting all the way down the aisle. There was literally no room for the four of us to stand.
One airport official spoke English, and so we worked with her extensively to remedy the situation. Could they call a van? Did the airport have any petty cash that would help us with a taxi? Could she drive us? Should we wait until 5am for the trains to open up? The official was pretty slow on delivering updated news, and an hour later (part of which we spent working on our throws on the sidewalk) she informed us there was no cash, but we could get a cab and they would redeem it for us. They had no forms in English, but they did have some in Chinese. We weren't thrilled about this idea, with the very likely possibility that said Chinese form would never get redeemed, and it was actually a relief when we discovered that we'd need a Japanese bank account for this to get processed. Idea nixed.
Now it was near 3am and we started really pressing on the officials. In the discussion I heard someone speaking Mandarin, asking "how many are they?" "Four," I answered. Turns out he had a car, worked for China Air, and it was essentially part of his job to drive us home. The man was from Beijing, didn't speak Japanese and only a bit of English, but we plugged our address into his GPS and fit everyone in comfortable and rolled out. During the ride, Grant asked me, "Cal, he doesn't speak Japanese right? The GPS is giving instructions in Japanese." I was aware, and just a tad worried. Turns out he could only get us to the general area of our house, the Shin-Imimaya station, but we had instructions from there and could walk. As the last people to arrive, we had previously seen emails from teammates complaining about how hard our house was to find, including one young player who gave seemed to have given up in desperation, found an internet cafe and emailed the team to go find him. We had laughed heartily at him, but as we circled around in confusion, we wondered if he would get the last laugh. The address system was so foreign, so we had no idea what 3-3-36 Ebisu-nishi really meant. Despite it being 4am, there were a fair number of Japanese milling about and I asked one on a bike to lead us to the address. He wondered about it for a little bit, then started biking away with my paper. I followed him as briskly as I could with my luggage. He pointed left, then right, as if wrestling with his own confused mental map, then ultimately led me to an intersection. There he got off his bike, shook his head in frustrated apology, and pointed at the street name. I was excited! It was the street on our address. Then I noticed it wasn't. Here I could read the Kanji. Where our address ended with 西 (west) this one ended with 東 (east). We had gone to the east version of this street. He apologized to me with a lot of short head bows, and then pointed me to the right general direction. We ended up walking back that way with some more gesticulated help and when we were finally in the right area and still couldn't find the house, the man on the bike reappeared and pointed at the correct house. What he had done in the intervening 15 minutes, I don't know, but I'm pretty touched that he decided to come back.
So I'm sure you're all furious that I've written 1600 words and we haven't gotten into game action or Japanese living. Well your fault for reading my blog in the first place. Our first game was in the late afternoon against France, and so we were able to get some sleep after our 4am arrival. The fields were in an immense complex called Sakai, to the south of the city. Navigating the metro system was quite a challenge. The Japanese system is legendarily intimidating to foreigners, with several privately owned companies operating the extensive rail system in addition to the municipally operated subway, totally 70 lines. I had never experienced a privately run system, where a company metro map did not necessarily show the lines and stops operated by its competitors. If a private company went out of business, it's stations were liable to disappear. I think during my first visit to the rail station, it took us 10 minutes to figure out where to go and what appropriate tickets to buy, and we were aided by a rare bilingual old man. Not only was the system map complicated, with too many lines for the color palette and with all the Japanese names meshing together, but that was just half the battle. The incoming trains were, similar to New York, liable to be local or express or somewhere in between. They were also, dissimilar to New York, liable to be women's only or first class (guaranteed seats).
The tournament provided shuttle buses from the nearest station, and we pulled into the massive complex seeing grass and flying discs everywhere. A soccer stadium that could seat 1000, where top games were showcased, welcomed us, followed by a fenced section of finely mowed grass fields. Our games would take place on these perfect pitches or on nearby artificial turf, which were a great change from the coarse Hong Kong fields we had trained on.
So onto the games! Our team was assembled like a pickup team, and so we had some growing pains familiarizing ourselves with our teammates, trying to figure out good strategies and lineups. The French team we faced was a polished one, that though not overly athletic, had a few stars and didn't turn the disc over against us. While stepping onto the field the first time, an intense sudden feeling came upon me. This was World's. It had arrived. I had thought about this tournament for so long, trained for it for so long, but here it finally was and the judgement would soon begin. I would have to guard some elite players and push myself through the deepest bouts of exhaustion. I didn't want to turn the disc over, I didn't want to drop the disc, I didn't want to do anything negative. I had to take deep breathes and remind myself to think positively, to not fear failure but to anticipate opportunities for success, to showcase what I could do. Those nerves were hard to settle and I turfed the disc the first time I threw it. I learned quickly that playing ultimate at this stage made a huge difference. Something about the setting, the fields, the uniforms, the officialness of it all really magnified the play. France beat us handily that Sunday. The next day, a fast and familiar Philippines team beat us in the morning, but in the afternoon we beat a decent South Africa team for our first win. Beau managed to get an unbelievable Callahan in this game, by making a layout D near the goal line that macked the disc back to the handler. He then got up, blocked the lane while his man ran behind the handler. The handler finally dumped to Beau's man, who bobbled it, where Beau scrambled and jumped to snatch the disc and land inside the end zone. Later I caught my first score by making a sharp S-cut off a turnover.
We'd finish the week with a close loss to Russia, a blowout at the hands of Japan, a decent loss against the US, a terrible game against Colombia played in torrential winds where we lost because they started first, and wins over Netherlands, China and Finland. The play was top notch and every point I played was challenging. The games were long and intense, but with only two a day, none of us ever got as sore as we normally were at the end of tournaments, although it wasn't fun being sore for a full week. Our team came together within the first couple days, both on the field and off, and aided by our Canadian imports, we were able to move the disc against anyone.
I fought the fatigue and tried to see as much of the city as I could. I ventured to Osaka Castle one morning when we had a bye, walked around the downtown area of Namba where I saw both an outdoor climbing wall over a busy street on the outer facade of a giant entertainment complex that spilled, and a "shoe kitchen" inside a department store. The Japan I saw didn't utterly shock me or seem like a futuristic society, but I did pick up some subtleties that leads to me to think that Japan is possibly unique as a modern non-Western nation. While many Eastern and otherwise non-Western nations have become well developed, few of them can boast as many indigenous ingenuities as Japan. To an extent, whether you're in Bangkok, Brussels, Boston or Beijing, if you're in a developed area, it can feel very similar. It's the same technology that has gone into the escalators and the streetlights and the computers. Many of these things were invented in the west and imported directly into these places. I have no idea how different technological evolution has been in Japan, but to me it felt different. It felt like the Japanese started engineering cars, dishwashers, light bulbs and malls, and only kept a mindful eye towards how these same concepts were developing abroad. Some of these products turned out well and became very popular abroad, with Toshiba, Sony, Nintendo, Honda and the like all international household names. This has occurred to the extent where when I see a Sony Blu-Ray player or a Nintendo Wii, it simply doesn't cross my mind that these products are Japanese. But then some Japanese products didn't leave the islands and they were cool with it. So you have all these toilets with remote controls and a dozen different settings that honestly kinda scare me. You have vending machines that pour beer for you, shopping streets giving off unique vibes, and game shows that are just frightening.
On Friday night I was one of the few Hong Kong players to attend the tournament party. The World's party turned out to be one of the best ultimate parties I've ever been to, spearheaded by an insane group of Kiwis and Australians, and a surprisingly fun Japanese open team that would have liked to have been playing in the finals the next day, but took solace in chugging sake from the bottle instead. Located in the back room of a bowling lanes complex, the setting was odd, but it may have been the most international party I've ever attended. I'd like to think that's saying a lot.
