Akasaka Hoops 

Akasaka Hoops

Originally posted on Sunday, January 09, 2005


Went to a basketball game last night. It was organised by a Filipino living in Tokyo primarily for foreigners (外人 gaijin) but also open to locals. I learned about the group from a classified in classifieds.japantoday.com. they play about 2-3x a week and as expected the majority of the players are gaijins.

There were about 12 people last night when I got to the community center gym - only 2 were Japanese. 3 Filipinos. The rest I'm not sure where they're from. The court size isn't standard at all. there is no 3-point line as it would have reached the halfcourt if it were there. So naturally the games were played with only 4 players per side to prevent overcrowding the court.

The fee for the game last night was 800 yen. Which probably is reasonable for non-area residents (it's a community center). But I had to spend 380 yen commuting to the gym and back.

A bunch of them is going to a ski resort next weekend. The cost of which is 21000 yen, which isn't bad consideing it includes the bus, lodging, dinner and onzen. I don't think I'll join though, as the TLUG (Tokyo Linux Users Group) will have it's first meeting of the year on Saturday and I wouldn't want to miss that as well as my first Japanese class of the year next Sunday.

I'll add pics from the basketball game when I get copies from the organiser sometime this week.