APAC and stuff!

This one is long overdue...but for our APAC volleyball tournament this year (pretty sure it stands for Asian Pacific Activities Conference?) we got to go to Kobe, Japan! It was such a neat experience first of all just to be able to go to Japan, but also to be able to coach in a volleyball tournament there AND get to go there with my friend Kirsten who actually grew up in Japan. Just a cool deal all-around. We got there on a Wednesday after having left the school at 4:30 a.m. (woof) but it was nice to have a good part of the day once we got there. The school hosting the tournament was the Canadian Academy so we went straight there so the kids could be picked up by their host families. Then the next three days were filled with lots of volleyball. We played teams from Korea, Japan and China, all of them being international schools as well, so it was really fun to watch the games during our downtime for both boys and girls.


On the first day they had an opening ceremony and in the elementary, there was a class assigned to each team at the tournament. So our girls got to go and meet our class and answer questions and they were so awesome with the kids:) Throughout the tournament, the class would come watch and cheer for us during our games and they were so so so cute!


Some of our wonderful girls


and some more:)


They gave the coaches these awesome 80's/early 90's waterbottles so Will and I thought a pose was necessary...


Our boys team getting ready to play. In the Asian leagues, teams bow to each other before and after games and I think it might be one of the coolest things ever.




The area around our hotel was gorgeous


including the spaceship...


One night they took all of the coaches out to an awesome dinner in Kobe. Afterwards we wandered around for a couple of hours so here's some pics from that night.






At one point, Will and I started walking down this one street and we soon realized we were in a red-light kind of district...haha oops.


Don't go down this street if you're ever in Kobe




Apparently Larry is a big deal







It was kind of a bummer to come back, especially since we didn't get to see a ton of Japan. But it was such a great experience! Not gonna lie, based on the 5 days we were there I definitely could live in Japan. Even though it's so expensive that even McDonalds will make you broke I thought it was a really neat place. I love Korea but it definitely had a "cleaner" feel to it and I liked the architecture alot more...less neon too if you know what I mean. Anyways! It was such an amazing opportunity and I'm so glad I got to hang out with a bunch of amazing girls for 5 days in Japan! I mean seriously, who gets to go to Japan for a volleyball tournament? So awesome.