Jan. 14, 2012 - First swim meet and Kim

Today we really missed having a car.  We haven't missed it too much up to now, even when lugging multiple bags of groceries home (okay, maybe we miss it then).  But today, we really missed it.  Greer had a swim meet at ASIJ this morning, and she was supposed to be there at 8:00 am.  Now our swim buddies in Houston are thinking, "What's the problem?  That seems like a pretty late arrival time to us."  Yes, and we would agree, if we had a car.  If we had a car, it would be just over a 30-minute drive to school.  But without the car.....  If you read Tuesday's post, you know it took Greer and me over two hours to make it to school.  Now, luckily, we figured out all the pitfalls that day, thus enabling us to leave the house only an hour and a half before we needed to be at school.  Definitely, we were missing our car as we headed out the door at 6:30 am.

If anybody was wondering what the trains were like early on a Saturday morning, they are still crowded.  We left our house shortly after 6:30, so it was well before 7:00 am when we caught our first train (of three).  The train was crowded enough that none of the four of us had seats.  We tried to unobtrusively take a picture, but it didn't work.  It's so quiet on the trains (all the time) that the click of the camera is too obvious.

Our first meet was a short one.  Normally the meets are middle school and high school together.  But this weekend our high school team was away in the Philippines at a meet, so it was just middle school.  The meet actually took less time than our travel there and back.  (I don't know if that says more about the length of the meet, or more about our travel time.)  However, my understanding is that we are in for a much longer day next Saturday.

Greer doesn't pick what she swims in the meets; the coach picks the races for every swimmer.  He can enter only 4 swimmers in each event who will be swimming for points, but he can enter other swimmers as exhibition swimmers.  Earlier in the week, he did not know if he would be putting Greer on any relay teams, but she ended up swimming butterfly on the C medley team.  The Mustangs also fielded 6 relay teams for the freestyle relay, and Greer swam on the C team there as well.

Our swim team buddies from Houston (both Stingrays and ESA) would be surprised by how differently these meets are run.  There were no heat sheets.  We did not know the order of events or even what events there were.  Greer's individual events were the 100 IM, the 50 fly, and the 100 backstroke, but we don't know if those were all exhibition events (she is just in 6th grade, after all), or if she was swimming for points in any of those.  Greer kept coming to us to ask us questions, and we kept pointing out to her that of all the people in the swimming pool area, we probably knew less than anybody else. 

We do know that she looked good and had some good times (compared to her Houston times), though we haven't seen any overall results.  I don't think we should be looking for results to be posted to the website.  Probably the coach just has them handwritten somewhere.  (Drew says I'm exaggerating; the results are definitely in the computer; they just must be top-secret.)

Here are some pictures from the meet:

Team suits were ordered back when the season started in December, so we weren't able to get her one of those, but we were able to get her a Mustangs swim cap.  I should have taken some pictures of Cooper playing on his iPhone, but trying to remember to look up and cheer his sister when it was her turn to swim.

Today we also got to see Drew's old friend Kim Choate.  Kim and Drew were in the same research group in graduate school (Kim was a few years ahead of Drew), and he and Drew have been friends since.  After graduation, Kim got a job with GE, and eventually he was transferred to Japan.  He lived in Tokyo for 7 or 8 years, a few of them not too far from where our apartment is.  He and his wife have been back in the States for a number of years now, but he just happened to be in the area on a business trip.  He came out to ASIJ during the swim meet and got to see a few of Greer's races.  The three of us thought it was funny that he had to come all the way to Japan to see Greer swim.

After the meet, we headed back to our apartment.  At our subway station, Kim showed us a grocery store down a side street on the other side of the station, which gives us an option besides the store in the station itself.  Greer showered, we showed Kim our place, and then we headed out for a late lunch.  Kim took us to Kua 'Aina (pronounced “Koo-a eye-na”).  This restaurant originated in Hawaii, but now there are several in Tokyo.  We thought the burgers were yummy! 

We then spent the rest of the day walking around Shibuya with Kim while he pointed out various stores and gave us tips on the area.  It definitely would be handy if he still lived around here.  By 8:00 Greer and Cooper were dragging (the day had started quite early, and they'd been on the go for all of it).  I took them back the apartment while Drew and Kim went out to dinner.  They went to a Korean barbecue place, which we'll tell you about when the whole family has a chance to go.