I was lucky enough to use my
aeroplan points to book my flight from Hanoi to Osaka but had to go through
Seoul, Korea. The plus side to it was traveling in business/first class on
ASIANA Airlines which was an amazing experience way better than 1st
class on any North American airline by far. It took a day to make the trip due
to a long layover which was spent in the lounge working on homework. From Seoul
to Osaka I flew on 747 which I thought was ridiculous for an almost 2 hour
flight but the plane was packed and I was ever so thankful not to be back in
economy. The Osaka International was April 4-8, 2012.
Upon arriving in Osaka I instantly
fell in love with the city, it is such an amazing place and I would go back in
a heartbeat. It took an hour and a half of driving from the airport to get into
the city and to our hotel. The organizers rented a bus since I wasn’t the only
one to come in; part of the Indonesian team came in the same time. I checked
into the hotel and then the tournament venue was pretty much right beside the
hotel the Mouriguchi City Gym. So I took a walk over there to the venue to
check it out and saw some teams practicing. I had a practice time for the
following day at 7pm at night after the team managers meeting. When I went to
the gym for my practice time I ran into 2 friends that I trained with in China
which was amazing and I was so shocked to see them there. I hit with them for
about 30 minutes to get use to the facility which was a lot nicer than the one
in Vietnam but still was a huge venue.
With these huge venues the depth
perception is what messes me up personally because of where I train in Calgary
it is only 32 feet high. These stadium/larger venues have ceilings that are 70+
feet in the air and it messes with my perception if I don’t get to practice in
a place like that long enough. Eventually I’m sure Ill adapt and get use to it.
The second thing with large venues is there is no sound you cannot hear your
own shots to the same extent as in a small club gym. You can hit a huge smash
and it sounds like absolutely nothing meaning when your opponent smashes hard
you can barely hear the full sound.
I played a guy from Singapore and it
wasn’t a bad match, he was a lot stronger than me and had a very powerful
attack. He also out played me at the net, spinning back any net shots that I
played against him. His pushes didn’t put me out of position, neither did his
clears but it was his smash that did the most damage because of how accurate
and powerful it was combined with his flat aggressive drive play. What worked
to my advantage were slices though especially on my around the head corner I
won most of my points with that shot. Overall not a bad match and a learning experience
for sure what the level is like over in Asia. I got to watch matches every day
and saw everything from players getting completely destroyed to some of the closest
most entertaining games.
Being in Japan I ended up eating a
lot of Sushi, from both the supermarket and from restaurants. As well I enjoyed
lots of other kinds of foods too. I was not able to bring myself to have McDonalds
after the tournament though; it has been 4 years since I last had a burger from
there. I will save that moment when it is truly deserved to eat a burger from a
fast food joint. I did a lot of my shopping for food in the supermarket and it
worked out to be really cheap to eat while there for the week.
The days after I was knocked out of
the tournament I went browsing around Osaka. I was fortunate enough to visit a
Yonex warehouse and see all the products that they had available, as well was
fortunate enough to receive quite a lot of Yonex products while in Japan. I was
also able to visit Osaka Castle and walk around the surrounding area, spending
a good 4 hours doing that and not completely covering the entire area. The day
before I left I was able to see one more sight so I went out into the “countryside”
taking a 45 minute train ride (switching trains 3 times) to a shrine/temple. I
enjoyed that area but got a little scare when it looked like it was going to
rain on my parade, fortunate for me it didn’t and I was able to enjoy my last
day in Japan before starting to make my long trip back home.
I had to catch my shuttle to the
airport at 6am in the morning because I had an early flight out of Osaka back
to Hanoi to spend a night and then fly back through Korea to Vancouver and
finally Calgary. It took 48 hours from the time I left Osaka to the time that I
landed in Calgary. I was fortunate enough to get an upgrade to executive class
on my flight from Korea to Vancouver; I was not looking forward to spending
that time in economy on such a long flight. The service did not even come close
to what I received on ASIANA Airlines though.
Overall my time in Asia was a great experience
and I was happy to be able to see the level of play over there. I was happy to
be able to have the opportunity to train with local players in both Vietnam and
Japan that was truly a unique experience and something that expanded my knowledge
of the game. I just need to continue to work towards my goal, to improve become
faster, stronger and most of all more consistent.
After those two tournaments my rank
went up to the highest it has been to 362 in the world for men’s singles. I
know that is not that high but for me it is incredible after not playing
badminton that long and working so hard for this. I can only hope to break into
the top 300 in the world by the end of 2012 or even higher. As of April 26,
2012 my rank is 382 for men’s singles and that will remain around that area
until I play more tournaments in July. My next 2 tournaments will be the US
Open Grand Prix Gold and the Canadian Open Grand Prix both in July. I can only
hope since its Olympic year and the Olympics are later that month a lot of
players will skip over those tournaments and I will be fortunate enough to get
main drawed instead of going through qualifications. But that is all for
another blog.
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