Cherry blossoms, 2005

Japan Cup 2004

The photos above were taken at the Japan Cup in November of 2004. Bob from HSPC played with Adrian from Aoyama Petanque CC and a Japanese guy. The team finished second and won 5,000 yen each.

Our official team logo

Kawamura san from MPC has kindly created our team logo from the photographs he took on the weekend. Thanks very much. 誠に有り難うございます！

Anyone know where you can get some good quality shirts printed up in Tokyo?

HSPC's team emblem

Look out Nike and Adidas, HSPC now has its own team emblem courtesy of these photos from Kawamura san at MPC. The cone is from our favorite Himalaya Sugi tree.

All rights reserved. Merchandising release to follow.

Toasting the weather

Despite gloomy weekend forecasts of snow and rain, Saturday was a balmy day down the park and the first plum tree buds started to bloom in the area. Together with the unusual January weather, there were several upsets during the day with Steve and Greg getting the better of Bob and Raj and the team of Raj, Mike and Greg coming back from 9-0 to defeat Bob, Steve and Charlie. Mike continued his good form of late and was undefeated on the day.

This Sunday HSPC will be fielding a team in a triples tournament at Akasaka High School.

Good luck guys.

The sound of one hand clap ...

A good turnout at Myoshoji on Saturday Jan. 20, with Charlie Kamata and two of his MPC teammates showing up for a few games.

For some reason, probably a lack of beer consumption, HSPC struggled early in a few games of triples and were beaten soundly by MPC. Seemed every round we'd all throw one ball in the gutter followed by a decent shot. You don't tend to win too many games when you're playing three boules to your opponent's six ...

On Sunday a few of us made it to the park and Bob and Yutaka teamed up against Mike and myself. We got off to a great start leading 8-0 but as expected they fought back and evened the scores at 9-9. The tide turned again, though, and with Mike throwing some solid knock out shots we held on to win.

The rematch was another close affair and the scores were locked up at 12-12 before Mike sent the cochonnet back deep and with Bob still holding one boule and nothing really close we thought they'd take the game but Bob's shot came up short.

Bob did throw the shot of the day, though, with a brilliant high lob to extract our boule from a tightly-packed cluster.

HSPC comes third in New Year Tokyo Cup

HSPC participated in its first tournament of the year at the Akasaka High-School ground, with the team of Bob, Bill and Rajan, defeating Fukugawa for third spot.

The team lost once in the morning round but with a 2-1 record (and a high win/loss point ratio) advanced to the finals.

Congratulations guys.

(Photo courtesy of Aoyama Petanque)