Monday, 19th November

Yesterday it was back to the baseball after a month 'off'. For those of you who haven't yet heard, K and his friend R (who is the catcher) have been getting watched by scouts recently and a local coach has invited them to join his team. Their coach has intimated that it would be a 'waste' and had asked the coach from a really well-known junior high school about 3.5 hrs away to take a look at them. It is famous for producing professional baseball players like Matsui but is also very academically renowned too with a lot of students going on to big-name Universities. Anyway, the coach took the pair of them to the school just to have a look at it and they also went to the Matsui museum and the school's coach's house where they got to see a lot of famous people's signed balls, bats, uniforms etc and got to pose for photos holding some of the things. I think Ks favourite was being able to hold Ichiro's bat! The coach also gave them a baseball signed by Matsui so they came home very happy. The only snag is that it was all 'hush-hush' - they took the day off school and aren't allowed to tell any of the other kids so it must be hard for them to keep quiet! We still haven't heard anything back from the school but I doubt anything will come of it anyway since they only have dormitories for high school age kids and in a way I am relieved at not having to make a choice of whether or not to allow him to board from such an early age. I know A did it, but it seems different somehow with K.

We are going to keep waiting until the last minute before deciding which team he will go into from next year (the team he is in only goes up to age 12).

From this week onwards I'm going to be busy with Christmas related events too and I really can't see us moving by the end of the year although will maybe move Ka's stuff just so she can get it the way she wants before going to NZ. Somedays she is looking forward to going, others not! I'm sure she must be feeling nervous about it all.