4th in the World

i guess it's now official. i'm now in LOVE with the Japanese Women Volleyball team.

i can remember each and every team member's name. and that's 10, 12 different people who are hardly household names, even among the Japanese.

i tried to prove that i'm wrong, that i'm only into women's volleyball, which is a very fascinating sport to watch. and i did specify only the women's part of the game, because it captures the true essential of the game better than the all-powerful tactic employed in the men's gameplay. which is like: serve, receiving team dig, set, spike, and either the spike is blocked, or deflected out, or it just goes in, but ultimately the point will end there and then.

boring. predictable.

while the girls, they are more... how do i say it? more fun to watch, basically. it's a little bit like you're watching men's doubles in tennis, as opposed to women's doubles. the points end very quickly in men's game, but it's more fun to watch if it's played by the girls (tho if it's in singles, some can border around boring)

so back to the trying to contradict. i tried to tell myself that i don't just love the japanese team (due to reasons some of you can already guess), but i like to watch women's volleyball, due to reasons i just stated above. but no, it doesn't work. this morning, there were back-to-back matches shown on tv, first is Japan v Germany, followed by Germany v China. as expected, i watched the whole of the first match, which went into the rubber set, and won by my favourite team, quite unexpectedly. enjoyed myself too.

but right after that match ended, i stayed on the tv for a while, and watched... and got bored after the 4th points. yes Germany got some eye-candies in their team, the names (Mareen) Apitz and (Maren) Brinker spring to mind. but... it's just not the same like watching Saori Kimura and gang playing, giving their all.

(side note: the shortest player in the Deutschland team is a scary 171cm, their libero and one other. a good 5cm taller than me. blardy hell)

and then i switched off to watch Spongebob.

anyway, the love of my life on volleyball court rebounded from their miserable run in the earlier part of the World Cup, and went on a gallant run to finish fourth in the table, defeating some big names like Brazil and the USA in straight sets in the process. ultimately they just missed out on the Olympics (will have to go thru qualy instead of auto tickets for the first 3 teams), but it's still a very good performance from the tournament host.

if they qualify for the Olympics... hmm... how much is London next year going to be?