Road Trip

Back from two fun-filled days of agility in Sendai, a 5 hour drive from Tokyo. On Friday, I followed two friends in a mini RV as I’ve done the previous two times that I’ve gone to Sendai. It makes the trip go by more quickly, (partially due to the fact that my friend likes to drive a LOT faster than I do) and we stop along the way to visit a dog run and have a meal. The trip up was uneventful, which is a good thing as I drive an old Land Rover (albeit with low mileage) and I always have a fear that the car will break down somewhere and I’ll be stuck with my Japanese-English dictionary trying to get the car towed.

Upon our arrival in Sendai, we set up our tent by the ring and then headed out to dinner at a restaurant that had all types of Japanese food, cooked and uncooked (I prefer the cooked variety myself!). I am not an adventurous eater, which can be complicated here in Japan when eating with Japanese friends. I feel that I can’t say NO to all the foods that I normally wouldn’t try, although knowing my friends now for a year, I find that I do say NO more often. And now that they know me better, they are more insistent that I try new foods. That night my “new” food was abalone, which was cooked and not bad tasting.

We finished our meal rather late and I still had a long drive to the pension (like a B&B) where I was staying, and where I had stayed the last time I was in Sendai. There are few places where a dog can stay in the room, and many people will stay in hotels that are close to the trial site and leave their dogs in their car, or they stay in their mini RVs on the agility site. I chose to stay again at this place, an hour away, in the mountains, the drive to which is part highway and part tight winding roads. That night the winding roads were especially challenging as it was raining and they were encased in fog. I arrived at 11:00pm and found that the lady of the house wasn’t too pleased with my late arrival.

Day 1 :
The next morning the skies were bright at 4am (there’s no daylight savings here in Japan) and all the other clientele were up and getting ready to go. So I did the same, despite a very short night of sleep. We got to the agility site at 6:30am (the trial was due to start at 7am) and then waited until noon or so before we had our first run. The skies were bright, the sun was hot, but fortunately there was a nice breeze. Cody and I had our jumpers run first. (Although the highest level offered at this trial was Level 2, there were all levels of competitors attending as many people enjoy this trial as a mini vacation, visiting the local onsens following a day of agility.)

Level 2 courses typically have a smoother flow than Level 3, and the courses this weekend were no exception. Cody and I ran the Jumpers course clean and ended up in 8th place, which wasn’t good enough at this trial to place us on the podium (1-5th place). It was just as well, as the day would have been very long, and I didn’t want to get back to the pension as late as I had the night before. Our standard run was not as successful, as the course begged for a good start line stay. Cody let me lead out past the first jump, but not to the second jump that I would have preferred. I got behind and he ended up going off course on the 4th obstacle, which meant that we were whistled off. Ouch.

A group of us went out to dinner to a Korean barbeque restaurant, where we cooked the food at our table. We had our own room, and on the table was a built in draft beer tap and a meter which kept track of how many milliliters of beer were consumed. (I stuck with non-alcohol beer as I had the long drive back to the pension.) My friends chose the food, which was heavy on meat, light on vegetables, and then at the end they ordered an abalone which was cooked on the grill. As it was cooking, it was writhing in the shell for quite some time, expanding and contracting. I was trying to opt out of eating it, as I felt squeamish, but my friends were persistent, so I broke down and gave it a try – yes, it was better than the abalone the day before. But the one bite was enough!

Abalone writhing in its shell

Day 2:
What a treat, being able to attend a two-day agility trial! After another early rise, we arrived at the trial site again around 6:30am. The day started out sultry and very warm, but fortunately clouds rolled in and the weather was more comfortable than the day before, despite the lack of breeze. By the end of the day, when Cody had his standard run, it was raining moderately.

We fared better with both the jumpers run and the standard run, both of which were clean. We ended up in 7th place in the jumpers run and 4th place in the standard run, with a visit to the podium. Also with the standard run we earned 5 championship points, which means that we now have accumulated all the points necessary for an agility championship, with only an obedience title of CD2 to complete the process. (We have been working on the skills needed for this and hopefully we will have an opportunity soon to attempt to pass the CD2 test.) After the podium visit, we headed back, tired and happy, on an uneventful trip back to Tokyo.

Fourth place standard run

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