The Shooting Star

Whenever I listen to country songs, it always gets me thinking about life for some reason.

The other day after work, I drove down to Santa Monica around midnight. I didn't have quite the smooth day at the job. I needed a breather before I headed home.

I sat on a bench looking over the beach on Ocean Avenue. Of course, I couldn't see anything but stars in the sky and the Pier that was lit up like a Christmas tree.

I sat there for a good 45 minutes just thinking about the past year and a half, which is from the time I graduated until now. I got hired at a great place, got to travel to places I wanted to go so far, almost got picked up by a team in Europe, just to name a few.

One thought that came to mind the summer of 2013 when I was driving back to California from Iowa. I think I was driving through the last stretch of Utah at night, and I looked up at the sky and saw a shooting star.

Before I move on, during the winter before I attended Barstow Community College, I lived with a teammate-to-be in Silver Lake, California. Nice little community but in the middle of no where. I remember one night, though I forgot where we were driving home from, my buddy Griff saw a shooting star as we were talking about something in the car. He immediately stopped talking and stared into the distance. I thought he got possessed by the "Hill Have Eyes." 

After 15 of 20 seconds of silence, he told me he saw a shooting star so he had to stop what he was doing and make a wish. I thought he was weird for believing in that then.

So going back to the summer of 2013 in August, I saw that shooting star and immediately thought of what Griff did. 

I stared off into the distance and wished to either get picked up by a team from an independent league or get a full-time job.

Then 8 months later, I got hired full-time at Fox Sports.

But as of late, I've haven't been satisfied with where I'm at overall and I'm ready to make some moves.

As much as I love the city of Torrance, maybe I need to move out of here, or California in general, or even move out of the country. 

The thing I fear is starting over from step one again when I put countless amounts of work at one place already. But what's life without some risk.

We'll see what happens soon. Who knows, maybe I'll see another shooting star soon.

Jun

“You have to take risks. We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.”

My first blog in Japanese

So I decided to do something different with this one.

My cousin took her first trip to America this past weekend with her husband.

I thought since her husband has a Facebook and likes my blogs at time, I thought I write this one in Japanese so he can read it.

Im sorry for the lack of the sentence structures for those of you who can read Japanese.

...

この三日間、僕の従姉が日本からアメリカに初めて遊びに来ました。その三日間の間に色々とロサンゼルスの周りを行きました。

一日目はメリニアムビルトモアのホテルに迎えにいってすぐデズニランドに行きました。それが、デイズニーランドに着くまで、一時間ほどかかってフリーエーでトラフィックの中運転しました。

やっとデイズニーランドに着いて、最初に行ったとこはデイズニーランドのカリフォルニアアドベンチャーに行きました。始めに、カリフォルニアスクリームの乗り物のファストパスを手に入れて、一番最初に乗った乗り物はトイストーリーのミッドウェイマニアに乗りました。もちろん僕が得点王でした（＾＿＾）

そのあとカリフォルニアスクリームのジェットコースターにのって、カリフォルニアアドベンチャーちょこちょこと歩いてデイズニーランドのほうに迎いました。

デイズニーランドに行ってメインストリートを歩いてたときにデイズニーランドのメインな城が再建してたんでちょっとがっかりしました。

デイズニーランドのあとアメリカ西側の人気なIn-N-Outに行って美里ねーちゃんと大樹さんをハンバーガーを食べに連れて行きました。

二日目はハリウッドに最初行きました。一時間ぐらいハリウッドブルバードをちょこちょこ歩いてそのあとメルローズの道あたりにあるお店にいくつもりでしたが、その町にある高校でフリーマーケットを遣ってて、楽しそうだったので、二時間もフリーマーケットで買い物をしました。

フリーマーケットで買い物したあと、ビバリーヒルズに行ってスプリンクルズのカップケーキ屋にアイスクリームを食べにいきました。

僕は大樹さんにカリフォルニアに来てから何が一番したいのって聞いたら、”ハリウッドのサインが見たいな〜”っと答えました。

スプリンクルズでアイスクリーム買った直ぐあとにハリウッドのサインの方に迎いました。役三十分ぐらいかかってやっとハリウッドのサインに到着しました！美里ねーちゃんと大樹さんがすごい嬉しそうにしていました！！

ハリウッドのサインの前で写真を取ったあと、サンタモニカのサードプロミナードに買い物しに行きました。買い物のとちゅ、ちょーど夕焼けだったから断崖のとこで見ました。

その後、サンタモニカのサードプロミナードをもーちょっと歩いて、その後、晩ご飯をボイリングクラブに食べに行くつもりでしたが、ニー三時間待ちだったのでレドンドビーチにあるそっくりなレストランに行って食べました。美郷ねーちゃんと大樹さんがそーゆ食べ物が食べたことがないって言ったからうれしっかた！！


三日目はロスにあるシテダルアウトレットに行って、もっと買い物をしました。買い物を三時間ぐらいしたあと、僕の住んでるトーランスの方に向かって人気なオーガニックスーパーマーケットに二件見に行きました。

最後の食事のためにブラジルのバーベキューレストランに連れて行ったげたかったけど、

二カ所知ってるとこがどっちも閉まってて困りました。だけどもYELPのおかげで助かりました！直ぐ近くにあるサンフランシスカンのステーキレストランにたべにいって、ステーキがちょーさいこうでした！

晩ご飯食べ終わったあと、美里ねーちゃんと大樹さんが止まってるホテルに連れて行きました。やっぱ、お別れの時は悲しーね。


美里ねーちゃんと大樹さん、アメリカを楽しんで本当に嬉しかったです！いつでもでも遊びにきてください！


潤


And here's the brief version in English (since google translate doesn't do a very good job at translating)

...

So as I mention at the top of the blog, my oldest cousins and her husband came from Japan to America for the first time. And let me tell you, I'm always the one being driven around when I visit friends so I felt what it was like to drive people around.

My sisters, my and I tried to cram everything we can during those 3 days to show them all of LA.


On the first day, we took them to Disneyland right after we picked them up from their hotel in the late afternoon. Then for dinner, went to In-N-Out for my cousins first experience of greatness.

On the second day, we gave them the tour of Los Angeles. We went to the see the Chinese Theater and walked down Hollywood Boulevard. Then, we stopped by a flea market where we spent way too much time there. After, we took a quick pit stop in Beverly Hills to get ice cream at Sprinkles Cupcake. Little after that, we headed towards the Hollywood sign and took a million pictures in front of it. In the late afternoon, we went down to the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica as my cousin and her husband caught their 1st glimpse of their California sunset. For dinner, we went to the Boiling Crab but since the wait was about two to two and a half hours, we decided go to a place similar in Redondo Beach instead called the Shrimp Lovers.

On the third day, we took them to the Citadel Outlets in the City of Commerce so they could do more shopping and let me tell you, my cousin almost bought everything she saw in her sight. Then we went to Grimaldi in Manhattan Beach to grab some pizza. After went to Whole Foods to check out an organic grocery store that my cousin wanted to see. Then on our way to dinner, they caught another glimpse of a sunset. For dinner, my cousin and her husband wanted to eat an "American" steak so we took them to The San Franciscan, where the steak is hands down the best I've eaten anywhere. After dinner, we finally dropped them off at their Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles and parted ways.

I thought my sisters, my mom and I did a decent job of trying to show as much of the Los Angeles to them with the short amount of time we had. It was a process of figuring out where to go first at what time because LA traffic is a hit or a miss day-to-day. There were times I felt bad because we were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I wish we could have showed her and her husband around more but there's not enough time in a day to do every single thing when you're on vacation.

With my cousin and her husband visiting from Japan, I realize that hanging out and sticking around with family gets more important as we grow up, even if they live 6000 miles away. It's the unconditional love they bring to you during your ups and during your downs.

Because at the end of the day, that's who matters most.


Jun

My Apology Letter To All My Friends

"All these touch screens is making us...lose touch."

Just yesterday, I clicked on a link on Facebook that someone shared.

The title read " If This Video Doesn't Convince You To Put Down Your Phone, Nothing Probably Will." 

So I said, "All right. Let give this a shot."

First I thought it was going to be a funny video of a person lecturing another person people post on YouTube just to get viewers.

But I was totally wrong...

After watching this video, I sat on my couch for a good 10 minutes, and watched the video again.

I thought about all those times I was hanging out with friends, out to dinner, at an event, on a date, at work, a party and I was on the looking the the screen on my phone looking at some social media the recent being when I went to visit Iowa for a week.

Looking back at all those times I was on my phone during those moments, I wish I could take it back.

I guess in this day and age of technology and using as it communication now, there are certain exceptions. For instance, I have friends in Iowa that I could make a phone call to, but texting is little more convenient since the time difference is by 2 hours from there to Los Angeles.

One friend texted me right after he saw this video and told me "Yeah man, it's crazy how it just consumes us when we should be in the moment."

I going to do my best to not be on my phone when I am out and about. I realize that it takes everything away from being "in the moment" if you're looking at your phone all day.

Long story short, I wanted to apologize to all my friends for being on my phone during those times.

I hope you accept my apology.

Jun

World Cancer Day

Sometimes, life treats us unfair...


Today, as people know, is World Cancer Day.

When I think about cancer, theres two particular people who come into my mind. My Aunt Yuriko and my childhood friend's mother, Fukue.

March 2014 in Saga, Japan

I found out my aunt, who lived in Japan, had cancer back in mid-2013. She was going through chemotherapy, which meant her time was coming up soon.  When my family and I heard that, we decided to take a trip to Japan to visit my relatives, especially my aunt and my grandmother. After making the trip and spending time with my relatives for a week in the end of March 2014, on April 16th 2014, my aunt passed away.

I remember clearly the last thing she told me before I left my Uncles house during the trip was "Make sure you take care of your mother." I couldn't help it and shed tears as she laid in her bed and was getting ready for bed.


Fukue was like another mother to me growing up. My childhood friend, Brian, were on the same little league team in middle school and from then, grew up playing on the same team until the end of high school. Throughout those years, I would always go to their house and always cause trouble in and out of the house with Brian.

Looking back, I didn't know how she dealt with not just me but all our other friends that always came in and out of the house all these years.

In college, every time I visited Brian's family, Fukue would always ask me how everything is and praise me to other people in the Buddhist community that she was in.

But the one thing I'll remember is how she always had a smile on her face until the end.

I can't thank her for everything she has done for my family and I.

When I wake up every morning, I think about Fukue and my aunt Yuriko and that gives me the drive to go do the best at everything I do in life, because life is too short to just sit around and wait for things to happen.


Jun



Rest in Paradise Aunt Yuriko Kitamura and Fukue Kohrogi.

February 2015 Challenge

Side Profile 1/31/15

Front Picture 1/31/15 (after I had two
 double-doubles and fries from In-N-Out
after my trip back from Iowa)

Time to stick with a challenge...


After injuring myself on December 16th, the past 47 days has been really rough on me.

My lifestyle went from working out 5 days a week, splitting time between Deuce Gym in Venice, CA or at Hardbody Fitness Gym, a global gym in Gardena, CA to sitting around, going out and eating everything in my way.

I went to go see a chiropractor, a sports medicine doctor and a sports massage therapists to see what was wrong with my injured right arm. I just couldn't sit around doing nothing anymore.

After being diagnosed with a strained bicep/tricep where I couldn't extend my arm all the way out, going to go get a sports massage once a week for 3 weeks, my arm got finally better so I started to go back to Hardbody again but strictly working out my lower body.

Now, my right arm isn't 100 percent recovered yet, but it's to the point where I feel minimal pain and I feel as if I could slowly start getting into the swing of things.

I write this blog as I am on the plane back to Los Angeles from the greater state of Iowa where I took a trip back to visit friends and teammates I haven't seen in a while. And during this trip, let's just say I relived college and my body feels like a train ran over me.

Then I realized when I arrive back to LA, the month of February starts. I thought to myself that I should do a month challenge of going on strict and working out on a daily bases again.

It'll be something similar to the Whole Life Challenge which I did in the Spring of 2013 and never finished because I was in baseball season at the time.

People would probably ask me why are you going to do this? No reason in particular but for a better, longer health in the future.

I'll posted a blog in a month with the nutrition and workouts I did during February.


Jun

Trip back to the Midwest

You always to stay humble...


After I found out that I wasn't going to be playing baseball overseas in Europe this summer, I told myself I wanted to travel more.

I talked to my co-workers at Fox Sports about where I should travel. Perhaps Europe? South America? Africa? Mexico? I didn't really know where I wanted to travel first.

As I was thinking about where to travel, I used stumbleupon.com to see what kind of places people travel to or unique places to go to. And what I really was looking forward to was traveling out of the country.

After nights of "stumbling," I became more overwhelmed of where to travel. There were just too many places to choose from.

So instead, I went in another direction and decided to go back to my old stomping grounds and visit some friends in Iowa instead.


I arrived to Iowa from be in 80 degrees and sunny SoCal to being 45 degrees in Des Moines, Iowa.

Just to keep it brief, I felt like I was on a tour.

Sarah and Emily. 

My friends Sarah picked me up from the airport in Des Moines, then the next day my summer roommate Alicia picked me up from Des Moines to go to Cedar Rapids. She was kind enough to let me borrow her car and drove to a restaurant to meet up with my roommates during college and their girlfriends. Then the first day in Cedar Rapids, I drove to the school to visit some people and surprisingly after a year and a half since my last visit, people remember who I was (crazy, right?). Then still on the same day, I met up with another teammate from Puerto Rico and catch up with him. Then the day after, went to go have lunch with my summer roommate and her parents when I was out in Iowa for an internship. Then met up with another roommate for dinner. (How about that for a tongue twister, and keeping it brief. Joe Sheller would definitely not be proud of this.) And now at this point, I still have one more night left to survive before I go back to LA.

Teammates from when I played at
Mount Mercy University

A lot of people would or did tell me, "Why Iowa?" But this trip back to the Midwest reminds me that I am blessed with friends around the world and I wouldn't give up anything for that. It also keeps me grounded from living in a city with a million people in it, where I personally take a lot of things for granted.

I wanted to thank everyone that went out of their way just to come say "hi" to me. It really meant a lot to me. I wouldn't be where I am at today without you guys.

Special shout out to Sarah Beck, Alicia Spurgin, Emily Roder, Vinnie Pantaleo, Jeff Dorman, Colin Johnson, Carlo Rivera and Elizabeth Sadler. I can't thank you guys enough.


Jun


“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven't learned anything.” 
― Muhammad Ali

Dream that remains a Dream

Everything happens for a reason...


A lot of people might not have known, but after I got done playing baseball at Mount Mercy, even with no connections what so ever, I still had the itch to play.

After graduating from the Mount, I was still in Iowa during the summer of 2013, interning at a Newspaper company and playing semi-pro baseball on the weekends. One day, I was hanging out around school and ran into my coach. He was asking what I was up to and there I asked him if he had any connections to any professional teams, not the Major Leagues but other independent teams out there. He looked at me with a blank face and told me, "No."

Then in October 2013 2 months after I moved back to California, I went on a trip to Las Vegas to coach in a baseball tournament with a travel ball team that one of my college coaches started up. One of the guys that coached for the team just came back from playing baseball in France. On the last day of the trip, I introduced myself and asked him how he got in to playing at France. Of course, he had a track record of by starting in the Pecos League, then going to the American Association, then going over seas to play in Europe. When I asked him, he told me he went through a website and sent out an email with a resúme and couple of team got back to him.

After he told me about that, days after a got home from the trip, I started to send some emails to France, England, Germany, Russia, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and so on and so forth.

I waited about a couple of months before I got any reply back. But during the time I was waiting, my buddy Mason told me about a guy he knew and told me to get in to contact with him.

So I got in contact with a guy named Keith. He was basically a recruiter. When I talked to him, he laid down how much he wanted from me just to talk to a team, and if I made the team, there was a more money involved added to the negotiation. At the time, I was only a part time Production Assistant at Fox Sports so I didn't have much saved up, so I passed up on it. But while we were discussing the possibility of me finding a team, he mentioned the Pecos League.

Now, the Pecos League, if you haven't seen the show on Fox Sports 1, is a professional baseball league where undrafted players go to play if they didn't get pick up by any other teams in other leagues. So When Keith told me about the Pecos League, I checked out the website. There I saw a possible ticket in to playing professional ball. There was an ad saying there are try outs in the state of Texas during the month of February. But the thing was, it was about $2,500 for the try out for the whole month. I knew it was a long shot since money was at the issue again, but I emailed one of the manager of the team and got in contact with him. In the end, after talking to the manager from December to February, I didn't end up going, but found out one of my teammates from Mount Mercy went out there and made that team.

So back to talking about Europe. After the Pecos League fell through, my thought was, "Ok, I gave it a try. I guess I'm done."

Then in mid-April, I checked my email in the morning. I looked and saw that the email was from baseball team in France. And the weirdest thing was, this was one of the team I DIDN'T send a email to. But it was an opportunity to play again. But there was one problem.

I just got hired as a full-time employee at Fox Sports in late March.

If I was a part-timer, no questions asked. I would have packed by bags that day and left whenever they needed me. But that wasn't the case. So I talked to the manager, Manu, for about a week and a half. I had a hard time deciding since being full-time at Fox Sports means having benefits and the whole 9. Then again, in the end, since I replied to his email with an open-ended answer, he signed another player.

Some things just doesn't work out.

Then the Summer of 2014 came along and I was asked if I wanted to play in a local sunday league team for the summer. Even with the crazy schedule at work, I agreed to play.

Meanwhile, I kept in touch my my buddy that played in France while he was in season. Some bad news came from him that he just got released from the team, but found another team in Belgium couple of days later. He kept telling me I should try to still play if I can because you only get to play this game when you're young.

That got me thinking about playing again, so I sent a mass email to all the countries again. This time, I had teams reply back but saying they didn't really need a player or there are no roster spots. One team from Norway emailed me back actually trying to help me out to find a team through another recruiter, but things didn't work out there.

Then this past October (2014), a team from Sweden emailed me saying they were interested in me and wanted to speak with me. I had an interview via Skype and it went well. The GM who I spoke to, Johan, actually went to school at Santa Barbara City College for a year and played baseball so I thought we had a connection there.

2 months passed by and I didn't get a reply from him whether or not he was going to be on the team or not. But regardless of having the job at Fox Sports, I ready to let that go to go chase my dream.

Then finally on January 13th, my dreams got crushed. I got an email at midnight saying that they were gonna take another player instead.

My mind raced with a lot of thoughts. I killed myself for about 4 months to be in the best shape to play baseball if the opportunity came; I woke up extra early to go work out before I went to work at Fox; Off days weren't even off days. I should have took the offer from France when they asked me to play for them. Just a lot of things running through my head.

Until that point, I always worked towards something, like getting ready to play baseball. But now, I feel like I have more free time on my hands, I don't even know what to do. I guess I'll have to find another hobby. I'll get over that hunch sooner or later.

Shoutout to Brian Kohrogi, Taylor and Logan Gelbrich, Brian Ramirez, Chris Pascual, Ronnie Lopez, Mike DeMaria,  Jenny Valliere, Brian Collins and last but not least my family who was in support of all this. Can't appreciate how much it meant to tell me or allow me to chase my dreams. And it was that close!

Now that this is put to rest, what now?


Jun