Saturday morning saw us heading for our practise round at the Biwako Country Club. As the Club has organised breakfast, lunch and dinner for us, we informed our hotel, The Royal Oak in Otsu, about it and to our surprise and delight the hotel decided to refund each of us the cost of breakfast ( 2500 yen) in the form of a credit voucher to be spent at the hotel F&B outlets.
We were welcomed upon arrival by club officials who were waiting for our arrival at the club foyer. We were each alloted our locker in the changing room and were given a tube of the club's golf balls as a gift.
We helped ourselves to the breakfast spread as more and more of Biwako Club's members arrived to join us.
Zahardin testing the speed at the practice green..
Nakanosan, Lim Cheng Yeow, Azlan Abdullah, Zaid Ibrahim..
Kubosan, pakdokter, Zahardin, Mahmood Merican.. It could not have been a better day for golf. It was bright and sunny and slightly cool in the morning but the temperature rose to probably around 30 by the middle of the day. Many of the golfers from RSGC were 'first-timers' and I am sure that they were all as excited, if not more, as pakdokter in having the chance to play at this club. The sakuras were in full bloom as the season had come somewhat later this year due to the rather cooler month of March. We were indeed a lucky lot this year.
However the fairways were still brown and dry and has not yet fully recovered from the 'winter effects'.
Zahardin getting out of the bunker..
Mahmood Merican at the tee...
Sakura in full bloom...
Pakdokter played with Zahardin and Dr Mahmmod Merican, accompanied by Kubosan ( Mr Tetsuji Kubo) who is a comittee member of the Biwako Country Club. Kubosan has been a regular visitor to RSGC in our interport games. Kubosan owns a company involved in 'fresh-water pearl farms'. He has now retired and has left the business to his son.
Korean members of the RSGC...Alex Hwang and Thomas Chun..
Mr Lee Chee Kin and daughter Ms Susan Lee Sook Leng..
Zahardin and Azlan ...Most of the Biwako Club's members were quite senior as almost everyone that pakdokter came to know of were in their sixties or more. Yet most of them have low handicaps and put pakdokter to shame by 'outdriving' pakdokter by at least 20 to 30 yards ahead of pakdokter's drive.
We played the Mikami and Biwako Nines which measured 6152 yards from the white tee. Pakdokter scored 51/53 (handicap 24) pakZahardin scored 52/50 ( handicap 22) and Dr Mahmood Merican returned a score of 50/52 (handicap 19). Our host, Kubosan, playing to a handicap of 5 returned a score of 41/39.
Golf in Japan is played at a leisurely pace. After the First Nine, we stopped for a choice of set-lunch before continuing to the Second Nine about an hour later. The bath after the game must have been quite an experience for the 'first-timers'. It was a typical Japanese bath, where one was given just a small face towel and has to bathe openly in our 'birthday suit'. After a wash and scrub at a sit-down stool, you can then soak yourself in the hot-pool which was steaming at a temperature of 41-42 degrees celcius.
It took pakdokter a while the first time 3 years ago to get used to the idea of going around in the nude in the company of other nude gentlemen in the bath and more so in the changing/dressing room when the caretaker lady walked around to pick up the used towels oblivious of us guys in the nude!
But once you get used to this cultural practice of the Japanese bath, you begin to enjoy and appreciate the philosophy behind the practice. Apparently it is meant to strip everyone to become equals and to enable a free flow of communication exchanges without worrying about each other's status in society....Hmmmm....Once we are all stripped to skin, we are all the same???
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