It is early Friday morning and the sun is rising over the beautiful city of Matsumoto. It is cold here. Really cold here!

We arrived a couple of days ago after a five-hour bus ride from Toray. The drive was long, but beautiful. The trees are beginning to change colors and some of the countryside is as beautiful as you could see anywhere in the world. We stopped a couple of times at rest stations. I know what your thinking (yuck!). But interesting enough, rest stations here are remarkably clean and quite a sight to see. You can get freshly made ramen or udon noodles along with an assortment of other snacks. The most fun though is watching the built-in monitors at the coffee machines as they make your order from scratch including grinding the beans.

Speaking of coffee. Most of the players and coaches are Starbucks fans and it is one of the first things we search out when getting to a new city. They are harder to find then back home, but once one is located, the word spreads quickly. My first day I walked about a mile to the closest Starbucks only to find it doesn't open until 8:30 a.m. I was there at 7:45 a.m. Seeing that I was disappointed, the baristas who were setting up brought me out a small cup of coffee and insisted I wait just a few minutes and they would open special for me. At least this is what I thought they said as I speak no Japanese and they spoke no English. Sure enough, 10 minutes later they opened the door and let me in. I spoke the universal language of " Venti coffee please" and it was just like I was back home. Ahhhh!

As I was walking back to our hotel I notice something that made me smile. The barista wrote in perfect english on the protective sleeve "Welcome to Japan. Good luck and drew a volleyball." I had a USA team sweatshirt on so they must have known why I was here. It was a very nice thing for them to do. And this is an example of how the fine people of this country have treated us all.

Yesterday we had a chance to practice in the venue for the first time. We only had an hour on the main court so we tried to make the most of it. Our first match is later today against a very good team from Thailand. In fact, there are 24 really good teams in this 2010 FIVB World Championship. It has taken two years of qualifying tournaments to get here. A total of 189 teams from around the world competed and the final 24 teams have certainly earned the right to be here. Our team is ready to play.

I will continue to update this blog as we move through the tournament.

Go USA!