Steve: I remember when I visited you, you played at Klagenfurt.
Mark: That's right. There was a big rivalry with the town down the road, which was?
Villach.
Villach.
And those were the most exciting games. I remember one year you were in the playoffs against them, and there were some very close games that ended in overtime and so forth.
Yeah, especially the rivalry between those two cities was very strong. The cities are about 45 minutes apart. That part of Austria is really sort of the "hot bed' of hockey in Austria. Most of the good Austrian players come from that area. Yeah. Really, to a lot of our fans, the only thing that mattered was how we did against Villach. If we lost against some other Austrian team, or we played against some Italian teams as well, it wasn't as big a deal whereas if we were to lose against Villach. That was not good.
That would be written up in the newspaper, with many negative comments, especially about the foreign players.
That's right. Very shortly thereafter would be an article calling for the heads of the foreign players or the coach, depending on who was in a worse odour at the time.
Now from Austria you spent, I think, a couple of years in Switzerland. Living in Bern, not in Bern but in Zurich.
That's right, I was in Zurich for two years, and that was a different situation again. Our particular team didn't have much of a fan base, so from the perspective of playing in front of fans and being excited about hockey, it wasn't that great an experience. However, living in Zurich, I mean Zurich's a beautiful city and we really enjoyed our time there. The Swiss players were great to us, and the Swiss people. I really enjoyed being in Switzerland.
And, now of course, you've been in Japan. It's interesting, because you were actually born in Japan and spent a couple of years at, I guess at least nursery school or play-school, and then even Elementary School in Japan. That's right. It's kind of funny the way things worked out. Now why were you in Japan, originally? Why were you born in Japan?
I was originally born in Japan because my father, Steve, was in the Foreign Service, working for the Canadian embassy. He then moved on from there to work for some Canadian forest products companies, and we ended up living there for six or seven years, as a kid.
Um-hmm. And did you find when you went to Japan to play hockey, did you know any words of Japanese at all?
I knew some. Not a whole lot. I don't know how much I knew when I was a kid but when I went back again I didn't know much, other than the basics. I'm sure it helped me, just in terms of comprehension, understanding the sounds, being able to pronounce the sounds. Were your teammates very helpful in trying to encourage you in your efforts to learn Japanese?
For sure. Any effort, in Japan, any effort you make to try to learn Japanese is always met with great applause, or appreciation. They definitely appreciate and encourage any efforts in terms of learning their language. As well, they like to practice their English on you, which is good too. Their attitude towards language learning is very good.
How is the quality of hockey in Japan?
The quality of hockey is good in Japan, especially considering how few people actually play hockey in Japan. That they manage to produce players of that caliber is pretty impressive. They're very good skaters, they have good skills. The one thing they are lacking, probably, is the sort of the hockey sense, which you can only really get from watching a lot of hockey and playing a lot of hockey, and being exposed to top-level competition. And I think that's what hurts hockey in Japan. And you've been there four years? Do you hope to go back this season?
That's still up in the air. We'll see. I think I'm nearing the end of the road as far as playing hockey goes. Not because I don't feel I can still keep playing, or that I don't enjoy it, but because now my eldest daughter will be going to school and it just gets tougher to drag the whole family back and forth. The kids start to miss out on things.
