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Friday sunburn
I overslept the 9am game at Jingu so went to Omiya for the 10am game there instead, plus I wanted to see Urawa Gakuin, of course. They played against Washinomiya. I didn't see Atsuki Minami (the 197-cm tall half-American kid) pitch but instead saw Ryosuke Abe, who was fantastic, he struck out 13 in this game, bringing him up to like 45 strikeouts for this tournament in 4 games. Also saw Masaya Masubuchi pitch for Washinomiya. Took me a while to realize OH SHIT THAT'S TATSUYOSHI'S LITTLE BROTHER. Hehe.
It was 36 degrees out though, which is like 97 to the rest of you. I brought two frozen bottles of water and an extra bottle of water, and I had gone through one frozen bottle and one normal bottle by the end of the fifth inning, sitting out in the sun, so I gave up and moved to the back of the grandstand and watched the rest of the game in the shade, where it was perfectly reasonable, but I had to stand because everyone else wanted to sit in the shade too. I took photos of an inning of the second game of the day and then left.
Funny story: the ouendan (mostly non-playing baseball club members, as well as the marching band kids and some assorted cheer girls) throw water all over each other during these games, which makes sense in summer to stay cool. It makes less sense in winter when college ouendan do it, but ANYWAY, on my way out of the stadium I nearly got run over by a bunch of 1st-year boys in baseball uniforms who were lugging buckets of water back and forth! They looked pretty grumpy about their lot in life.
Despite putting on sunscreen, I got a pretty lousy sunburn. Sigh.
So I left that stadium feeling really hot and headachy yet again. It's a 20-minute walk to/from Omiya station to the stadium, and on the way there I knew I saw an omurice place, so I figured I would stop there for lunch. It turned out to be the bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland-themed restaurant that I swear someone on my friendslist mentioned at some point. I had no clue, I just wanted omurice -- I realized it when they actually brought out my lunch on these dishes with tons of weird Alice quotes.
But the food was DELICIOUS. The omurice was perfect, and it came with a salad and a baked potato, and with this bread roll... I don't know how to describe the bread beyond AMAZING. I had no clue they knew how to make bread like this in Japan. It was puffy and sweet and had butter in the middle, served hot... oh man. I took a bite of the bread and was thinking I need to go back there just to get bread sometime.
And beyond that, I had a dessert set... figured an ice cream parfait would be nice after all that heat. And it was. I had the apple-berry-cheesecake-whatever parfait, and it was delicious as well.
Very much recommend this place. Would be happy to go back with anyone who wants to, although I do believe they have locations more convenient than Omiya.
So yeah, I came in there sweaty and feeling lousy, and left feeling pretty good. Got some mini-taiyaki at the station and then came home.
I realized that the newspaper station near me is of Tokyo Chunichi sports, actually... but nobody was around when I was going by. So after staying home for 2-3 hours cooling down and playing PP (I'm seriously incapable of doing anything useful when I have first gotten indoors from the heat...) I went out on errands, to eat dinner and to pay bills and to bug the newspaper people.
See, one of my students was on the winning team in the Tokyo Chunichi little league tournament, and I heard it was mentioned in the newspaper. But getting old issues of a daily newspaper is impossible in Japan. BUT it turned out that this newspaper outpost had old issues going back about 2 weeks, so once I explained what I was looking for, the guys there actually helped me find the issue with the photo and article about the tourney! It's pretty cool. I'll save it and if my student doesn't have a copy, I'll give it to him after the summer. I was astounded by how nice the newspaper guys actually were to me... maybe it was just such a crazy request? They gave me the newspaper for free, even.
Rar. I should go to sleep... I want to go to Yokohama tomorrow and continue my high school baseball journey. I also need to, um, start packing for my Seattle trip...
It was 36 degrees out though, which is like 97 to the rest of you. I brought two frozen bottles of water and an extra bottle of water, and I had gone through one frozen bottle and one normal bottle by the end of the fifth inning, sitting out in the sun, so I gave up and moved to the back of the grandstand and watched the rest of the game in the shade, where it was perfectly reasonable, but I had to stand because everyone else wanted to sit in the shade too. I took photos of an inning of the second game of the day and then left.
Funny story: the ouendan (mostly non-playing baseball club members, as well as the marching band kids and some assorted cheer girls) throw water all over each other during these games, which makes sense in summer to stay cool. It makes less sense in winter when college ouendan do it, but ANYWAY, on my way out of the stadium I nearly got run over by a bunch of 1st-year boys in baseball uniforms who were lugging buckets of water back and forth! They looked pretty grumpy about their lot in life.
Despite putting on sunscreen, I got a pretty lousy sunburn. Sigh.
So I left that stadium feeling really hot and headachy yet again. It's a 20-minute walk to/from Omiya station to the stadium, and on the way there I knew I saw an omurice place, so I figured I would stop there for lunch. It turned out to be the bizarre Alice-in-Wonderland-themed restaurant that I swear someone on my friendslist mentioned at some point. I had no clue, I just wanted omurice -- I realized it when they actually brought out my lunch on these dishes with tons of weird Alice quotes.
But the food was DELICIOUS. The omurice was perfect, and it came with a salad and a baked potato, and with this bread roll... I don't know how to describe the bread beyond AMAZING. I had no clue they knew how to make bread like this in Japan. It was puffy and sweet and had butter in the middle, served hot... oh man. I took a bite of the bread and was thinking I need to go back there just to get bread sometime.
And beyond that, I had a dessert set... figured an ice cream parfait would be nice after all that heat. And it was. I had the apple-berry-cheesecake-whatever parfait, and it was delicious as well.
Very much recommend this place. Would be happy to go back with anyone who wants to, although I do believe they have locations more convenient than Omiya.
So yeah, I came in there sweaty and feeling lousy, and left feeling pretty good. Got some mini-taiyaki at the station and then came home.
I realized that the newspaper station near me is of Tokyo Chunichi sports, actually... but nobody was around when I was going by. So after staying home for 2-3 hours cooling down and playing PP (I'm seriously incapable of doing anything useful when I have first gotten indoors from the heat...) I went out on errands, to eat dinner and to pay bills and to bug the newspaper people.
See, one of my students was on the winning team in the Tokyo Chunichi little league tournament, and I heard it was mentioned in the newspaper. But getting old issues of a daily newspaper is impossible in Japan. BUT it turned out that this newspaper outpost had old issues going back about 2 weeks, so once I explained what I was looking for, the guys there actually helped me find the issue with the photo and article about the tourney! It's pretty cool. I'll save it and if my student doesn't have a copy, I'll give it to him after the summer. I was astounded by how nice the newspaper guys actually were to me... maybe it was just such a crazy request? They gave me the newspaper for free, even.
Rar. I should go to sleep... I want to go to Yokohama tomorrow and continue my high school baseball journey. I also need to, um, start packing for my Seattle trip...
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I could see it being a girly place to eat, with all the cutesy stuff and the tons of omurice and desserts and the waitress costumes and so on. But actually I thought the food was fantastic, which is not usually the case for these "cutesy themed restaurant" places, IMO. I mean, I just wanted some good omurice and a comfy place to sit for a while out of the heat and I got way more than I bargained for.
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