![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
In Hiroshima
By now everyone must be used to me being in a different city every day, right? :)
I'm at the Toyoko Inn; I got here about half an hour early and checked in but my room won't be ready until 3pm. Fortunately the lobby has nice tables, comfy airconditioning, electrical outlets, and best of all, free wireless!
I wrote an LJ entry while riding the shinkansen from Tokyo, so herein I will copy/paste it.
--------------------
Writing on the train again, whee... yes, less than 24 hours after getting home to Tokyo I already find myself on the road again, this time going south instead of north -- right now I am on a 4-hour shinkansen ride to Hiroshima. Tonight I'll watch a Carp vs. Giants game, tomorrow I'll see a college all-star game in Matsuyama, but after that I'm not entirely sure exactly what I'll end up doing. I mean, there's a game in Kagawa that I'd like to see but it might not work out that well to go due to train times and bus times -- if I want to get back to Tokyo via the Seishun 18 route on Monday I may have to stay in Tokushima on Sunday night instead of Takamatsu, so I can get the 8am ferry instead of the 11am ferry. Still investigating it, really. The question is whether the point is to get to unvisited prefectures or if it's to watch baseball...
There's this new JET girl sitting in the row behind me, I think she must be going to Mie, and she sounds like a complete and total airhead and hasn't shut up the entire trip, occasionally being so loud that other people in the car are looking back like "wtf is that loud English thing back there", and yet the two Japanese people with her from the JET program aren't doing anything about it, it's kind of weird. Listening to her, I want to smack her upside the head and tell her all these things about how the country works and how the school system works, but in reality I'm just going to sit here and maybe put on my iPod if she gets much louder.
Anyway...
Yesterday I came back to Tokyo... I got to Morioka station and ran into Yu and her daughter who were also on the same train back as me -- well technically we were in separate halves of the same train, I had a seat in the Komachi section and they were in the Hayate section. Essentially, the Hachinohe train comes in and then the Akita train comes in and they link together to form VOLTRAIN! and from Morioka to Tokyo, they go together as one unit. The main difference is that Hayate has electrical outlets and Komachi doesn't :( Wish I'd known that beforehand...
But the real kicker is, you know who ELSE was on the same train as me?? THE ENTIRE TOHOKU RAKUTEN GOLDEN EAGLES BASEBALL TEAM!
Yu told me that in the station, but it was like, I went to get a bento and there were these tall guys ahead of me and I realized those tall guys were Hisashi Iwakuma and one of the other players :| And outside the bento shop I saw another group of guys (they're all wearing white button-down shirts and suit slacks, which is how the teams usually travel), and realized OMG THAT'S TAKESHI YAMASAKI AND MOTOHIRO SHIMA AND... that's what was really nuts, I could actually pick them all out. I mean, I know the Fighters players all by face but I didn't realize exactly how far that extends to the other teams, see. I saw Darrell Rasner up on the platform, but I didn't recognize the other foreign guys easily (didn't see Marty Brown). And several of the Japanese players looked at me with this curious look that was actually vaguely of recognition... I wonder if they remember me from when I used to be on the field at Lotte and whatnot, taking photos and wandering around. Or maybe they were just like "hey look there's a gaijin with a big Fighters bag and a Fighters bear hanging off her backpack. Should we beat her up?"
Either way I really wanted to take a photo or say something but I was just too nervous and carrying too much crap. And what would I say anyway? I dunno, I didn't want to bother them, either, but damn, the entire Rakuten team! On the same train! That was pretty nuts! They all got off at Sendai though, and I was going through to Omiya.
Other than that not much happened; I got back to Omiya, got a local train to Akabane, got home, it was HOT, so I went into my room and turned on the AC and just sat there for like half an hour before doing anything else -- eventually I did laundry and I also caught up on things like Puzzle Pirates since I couldn't play that while on the road (I guess the port range is blocked by Toyoko Inn).
At 4:30ish I left my house to go to Shibuya and meet up with Pau; he's in Japan for a week or so. We went to the Momo Paradise to get shabu-shabu for dinner and catch up; naturally he kinda knows what is up with me because I blog everything but I kind of had no clue what was up with him! So that was good.
I came home after running some errands; bought my shinkansen ticket for this trip, had to stop by the ATM again, paid my bills for the month, then also went into the grocery at Ito Yokado to get some drinks and whatnot to have at home when I get back.
I thought about trying to get some blogging and whatnot done, and of course do some packing but.. in the end I fell asleep around 10:30pm. Woke up once in the night because the AC was loud; then got up for real at 7:30am, threw some stuff in a bag and basically got on the train. Woo.
--------------------------------------
So yeah. In a bit I will go to Mazda Zoom Zoom Stadium, and hopefully see the Carp beat the Giants. And then tomorrow morning I will get on a boat to Shikoku. I asked at the station about it and the lady's like "you can only buy tickets there -- but -- I don't think you should have a problem with it selling out or anything, we're past summer vacation time and not that many people ride to Shikoku to begin with," so hopefully it'll be okay.
Oh! In the time it took me to post this, my room became ready! Hooray!
I'm at the Toyoko Inn; I got here about half an hour early and checked in but my room won't be ready until 3pm. Fortunately the lobby has nice tables, comfy airconditioning, electrical outlets, and best of all, free wireless!
I wrote an LJ entry while riding the shinkansen from Tokyo, so herein I will copy/paste it.
--------------------
Writing on the train again, whee... yes, less than 24 hours after getting home to Tokyo I already find myself on the road again, this time going south instead of north -- right now I am on a 4-hour shinkansen ride to Hiroshima. Tonight I'll watch a Carp vs. Giants game, tomorrow I'll see a college all-star game in Matsuyama, but after that I'm not entirely sure exactly what I'll end up doing. I mean, there's a game in Kagawa that I'd like to see but it might not work out that well to go due to train times and bus times -- if I want to get back to Tokyo via the Seishun 18 route on Monday I may have to stay in Tokushima on Sunday night instead of Takamatsu, so I can get the 8am ferry instead of the 11am ferry. Still investigating it, really. The question is whether the point is to get to unvisited prefectures or if it's to watch baseball...
There's this new JET girl sitting in the row behind me, I think she must be going to Mie, and she sounds like a complete and total airhead and hasn't shut up the entire trip, occasionally being so loud that other people in the car are looking back like "wtf is that loud English thing back there", and yet the two Japanese people with her from the JET program aren't doing anything about it, it's kind of weird. Listening to her, I want to smack her upside the head and tell her all these things about how the country works and how the school system works, but in reality I'm just going to sit here and maybe put on my iPod if she gets much louder.
Anyway...
Yesterday I came back to Tokyo... I got to Morioka station and ran into Yu and her daughter who were also on the same train back as me -- well technically we were in separate halves of the same train, I had a seat in the Komachi section and they were in the Hayate section. Essentially, the Hachinohe train comes in and then the Akita train comes in and they link together to form VOLTRAIN! and from Morioka to Tokyo, they go together as one unit. The main difference is that Hayate has electrical outlets and Komachi doesn't :( Wish I'd known that beforehand...
But the real kicker is, you know who ELSE was on the same train as me?? THE ENTIRE TOHOKU RAKUTEN GOLDEN EAGLES BASEBALL TEAM!
Yu told me that in the station, but it was like, I went to get a bento and there were these tall guys ahead of me and I realized those tall guys were Hisashi Iwakuma and one of the other players :| And outside the bento shop I saw another group of guys (they're all wearing white button-down shirts and suit slacks, which is how the teams usually travel), and realized OMG THAT'S TAKESHI YAMASAKI AND MOTOHIRO SHIMA AND... that's what was really nuts, I could actually pick them all out. I mean, I know the Fighters players all by face but I didn't realize exactly how far that extends to the other teams, see. I saw Darrell Rasner up on the platform, but I didn't recognize the other foreign guys easily (didn't see Marty Brown). And several of the Japanese players looked at me with this curious look that was actually vaguely of recognition... I wonder if they remember me from when I used to be on the field at Lotte and whatnot, taking photos and wandering around. Or maybe they were just like "hey look there's a gaijin with a big Fighters bag and a Fighters bear hanging off her backpack. Should we beat her up?"
Either way I really wanted to take a photo or say something but I was just too nervous and carrying too much crap. And what would I say anyway? I dunno, I didn't want to bother them, either, but damn, the entire Rakuten team! On the same train! That was pretty nuts! They all got off at Sendai though, and I was going through to Omiya.
Other than that not much happened; I got back to Omiya, got a local train to Akabane, got home, it was HOT, so I went into my room and turned on the AC and just sat there for like half an hour before doing anything else -- eventually I did laundry and I also caught up on things like Puzzle Pirates since I couldn't play that while on the road (I guess the port range is blocked by Toyoko Inn).
At 4:30ish I left my house to go to Shibuya and meet up with Pau; he's in Japan for a week or so. We went to the Momo Paradise to get shabu-shabu for dinner and catch up; naturally he kinda knows what is up with me because I blog everything but I kind of had no clue what was up with him! So that was good.
I came home after running some errands; bought my shinkansen ticket for this trip, had to stop by the ATM again, paid my bills for the month, then also went into the grocery at Ito Yokado to get some drinks and whatnot to have at home when I get back.
I thought about trying to get some blogging and whatnot done, and of course do some packing but.. in the end I fell asleep around 10:30pm. Woke up once in the night because the AC was loud; then got up for real at 7:30am, threw some stuff in a bag and basically got on the train. Woo.
--------------------------------------
So yeah. In a bit I will go to Mazda Zoom Zoom Stadium, and hopefully see the Carp beat the Giants. And then tomorrow morning I will get on a boat to Shikoku. I asked at the station about it and the lady's like "you can only buy tickets there -- but -- I don't think you should have a problem with it selling out or anything, we're past summer vacation time and not that many people ride to Shikoku to begin with," so hopefully it'll be okay.
Oh! In the time it took me to post this, my room became ready! Hooray!
no subject
Oh god, I'm gasping laughing at this.
no subject