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Jiiiiiiiingu in the Rain
Yesterday morning, it was raining when I left the house. Sadly, I opened my umbrella and one of the spokes snapped. Hooray for a gimpy umbrella.
It rained heavily for most of the morning in Arakawa and stopped shortly before lunchtime (so I had to argue with the soccer boys why they were not allowed to go play in a mudpit during lunch recess).
But when the school day was wrapping up, Kozo told me it wasn't raining at Jingu so I should come over, so I did. It was the 3rd game in the Swallows-Giants deathmatch this week, and I sat with Kozo and Mac and the group at the top of section D.
The rain wasn't so heavy for the first few innings, so I didn't wear a raincoat. I went back to wander around for a bit, got some Swallows match card magazines (unlike Chiba and Seibu they are 200 yen each instead of 100 yen), and then got food -- the "sausage moriawase" as they call it, which is basically a tray that is a mix of three types of sausage, for 500 yen. Usually it would be ideal for sharing and I even grabbed some extra sticks for that purpose, except while I was in the back, it had started raining a bit more outside. There was no way I was bringing food back out there to eat, so instead I watched the game from the screens in back and ate the entire tray by myself. (Which, honestly, is about enough food for dinner for me anyway. The "big plate" would have actually required help.)
Came outside, went to put on my raincoat, and discovered it had a HUGE tear in it :( This is a 500-yen plastic poncho-like thing that I got at a game a few months ago, so it isn't like a truly terrible thing happening, but I'd used it for a whole bunch of games rather than always buying and throwing out 100-yen ponchos. Suzuki-kun offered me some plastic trash bags, so I basically poked a head and armholes out of a plastic bag and put it over my torso, and then put the raincoat over that. (The big tear was basically in back next to the left shoulder.) It was pretty effective even if everyone else was like "OMG you're nuts."
The game went into a huge rain delay in the 4th inning or so when the rain REALLY started coming down, pouring, such that we couldn't even see the infield. I remember that Hiroyasu Tanaka had a full count on him when the umpires got together to say "fuck this" and went into rain delay in the middle of the at-bat. I wandered around in the concourses for the interim, looking at all the wet baseball fans. Ended up talking to Suzuki for a while, he doubles as a Carp fan and I gave him some lemon candies I brought back from Hiroshima. Since my real umbrella was broken, I used my little green Yakult umbrella instead. It looked pretty dumb, I'm sure.
Then there was the rest of the game, once the rain lightened up enough (and pretty much stopped completely by the 7th inning). The Giants scored 4 runs in the 8th inning but the Swallows held on to win 6-4. One of the women in the group came by with agedashi tofu for everyone in the 8th inning, which was really nice of her (she apparently just does this where she'll cook enough of something for 15 people and bring it to the games occasionally, but I am not ingrained in their group enough to have experienced it before).
After the game Mac said goodbye and went off to go be busy (pretty much any time I see him, he has a trip to take in 2-3 days, and this was probably our last game together this year -- though we're talking about trying to have a party sometime in November) and Kozo and I walked back to Sendagaya with Suzuki, during which time we talked about various bizarre crap, for a while it was geography and how the school lunches are in various parts of Tokyo. It came out that Suzuki is 36 -- I thought he was like 29-30. And he thought I was around 26-27, because I mentioned Takaaki Matsumoto, the Carp player who grew up 4 blocks from my JHS (but went to Hara instead because they have a baseball club) and is 26 years old, and he said "You're about the same age as Matsumoto, right?" and I'm like "Hahahaha no, Kozo is the same age as Matsumoto". I think I will forever be as bad at guessing Japanese ages as they are at guessing mine. Although I am pretty good at identifying JHS kids by age now just because I see them so much (so even randomly on a train I can see a group of kids like "ah, JHS" or "ah, too young, elementary school" or whatever).
I bought another umbrella at the convenience store on my way home from the station; it wasn't raining but I figured I might as well take care of it rather than opening my umbrella in another week like WTF.
It rained heavily for most of the morning in Arakawa and stopped shortly before lunchtime (so I had to argue with the soccer boys why they were not allowed to go play in a mudpit during lunch recess).
But when the school day was wrapping up, Kozo told me it wasn't raining at Jingu so I should come over, so I did. It was the 3rd game in the Swallows-Giants deathmatch this week, and I sat with Kozo and Mac and the group at the top of section D.
The rain wasn't so heavy for the first few innings, so I didn't wear a raincoat. I went back to wander around for a bit, got some Swallows match card magazines (unlike Chiba and Seibu they are 200 yen each instead of 100 yen), and then got food -- the "sausage moriawase" as they call it, which is basically a tray that is a mix of three types of sausage, for 500 yen. Usually it would be ideal for sharing and I even grabbed some extra sticks for that purpose, except while I was in the back, it had started raining a bit more outside. There was no way I was bringing food back out there to eat, so instead I watched the game from the screens in back and ate the entire tray by myself. (Which, honestly, is about enough food for dinner for me anyway. The "big plate" would have actually required help.)
Came outside, went to put on my raincoat, and discovered it had a HUGE tear in it :( This is a 500-yen plastic poncho-like thing that I got at a game a few months ago, so it isn't like a truly terrible thing happening, but I'd used it for a whole bunch of games rather than always buying and throwing out 100-yen ponchos. Suzuki-kun offered me some plastic trash bags, so I basically poked a head and armholes out of a plastic bag and put it over my torso, and then put the raincoat over that. (The big tear was basically in back next to the left shoulder.) It was pretty effective even if everyone else was like "OMG you're nuts."
The game went into a huge rain delay in the 4th inning or so when the rain REALLY started coming down, pouring, such that we couldn't even see the infield. I remember that Hiroyasu Tanaka had a full count on him when the umpires got together to say "fuck this" and went into rain delay in the middle of the at-bat. I wandered around in the concourses for the interim, looking at all the wet baseball fans. Ended up talking to Suzuki for a while, he doubles as a Carp fan and I gave him some lemon candies I brought back from Hiroshima. Since my real umbrella was broken, I used my little green Yakult umbrella instead. It looked pretty dumb, I'm sure.
Then there was the rest of the game, once the rain lightened up enough (and pretty much stopped completely by the 7th inning). The Giants scored 4 runs in the 8th inning but the Swallows held on to win 6-4. One of the women in the group came by with agedashi tofu for everyone in the 8th inning, which was really nice of her (she apparently just does this where she'll cook enough of something for 15 people and bring it to the games occasionally, but I am not ingrained in their group enough to have experienced it before).
After the game Mac said goodbye and went off to go be busy (pretty much any time I see him, he has a trip to take in 2-3 days, and this was probably our last game together this year -- though we're talking about trying to have a party sometime in November) and Kozo and I walked back to Sendagaya with Suzuki, during which time we talked about various bizarre crap, for a while it was geography and how the school lunches are in various parts of Tokyo. It came out that Suzuki is 36 -- I thought he was like 29-30. And he thought I was around 26-27, because I mentioned Takaaki Matsumoto, the Carp player who grew up 4 blocks from my JHS (but went to Hara instead because they have a baseball club) and is 26 years old, and he said "You're about the same age as Matsumoto, right?" and I'm like "Hahahaha no, Kozo is the same age as Matsumoto". I think I will forever be as bad at guessing Japanese ages as they are at guessing mine. Although I am pretty good at identifying JHS kids by age now just because I see them so much (so even randomly on a train I can see a group of kids like "ah, JHS" or "ah, too young, elementary school" or whatever).
I bought another umbrella at the convenience store on my way home from the station; it wasn't raining but I figured I might as well take care of it rather than opening my umbrella in another week like WTF.
no subject
Are you excited about the move?
no subject
You're from Pittsburgh? I went to CMU and lived in the area for like 8 years, and taught a whole bunch of people from your HS when I was a teacher for Governor's School but I think it would have been before you were there.
no subject
And you taught at Mt Lebanon High School? I was there from 1998-2004; when I was going to Jr High it was still a part of the high school building.
My mom has a theory that somehow everyone has a connection to Pittsburgh. I think it's funny...but it's so true.
no subject
Hmm, I was in Pittsburgh from 1994-2002, taught PGSS in the 1996-1998 summers, so yeah, before your time. What are you doing in Japan now?
no subject
I'm currently doing graphic design for a venture company in Ebisu. Most of the time I feel like I don't fit in and although my Japanese reading is awesome, my speaking and listening is...not. So I feel stupid most of the time as well. But I'm getting experience, and I'm happy I was able to find a job at all, so there's that.
Do you enjoy teaching? Did you come to Japan to teach or were there other reasons? (I'm always interested in why people come here.)