Senbatsu the final and HEY I AM IN NAGOYA
So it's Sunday morning and I'm sitting in the Toyoko Inn lobby leeching wireless and power for the next hour or so while I wait for ![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
the2belo to get to town and meet up with me.
Saturday, I got up super-early yet again, though I had to get my stuff together for checking out, and then threw my big bag in a locker at Noda Hanshin station, so I was at Koshien at like... 8:20am. Decided to go for 3rd base instead of 1st base, partially just for a change, and also partially because Chiben Wakayama's Big Red C is much more impressive from across the stadium than from the same side. In a way, this turned out to be a mistake -- I shoulda been on the other side for Chiben's game and Kokugakuin Kugayama's, AND almost every team ended up starting lefty pitchers instead of righty! Chiben started #10 lefty Aoki instead of #1 righty Uenoyama, Riseisha started #18 lefty Watanabe instead of #1 righty Iizuka, and Kyushu Gakuin's #1 Otsuka is lefty as is Sogo Gijutsu's #1 Ida. (In the Senbatsu book though their #1 was supposed to be a righty named Doi.) So only 2 out of 6 starting pitchers were righty instead of the 5 I was expecting. Sigh. Plus... I felt bad cheering for Kugayama from the other side.
Anyway, I sat in the second row with a GREAT view for taking photos, at least during the first game when the people in front of me were fairly short. I was sitting with a bunch of Sado HS alumni apparently. And, before the game I got a KFC chicken sandwich set for lunch despite that it was 8:30am. What was funny is, in the 2nd inning, one of the Sado guys got up to go to the concourse... and stepped on and SMASHED my Coke by accident (paper cup). So... whoops. The guy came back having bought me a new Coke though... and another guy ended up fetching an attendant with paper towels to clean up the mess. Sigh. I felt pretty bad. But anyway, Sado lost to Chiben Wakayama, which surprised pretty much nobody. At least they put up a good fight though.
Between games all I did was go for a walk, and to the bathroom.
Game 2 was Riseisha vs. Sogo Gijutsu. Gijutsu had this lovely lefty pitcher named Ida, he had a funky delivery with a hitch in it. People expected this to be a blowout in favor of Riseisha but actually it was a pretty close game for a while, Riseisha got up 2-0 in the first inning on a bunch of errors and the first hits of the game weren't even until the 5th inning for either side and the game was 1.5 hours long, no joke, Riseisha winning 4-0. Only downside is this annoying Riseisha girl was sitting in front of me (IN THE FRONT ROW!!) and kept standing up and/or putting her camera against the screen so it was REALLY hard to see over her. And she was sitting with a boy who was equally obnoxious.
Between games 2 and 3, a woman in front of me turns around like "Hey, we saw you on the other side a day or two ago, right?" I get into a conversation with them and it turned out it was a lady from Saitama and a lady from Osaka. They know each other through a women's baseball club -- women who love baseball and get together to play, even though they suck, basically. They were like "Please come play with us!!! We could totally use you, you're tall and left-handed, it would be fun!!" but I'm like "I'm leaving Japan again in mid-April. I'll be back sometime but I don't know when..."
Game 3, all the guys sitting in my row left, so... I had 2 high school girls to my left and 2 to my right. They're so annoying, seriously -- the girls to the left were just talking about me like "wtf is this crazy gaijin doing with all the picture taking and scorekeeping" and so I remarked back in Japanese "...what's so strange about it?" which at least shut the one girl up. The girls to the right were quieter but clearly also thinking "this gaijin is annoying, she keeps dropping her pens or lenscaps or books or whatever". Shrug. I guess it didn't help that I was on the Kyushu Gakuin side cheering for Kokugakuin Kugayama.
And BOY WAS THAT GAME PAINFUL. Kugayama pretty much steamrollered the last few Tokyo taikai, they were a very good team, so I was expecting big things out of them. Their ace is a kid named Kawaguchi, he's only a 1st->2nd year. But he had a rough first 2 innings and before you knew it Kyushu was up 7-1! Ugh. HOWEVER, as expected, Kugayama rebounded and tied the game up in the 8th inning. VERY exciting.
UNFORTUNATELY you would not believe how this game ended -- with 2 outs, the Kyushu Gakuin shortstop hit a triple over the guys in left-center -- and then scored on A WILD PITCH! A sayonara freaking wild pitch WTF WTF WTF. So that was kinda heartbreaking.
After the game I ended up walking around with the baseball-league women, Noriko and Shiho, for a bit. We took a photo together outside the Koshien team lineup thingy, and talked about HS/college ball for a while. Ended up showing off some of my photos with players because they were like "OMG YOU MET KAWAI? AND NOMURA? AND THE KEIO BOYS? AND OMG!" That was kinda crazy. I traded email addresses with them, so we'll see. Noriko is a Lions fan so she was all like "I wish you could come play catch with me at Woman's Night at the Seibu Dome!" They even wanted to play catch right then but I was like... I had to go to Nagoya.
Which I did.
So I got some taiyaki from the place outside Koshien finally (it's sooooooooooo good) and made my way to Noda. Got my stuff, then continued to Osaka Station, got a shinkansen ticket, got on the shinkansen. Really not that eventful, other than finding the awesome yatsuhashi dorayaki again that I love! Hooray. Shinkansen ride also uneventful. Nice sunset though.
Got into Nagoya, checked into my hotel, and then headed out to meet up withkawaru. We met at Sakae station and proceeded to a Sekai no Yamachan near there; we had to wait for a bit and then got a huge table just for 2 of us and proceeded to fill it up with miso katsu skewers, spicy chicken wings, all kinds of yummy food. I'd been snacking all day but still managed to eat a ton :) Caught up with Craig and heard about stuff in his jobs in Nagoya and whatnot. Then we went to Karaoke kan for 1.5 hours of singing, where we harmonized on a lot of stuff and that kicked ass! Especially getting to do "Winding Road" (Ayaka x Kobukuro) again, I think the last time I sang that was with Craig too, so a long time ago! Woooooo.
Came back to the hotel but pretty much crashed out -- I'd been up since super-early after all.
Got up this morning to check out and waste time until Jeff gets here, and that's where we are now. It's been a good trip. I kinda wish I'd stayed at Koshien longer but at the same time, it was good that I could get the weekend time at Nagoya to see people, plus, Koshien on weekends is INSANE crowded, so. Just as well.
Heading out to meet Jeff in a bit and then heading back to Tokyo tonight!
the2belo to get to town and meet up with me.Saturday, I got up super-early yet again, though I had to get my stuff together for checking out, and then threw my big bag in a locker at Noda Hanshin station, so I was at Koshien at like... 8:20am. Decided to go for 3rd base instead of 1st base, partially just for a change, and also partially because Chiben Wakayama's Big Red C is much more impressive from across the stadium than from the same side. In a way, this turned out to be a mistake -- I shoulda been on the other side for Chiben's game and Kokugakuin Kugayama's, AND almost every team ended up starting lefty pitchers instead of righty! Chiben started #10 lefty Aoki instead of #1 righty Uenoyama, Riseisha started #18 lefty Watanabe instead of #1 righty Iizuka, and Kyushu Gakuin's #1 Otsuka is lefty as is Sogo Gijutsu's #1 Ida. (In the Senbatsu book though their #1 was supposed to be a righty named Doi.) So only 2 out of 6 starting pitchers were righty instead of the 5 I was expecting. Sigh. Plus... I felt bad cheering for Kugayama from the other side.
Anyway, I sat in the second row with a GREAT view for taking photos, at least during the first game when the people in front of me were fairly short. I was sitting with a bunch of Sado HS alumni apparently. And, before the game I got a KFC chicken sandwich set for lunch despite that it was 8:30am. What was funny is, in the 2nd inning, one of the Sado guys got up to go to the concourse... and stepped on and SMASHED my Coke by accident (paper cup). So... whoops. The guy came back having bought me a new Coke though... and another guy ended up fetching an attendant with paper towels to clean up the mess. Sigh. I felt pretty bad. But anyway, Sado lost to Chiben Wakayama, which surprised pretty much nobody. At least they put up a good fight though.
Between games all I did was go for a walk, and to the bathroom.
Game 2 was Riseisha vs. Sogo Gijutsu. Gijutsu had this lovely lefty pitcher named Ida, he had a funky delivery with a hitch in it. People expected this to be a blowout in favor of Riseisha but actually it was a pretty close game for a while, Riseisha got up 2-0 in the first inning on a bunch of errors and the first hits of the game weren't even until the 5th inning for either side and the game was 1.5 hours long, no joke, Riseisha winning 4-0. Only downside is this annoying Riseisha girl was sitting in front of me (IN THE FRONT ROW!!) and kept standing up and/or putting her camera against the screen so it was REALLY hard to see over her. And she was sitting with a boy who was equally obnoxious.
Between games 2 and 3, a woman in front of me turns around like "Hey, we saw you on the other side a day or two ago, right?" I get into a conversation with them and it turned out it was a lady from Saitama and a lady from Osaka. They know each other through a women's baseball club -- women who love baseball and get together to play, even though they suck, basically. They were like "Please come play with us!!! We could totally use you, you're tall and left-handed, it would be fun!!" but I'm like "I'm leaving Japan again in mid-April. I'll be back sometime but I don't know when..."
Game 3, all the guys sitting in my row left, so... I had 2 high school girls to my left and 2 to my right. They're so annoying, seriously -- the girls to the left were just talking about me like "wtf is this crazy gaijin doing with all the picture taking and scorekeeping" and so I remarked back in Japanese "...what's so strange about it?" which at least shut the one girl up. The girls to the right were quieter but clearly also thinking "this gaijin is annoying, she keeps dropping her pens or lenscaps or books or whatever". Shrug. I guess it didn't help that I was on the Kyushu Gakuin side cheering for Kokugakuin Kugayama.
And BOY WAS THAT GAME PAINFUL. Kugayama pretty much steamrollered the last few Tokyo taikai, they were a very good team, so I was expecting big things out of them. Their ace is a kid named Kawaguchi, he's only a 1st->2nd year. But he had a rough first 2 innings and before you knew it Kyushu was up 7-1! Ugh. HOWEVER, as expected, Kugayama rebounded and tied the game up in the 8th inning. VERY exciting.
UNFORTUNATELY you would not believe how this game ended -- with 2 outs, the Kyushu Gakuin shortstop hit a triple over the guys in left-center -- and then scored on A WILD PITCH! A sayonara freaking wild pitch WTF WTF WTF. So that was kinda heartbreaking.
After the game I ended up walking around with the baseball-league women, Noriko and Shiho, for a bit. We took a photo together outside the Koshien team lineup thingy, and talked about HS/college ball for a while. Ended up showing off some of my photos with players because they were like "OMG YOU MET KAWAI? AND NOMURA? AND THE KEIO BOYS? AND OMG!" That was kinda crazy. I traded email addresses with them, so we'll see. Noriko is a Lions fan so she was all like "I wish you could come play catch with me at Woman's Night at the Seibu Dome!" They even wanted to play catch right then but I was like... I had to go to Nagoya.
Which I did.
So I got some taiyaki from the place outside Koshien finally (it's sooooooooooo good) and made my way to Noda. Got my stuff, then continued to Osaka Station, got a shinkansen ticket, got on the shinkansen. Really not that eventful, other than finding the awesome yatsuhashi dorayaki again that I love! Hooray. Shinkansen ride also uneventful. Nice sunset though.
Got into Nagoya, checked into my hotel, and then headed out to meet up with
kawaru. We met at Sakae station and proceeded to a Sekai no Yamachan near there; we had to wait for a bit and then got a huge table just for 2 of us and proceeded to fill it up with miso katsu skewers, spicy chicken wings, all kinds of yummy food. I'd been snacking all day but still managed to eat a ton :) Caught up with Craig and heard about stuff in his jobs in Nagoya and whatnot. Then we went to Karaoke kan for 1.5 hours of singing, where we harmonized on a lot of stuff and that kicked ass! Especially getting to do "Winding Road" (Ayaka x Kobukuro) again, I think the last time I sang that was with Craig too, so a long time ago! Woooooo.Came back to the hotel but pretty much crashed out -- I'd been up since super-early after all.
Got up this morning to check out and waste time until Jeff gets here, and that's where we are now. It's been a good trip. I kinda wish I'd stayed at Koshien longer but at the same time, it was good that I could get the weekend time at Nagoya to see people, plus, Koshien on weekends is INSANE crowded, so. Just as well.
Heading out to meet Jeff in a bit and then heading back to Tokyo tonight!