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More baseball, biking, etc
Zonked again but want to post before I sleep so I don't fall more than 2 days behind on chronicling this time in Japan.
But first: I'll be heading back to the US on April 12th. Booked my flight using miles. It's nice that my overuse of United is finally paying off. Then, Mike and I are heading to Carnival a day or two later (basically the redeye to land in Pittsburgh on the 14th) and staying until that Sunday night. Crazy, huh?
So, Wednesday. I went to Hosei's sports ground in Musashi-Kosugi to watch a preseason practice game between them and Chuo University. I was joking beforehand that "Hopefully I'll get a glimpse of Yosuke Shimabukuro", the kid who pitched Konan HS to Spring and Summer Koshien victories, who looks like a lefty Nomo tornado type. It was quite an adventure to actually FIND the place, and even once I got there I couldn't figure out how to get IN, I ended up walking around the entire compound and seeing Hosei's football/etc teams practicing too. But finally I got in, it was the 3rd inning, and the first person I see is Hanako Tokachi, who ushers me in and sits me down in the front row in front of all the baseball club guys and says she'll be back in a bit. The second person I see is Kazuki Mishima (3rd-year pitcher who shares my birthday), sitting behind me, so we also nodded hellos at each other. The third is my friend Suda, who also keeps score. So he sits with me for the entire game and I cheat off him to get the first 2 innings.
And umm... the 4th person I see and recognize is that CHUO'S PITCHER IS SHIMABUKURO!
Holy shit. I actually got to see THE MAN in person completely by random chance.
And he's goooooooood. Yeah, this was a preseason game so some guys like Taki, Doi, Imamura etc weren't playing, but Shimabukuro pretty much just set down all those Hosei batters despite that like... he's technically not even IN college yet, just practicing baseball for the preseason. Dang.
Also amusingly Chuo had a boy wearing number 28 whose name is 二十八貴大 (Takahiro Tsuchiya). That was pretty funny, I thought. I don't think I've seen other guys with numbers in their names actually wear the numbers usually.
So Chuo won 2-0. Yoshikoshi and Funamoto pitched for Hosei. I hope they do well this year...
After the game I hung out a bit. Didn't get to meet Shimabukuro. Instead I waited for the Hosei players' meeting to be over, and when it was, the players filtered out; some that recognized me nodded hello, and then Eiji Egashira came up to me with a big smile like "Hey! You're here! Remember me?" and I'm like "Dude! I went to Saga Kita this winter!!" and we got into a conversation about that for a while. He told me there was also some other stuff from the 2007 Koshien team that I didn't get to see because it was all either in the school or on the field ("I was in Saga when you were there... next time tell me and I'll show you around!") He's a very nice boy, I enjoyed talking to him for a few minutes. I had some photos to give Mishima and Yoshikoshi among others, so when Mishima came out I handed him the photos and apologized that I never got around to making him a photo book ("It's ok. These are really good. You're like a pro photographer or something!") And I gave a box of Seattle chocolates to him and Egashira (I think they're roomates now though I might be wrong) and told them to share with their teammates.
Unfortunately I kinda wanted to get Masashi Nanba's autograph, since I never did and he's the new captain. But he was still in meetings and stuff, and everyone was putting things away, like the batting nets and so on. Kota Imamura, one of the co-captains, also saw me and had a huge smile like "Hey, long time! Thanks for coming to our game!" and I told him "I hope you kick ass this season but I won't be here for it!"
So I dunno, I left and went home after that. It was nice though, a year or two ago I felt like the players only talked to me because I was with my Hosei alum friends, but this time I was there by myself and they still took a second to chat, so that was neat! Maybe they were all surprised that I showed up despite Kagami having graduated :) Egashira in particular made me so happy by coming up to talk. I mean he's a Koshien champion team member!
I bought my tickets to the charity games over the weekend and then sat on a Toyoko/Mita train for exactly an hour back to Motohasunuma and walked home from there.
Shin and I had talked about getting together in the evening, so... we'd debated between butadon and Chinese food. I wanted to go to the dim sum buffet place in Ikebukuro, but he wanted to take me to a place called Butayaro ("You pig!") He said it'd be a fast place to eat but that it was the kind of place that he figured I'd never go to on my own. I said that butadon (bowl of rice with pork on top) sounded boring. Well, I was wrong. We met up at Ochanomizu and went to the one there; had to wait for like 15-20 minutes to actually get into the place since they only have like 10 seats.
We both got the butadon and "ochazuke", which is like, a teapot of "tea", which is really more like dashi, and some nori and wasabi and scallions. Basically, once you've eaten a bunch of your donburi, you pour the dashi into the bowl, and kinda scoop up the rest of the rice and stuff as if you're eating soup. It sounds awful but it's actually quite good. And at this place the butadon was also freaking fantastic, just really delicious overall. (I found it amusing when the guy behind the counter explained to Shin about how to do the ochazuke and then told him "Explain it to your friend," and he's like "Uh, she speaks Japanese," and I'm like "Yeah, I understood you just fine," and the guy's like "Oh. Sorry for being rude.")
After dinner we went over to a coffeehouse and chatted and played Kanji Kentei DS (I'd told Shin about it a while ago but he'd never seen it), which was funny because it was kicking his butt too at the higher levels and he's all like "I'm Japanese, this is embarrassing" and I'm like "...I think the entire POINT of this level is to embarrass Japanese people."
Sadly, he mentioned that he thought it'd be fun to take me to this huge legendary cherry blossom tree for a train/etc excursion. The problem? The tree is in Fukushima Prefecture. It's literally 60km or so from those power plants. So... yeah. "It'd be fun to show you the tree, but... I probably shouldn't take you there NOW, huh? It's outside the danger radius, I swear!"
And then we walked to Akihabara and I took the train home. Yay. Hanging out with Shin is always fun.
Today I decided to go to a Swallows-Lions minor-league game at Toda stadium. I've been past Toda Stadium a bunch (and snuck in once, years ago) but never actually saw a game there. I thought it'd take around 30-40 minutes to ride my bike there -- it's a royal pain to get there by train, it's like a mile or two from the closest station. Only thing is, it takes longer to ride a bike than I think, really. That is, it took me 30 minutes alone just to get to SAITAMA. Then I got lost trying to find the stadium. Didn't arrive until about 1:10, by which point it was already the 2nd inning.
I'd hoped to see either Mikinori Katoh pitch for Yakult or Tatsuya Ohishi pitch for Seibu. Neither one was in the game at all. Yakult's starter was last year's #1 pick Nakazawa though, so that was at least interesting. But, Yakult Toda has like NO seating. Just some bleachers behind home plate, and those were packed full. So were all the available benches on the side. So I basically stood for the entire game and took some photos. The game was 2-2 and went into extra innings and basically I was cold and hungry and tired and worried about getting home in time to meet Kozo and Ben, so I left around 3:45. As it is, yeah, I also took forever getting home (and really only stopped like, once for some inari at a 7-11 because I was starving, and once or twice to look at my phone GPS and check my location), and barely walked into my house a little after 5:30. I just got lost both ways, basically, and in the end I looked at Google maps and calculated that I musta rode 25 kilometers or so today, or like 15 miles. Not bad, huh?
Met up with Kozo and Ben at 6:15 at Akabane, and we went to Watami for dinner, which worked out well since we got to eat lots of different stuff! I burned my mouth a little on some gyoza but that's ok.
Then they came back here and we watched Mr. Rookie, since it's the start of the season and I like to watch it around this time. We had the Japanese subtitles on, too, which meant that I could see that they spell "Ohhara Koji" with a really weird kanji. Also, seeing all the Kansai-ben speech written was really weird!
Good times, really. I feel like I should have made an effort to invite people over more often, the problem being that I also never really felt like I had people to invite over. Sigh Japan.
Tomorrow Kobayashi and I are going to a Meiji-Tokai university preseason game. It should be fun! Hope I get to see Sugano :)
But first: I'll be heading back to the US on April 12th. Booked my flight using miles. It's nice that my overuse of United is finally paying off. Then, Mike and I are heading to Carnival a day or two later (basically the redeye to land in Pittsburgh on the 14th) and staying until that Sunday night. Crazy, huh?
So, Wednesday. I went to Hosei's sports ground in Musashi-Kosugi to watch a preseason practice game between them and Chuo University. I was joking beforehand that "Hopefully I'll get a glimpse of Yosuke Shimabukuro", the kid who pitched Konan HS to Spring and Summer Koshien victories, who looks like a lefty Nomo tornado type. It was quite an adventure to actually FIND the place, and even once I got there I couldn't figure out how to get IN, I ended up walking around the entire compound and seeing Hosei's football/etc teams practicing too. But finally I got in, it was the 3rd inning, and the first person I see is Hanako Tokachi, who ushers me in and sits me down in the front row in front of all the baseball club guys and says she'll be back in a bit. The second person I see is Kazuki Mishima (3rd-year pitcher who shares my birthday), sitting behind me, so we also nodded hellos at each other. The third is my friend Suda, who also keeps score. So he sits with me for the entire game and I cheat off him to get the first 2 innings.
And umm... the 4th person I see and recognize is that CHUO'S PITCHER IS SHIMABUKURO!
Holy shit. I actually got to see THE MAN in person completely by random chance.
And he's goooooooood. Yeah, this was a preseason game so some guys like Taki, Doi, Imamura etc weren't playing, but Shimabukuro pretty much just set down all those Hosei batters despite that like... he's technically not even IN college yet, just practicing baseball for the preseason. Dang.
Also amusingly Chuo had a boy wearing number 28 whose name is 二十八貴大 (Takahiro Tsuchiya). That was pretty funny, I thought. I don't think I've seen other guys with numbers in their names actually wear the numbers usually.
So Chuo won 2-0. Yoshikoshi and Funamoto pitched for Hosei. I hope they do well this year...
After the game I hung out a bit. Didn't get to meet Shimabukuro. Instead I waited for the Hosei players' meeting to be over, and when it was, the players filtered out; some that recognized me nodded hello, and then Eiji Egashira came up to me with a big smile like "Hey! You're here! Remember me?" and I'm like "Dude! I went to Saga Kita this winter!!" and we got into a conversation about that for a while. He told me there was also some other stuff from the 2007 Koshien team that I didn't get to see because it was all either in the school or on the field ("I was in Saga when you were there... next time tell me and I'll show you around!") He's a very nice boy, I enjoyed talking to him for a few minutes. I had some photos to give Mishima and Yoshikoshi among others, so when Mishima came out I handed him the photos and apologized that I never got around to making him a photo book ("It's ok. These are really good. You're like a pro photographer or something!") And I gave a box of Seattle chocolates to him and Egashira (I think they're roomates now though I might be wrong) and told them to share with their teammates.
Unfortunately I kinda wanted to get Masashi Nanba's autograph, since I never did and he's the new captain. But he was still in meetings and stuff, and everyone was putting things away, like the batting nets and so on. Kota Imamura, one of the co-captains, also saw me and had a huge smile like "Hey, long time! Thanks for coming to our game!" and I told him "I hope you kick ass this season but I won't be here for it!"
So I dunno, I left and went home after that. It was nice though, a year or two ago I felt like the players only talked to me because I was with my Hosei alum friends, but this time I was there by myself and they still took a second to chat, so that was neat! Maybe they were all surprised that I showed up despite Kagami having graduated :) Egashira in particular made me so happy by coming up to talk. I mean he's a Koshien champion team member!
I bought my tickets to the charity games over the weekend and then sat on a Toyoko/Mita train for exactly an hour back to Motohasunuma and walked home from there.
Shin and I had talked about getting together in the evening, so... we'd debated between butadon and Chinese food. I wanted to go to the dim sum buffet place in Ikebukuro, but he wanted to take me to a place called Butayaro ("You pig!") He said it'd be a fast place to eat but that it was the kind of place that he figured I'd never go to on my own. I said that butadon (bowl of rice with pork on top) sounded boring. Well, I was wrong. We met up at Ochanomizu and went to the one there; had to wait for like 15-20 minutes to actually get into the place since they only have like 10 seats.
We both got the butadon and "ochazuke", which is like, a teapot of "tea", which is really more like dashi, and some nori and wasabi and scallions. Basically, once you've eaten a bunch of your donburi, you pour the dashi into the bowl, and kinda scoop up the rest of the rice and stuff as if you're eating soup. It sounds awful but it's actually quite good. And at this place the butadon was also freaking fantastic, just really delicious overall. (I found it amusing when the guy behind the counter explained to Shin about how to do the ochazuke and then told him "Explain it to your friend," and he's like "Uh, she speaks Japanese," and I'm like "Yeah, I understood you just fine," and the guy's like "Oh. Sorry for being rude.")
After dinner we went over to a coffeehouse and chatted and played Kanji Kentei DS (I'd told Shin about it a while ago but he'd never seen it), which was funny because it was kicking his butt too at the higher levels and he's all like "I'm Japanese, this is embarrassing" and I'm like "...I think the entire POINT of this level is to embarrass Japanese people."
Sadly, he mentioned that he thought it'd be fun to take me to this huge legendary cherry blossom tree for a train/etc excursion. The problem? The tree is in Fukushima Prefecture. It's literally 60km or so from those power plants. So... yeah. "It'd be fun to show you the tree, but... I probably shouldn't take you there NOW, huh? It's outside the danger radius, I swear!"
And then we walked to Akihabara and I took the train home. Yay. Hanging out with Shin is always fun.
Today I decided to go to a Swallows-Lions minor-league game at Toda stadium. I've been past Toda Stadium a bunch (and snuck in once, years ago) but never actually saw a game there. I thought it'd take around 30-40 minutes to ride my bike there -- it's a royal pain to get there by train, it's like a mile or two from the closest station. Only thing is, it takes longer to ride a bike than I think, really. That is, it took me 30 minutes alone just to get to SAITAMA. Then I got lost trying to find the stadium. Didn't arrive until about 1:10, by which point it was already the 2nd inning.
I'd hoped to see either Mikinori Katoh pitch for Yakult or Tatsuya Ohishi pitch for Seibu. Neither one was in the game at all. Yakult's starter was last year's #1 pick Nakazawa though, so that was at least interesting. But, Yakult Toda has like NO seating. Just some bleachers behind home plate, and those were packed full. So were all the available benches on the side. So I basically stood for the entire game and took some photos. The game was 2-2 and went into extra innings and basically I was cold and hungry and tired and worried about getting home in time to meet Kozo and Ben, so I left around 3:45. As it is, yeah, I also took forever getting home (and really only stopped like, once for some inari at a 7-11 because I was starving, and once or twice to look at my phone GPS and check my location), and barely walked into my house a little after 5:30. I just got lost both ways, basically, and in the end I looked at Google maps and calculated that I musta rode 25 kilometers or so today, or like 15 miles. Not bad, huh?
Met up with Kozo and Ben at 6:15 at Akabane, and we went to Watami for dinner, which worked out well since we got to eat lots of different stuff! I burned my mouth a little on some gyoza but that's ok.
Then they came back here and we watched Mr. Rookie, since it's the start of the season and I like to watch it around this time. We had the Japanese subtitles on, too, which meant that I could see that they spell "Ohhara Koji" with a really weird kanji. Also, seeing all the Kansai-ben speech written was really weird!
Good times, really. I feel like I should have made an effort to invite people over more often, the problem being that I also never really felt like I had people to invite over. Sigh Japan.
Tomorrow Kobayashi and I are going to a Meiji-Tokai university preseason game. It should be fun! Hope I get to see Sugano :)
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I laughed. That's AWESOME.
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