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Monday, Tuesday
Last I posted was about Sunday...
Monday was more Big 6 baseball! So exciting! See, if both series go to Monday you know you'll see good games, because it means that both pairs of teams split their Saturday/Sunday games, so it's not like one team is just killing the other.
Anyway, I sat on the Keio side for game 1 -- Keio-Rikkio. I thought Kobayashi would be there but she was late, instead I ended up sitting with Matsui-san, a Keio fan that I've known for a few semesters now, and with Kohei Nishino's mom. (Nishino is like a backup backup backup catcher -- I think the only reason he's playing is because he's a 4th-year.) We were in the front row and I took a whole bunch of photos as usual... and cheered... but well, Daisuke was pitching and Rikkio ended up winning the game on a big 6th inning where they batted around. Rikkio's starter Komuro, on the other hand, went the entire game, striking out 11. It's funny because I think Komuro is awesome, and back in April I wished him good luck and he had a fantastic spring, but I think he also overworked himself then and thus couldn't play much in the fall. But I didn't actually KNOW that since I haven't seen him pitch much this semester, and wasn't paying attention... anyway, as usual, when I see him he's awesome, which is what happened here.
I didn't even bother going outside between games. In hindsight I should have tried to catch Rikkio captain Okazaki. Oops.
Anyway, so I spent the time between games moving from one side of the stadium to another. Hosei side was pretty much empty, I plunked my stuff down in the front row, went off to get "lunch", which ended up being some french fries because pretty much NOTHING was open concession-wise. On the way there I ran into Kurihara-san, he apparently had Monday off and was at Jingu despite Meiji not playing.
Came back to my seat and found that the two occupied seats in the row were occupied by Drunk Tanaka and another old guy who I forget the name of but who spends all of his time yelling random shit at the baseball players. Did NOT bode well. I feel embarrassed in those situations because I basically don't want to be associated with those guys, and if ANY player comes anywhere within earshot they're going to yell stuff at them.
Anyway, the game featured Tomoya Mikami pitching a complete-game shutout and Hosei winning 2-0 on a Taki 2-run homer. So that was good :)
Afterwards I hung out outside Jingu and talked to most of the Hosei team! I ran into my friend Masuda, who I hadn't seen in AGES; he comes to Kamagaya sometimes too and we both are Imanari fans. He told me that his second kid was born this spring, so he's been too busy to come to baseball much at all, but that he did go to Koshien this summer, and he actually missed me because he doesn't have a lot of friends who can talk about college, high school, AND the Fighters ichi-gun and ni-gun teams! So that was nice. He was hoping to get Taki and Mishima's signatures.
I talked to Tomoya Mikami for a little while first. Mostly like "Great game today, dude. I noticed you're not entering the draft, what's up with that?" and he said thanks, and that he wasn't interested in the draft right now so was going to go the industrial league route, and he already has a job lined up with ENEOS. So, good for him I guess. We took a photo together. Tokachi-san was even like "Did you give him photos from the US games?" and Mikami's like "Yeah, she caught me a few weeks ago." Yay for that, I sometimes wonder whether the guys appreciate that sort of thing and apparently they do.
Mishima and Egashira were hanging out too, so I went to talk to them for a while. Egashira has me friended on Facebook and Twitter, he's interested in learning English, but he admitted that it's a royal pain in the ass, and told me that my Japanese is so good that he gets lazy about bothering to read the English. I doubt that, but whatever. We talked about some random stuff -- I should have asked more RELEVANT questions but was kind of out of it, so he was telling me about a Saga Kita alumni party he was at the night before. I asked Mishima if he got my birthday card, he said he did and thanks. We were like "Yeah, May 7 birthdays are cool." Egashira's like "My birthday's in June, you know" and I'm like "Hmm, is that so?" though I already knew that and I was thinking maybe I'll send him a card next year. Who knows.
I went off to catch Kota Imamura because I had photos for him. He was with a bunch of the other 4th-years -- Nanba, Harada, etc. I had nothing for those guys, but... anyway I went up to Imamura and asked if he'd sign one and said I was giving him the rest. He was like "of course!" and did... and then looked through the photos like "whoa, these are great. are these from the Meiji games?" and I said yeah, and that he's always got this cool "guts pose" thing going on when the team does well that I think is cool, hence why I had some photos of that and of him stealing second and whatnot. He's going to play for Nippon Express next year apparently! So cool. And he's such a nice guy too. Unlike freaking Nanba -- I asked him what HE'S doing next year and he said something incomprehensible that I think must have been a joke because the other people laughed. I was like "what?" and he just kind of ignored me -- my guess is either he hasn't figured it out yet, or he's just being a jerk. I always thought Nanba was kind of a crappy choice for captain and it should have been Imamura or Harada, so whatever.
OH -- I also got Kanemitsu-kantoku's autograph. I gave him photos from the US-Japan games and he was like "Oh! You!" And then thanked me for coming to the games and asked me to please continue cheering for Hosei, very formal-like. Shrug. Whatever, I was happy to finally catch him :)
Taki eventually came out and everyone applauded. I had nothing in particular for him, I just wanted to say "great home run", so I did. He got kinda swarmed with autograph requests too.
I said hi to Yokoyama-kun on the way out -- he's one of the "managers", which really means more like "team staff". I also talk to him on various social network sites sometimes, so I just wanted to say hi.
I dunno, I said hi to other players and failed to say hi to some players and, whatever. Really, the guys on the Hosei team are pretty nice guys overall. I think the only other Big 6 team I consider even remotely as approachable as them is Todai, and that's mostly because they're irrelevant.
After that all, I went home, dropped off my stuff, and then Kozo and I went off on a Shinjuku dinner and karaoke mission. We had dinner at a random 270-yen izakaya place (Kinnokura or whatever), and then did karaoke at the Crosso Karaoke Kan for 2.5 hours. We had the WEIRDEST ROOM EVER -- it was decorated in Cinnamon wallpaper, like, that bunny rabbit thing from Sanrio, and had weird wall lights too. I rolled dice afterwards and we won some karaoke coupons. And on the way home we saw artwork on the side of a wall by the station that also was trippy and had flying bunny rabbtis. Like a theme for the day...
Hmm.
Tuesday evening was a Fighters game at the Seibu Dome. I went there by way of stopping off in Shinjuku to print a few photos, which turned out to be entirely irrelevant. (Had Rissho won their game, it would have been. I still need to either send these to the dorm there or find some way to stalk Yuta Yoshida another time. Sigh.) Anyway, got to the Dome around 4:30pm. It was NUTS because they had split the rightfield outfield area into half Fighters, half Lions seating. I'd never seen that before -- but since the game was expected to sell out (and did), it was crazy. The Lions had a shot at clinching a playoff spot and it was their last game, so yeah, even at 4:30 it was already PACKED and really crowded. Our group had a decent showing too, though Taicho wasn't there and I've still yet to see Tsuyoshi, not necessarily a bad thing. Akemi was up from Osaka, so when Takuma showed up they chatted a while since apparently HE has the contact info for one of HER friends in Kobe. WTF?
I had a Kataoka bento for dinner. It was pretty good.
OH, and I bought a Hiroyuki Nakajima #3 t-shirt in anticipation of him trying to go to the MLB, just in case.
The game was Lions "ace" Fumiya Nishiguchi against Fighters youngster Mitsuo Yoshikawa. Thanks to an Okawari-kun homer and a Jose Fernandez homer the Lions won pretty handily. It was Okawari-kun's 48th homer of the season, which puts him WAY IN THE LEAD OF EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY. Kinda scary really. I spent most of the game talking to Takuma in English, and eating a ton of snacks and omiyage that everyone else had brought. Oh, and sneaking off for half an inning to take photos of the Lions balloons and of some Fighters signs that were cool.
After the game, they showed the Buffaloes-Hawks game on the big screen -- since the Lions won, if the Buffaloes lost, the Lions would clinch 3rd place and go to the playoffs. Most of our friends left, but Takuma and I stuck around to watch. Fighters fans were doing Buffaloes cheers, which was funny -- mostly like "we want THEM to win since we can beat them more easily!" Anyway, the Buffaloes lost, so the Lions "final game ceremony" also turned into a "we're going to the playoffs!!!" ceremony. And so we left to get a train home before the crowds rushed out.
I don't usually take Seibu-Shinjuku but that's where Takuma lives, so we rode a few trains together until he reached his home station, and I continued home on my own. I talk too much and really should have asked him more stuff about college life here (he's a sophomore at Keio, so we talk about that a lot). Oh well.
I really ought to get into the habit of writing LJ more.
Monday was more Big 6 baseball! So exciting! See, if both series go to Monday you know you'll see good games, because it means that both pairs of teams split their Saturday/Sunday games, so it's not like one team is just killing the other.
Anyway, I sat on the Keio side for game 1 -- Keio-Rikkio. I thought Kobayashi would be there but she was late, instead I ended up sitting with Matsui-san, a Keio fan that I've known for a few semesters now, and with Kohei Nishino's mom. (Nishino is like a backup backup backup catcher -- I think the only reason he's playing is because he's a 4th-year.) We were in the front row and I took a whole bunch of photos as usual... and cheered... but well, Daisuke was pitching and Rikkio ended up winning the game on a big 6th inning where they batted around. Rikkio's starter Komuro, on the other hand, went the entire game, striking out 11. It's funny because I think Komuro is awesome, and back in April I wished him good luck and he had a fantastic spring, but I think he also overworked himself then and thus couldn't play much in the fall. But I didn't actually KNOW that since I haven't seen him pitch much this semester, and wasn't paying attention... anyway, as usual, when I see him he's awesome, which is what happened here.
I didn't even bother going outside between games. In hindsight I should have tried to catch Rikkio captain Okazaki. Oops.
Anyway, so I spent the time between games moving from one side of the stadium to another. Hosei side was pretty much empty, I plunked my stuff down in the front row, went off to get "lunch", which ended up being some french fries because pretty much NOTHING was open concession-wise. On the way there I ran into Kurihara-san, he apparently had Monday off and was at Jingu despite Meiji not playing.
Came back to my seat and found that the two occupied seats in the row were occupied by Drunk Tanaka and another old guy who I forget the name of but who spends all of his time yelling random shit at the baseball players. Did NOT bode well. I feel embarrassed in those situations because I basically don't want to be associated with those guys, and if ANY player comes anywhere within earshot they're going to yell stuff at them.
Anyway, the game featured Tomoya Mikami pitching a complete-game shutout and Hosei winning 2-0 on a Taki 2-run homer. So that was good :)
Afterwards I hung out outside Jingu and talked to most of the Hosei team! I ran into my friend Masuda, who I hadn't seen in AGES; he comes to Kamagaya sometimes too and we both are Imanari fans. He told me that his second kid was born this spring, so he's been too busy to come to baseball much at all, but that he did go to Koshien this summer, and he actually missed me because he doesn't have a lot of friends who can talk about college, high school, AND the Fighters ichi-gun and ni-gun teams! So that was nice. He was hoping to get Taki and Mishima's signatures.
I talked to Tomoya Mikami for a little while first. Mostly like "Great game today, dude. I noticed you're not entering the draft, what's up with that?" and he said thanks, and that he wasn't interested in the draft right now so was going to go the industrial league route, and he already has a job lined up with ENEOS. So, good for him I guess. We took a photo together. Tokachi-san was even like "Did you give him photos from the US games?" and Mikami's like "Yeah, she caught me a few weeks ago." Yay for that, I sometimes wonder whether the guys appreciate that sort of thing and apparently they do.
Mishima and Egashira were hanging out too, so I went to talk to them for a while. Egashira has me friended on Facebook and Twitter, he's interested in learning English, but he admitted that it's a royal pain in the ass, and told me that my Japanese is so good that he gets lazy about bothering to read the English. I doubt that, but whatever. We talked about some random stuff -- I should have asked more RELEVANT questions but was kind of out of it, so he was telling me about a Saga Kita alumni party he was at the night before. I asked Mishima if he got my birthday card, he said he did and thanks. We were like "Yeah, May 7 birthdays are cool." Egashira's like "My birthday's in June, you know" and I'm like "Hmm, is that so?" though I already knew that and I was thinking maybe I'll send him a card next year. Who knows.
I went off to catch Kota Imamura because I had photos for him. He was with a bunch of the other 4th-years -- Nanba, Harada, etc. I had nothing for those guys, but... anyway I went up to Imamura and asked if he'd sign one and said I was giving him the rest. He was like "of course!" and did... and then looked through the photos like "whoa, these are great. are these from the Meiji games?" and I said yeah, and that he's always got this cool "guts pose" thing going on when the team does well that I think is cool, hence why I had some photos of that and of him stealing second and whatnot. He's going to play for Nippon Express next year apparently! So cool. And he's such a nice guy too. Unlike freaking Nanba -- I asked him what HE'S doing next year and he said something incomprehensible that I think must have been a joke because the other people laughed. I was like "what?" and he just kind of ignored me -- my guess is either he hasn't figured it out yet, or he's just being a jerk. I always thought Nanba was kind of a crappy choice for captain and it should have been Imamura or Harada, so whatever.
OH -- I also got Kanemitsu-kantoku's autograph. I gave him photos from the US-Japan games and he was like "Oh! You!" And then thanked me for coming to the games and asked me to please continue cheering for Hosei, very formal-like. Shrug. Whatever, I was happy to finally catch him :)
Taki eventually came out and everyone applauded. I had nothing in particular for him, I just wanted to say "great home run", so I did. He got kinda swarmed with autograph requests too.
I said hi to Yokoyama-kun on the way out -- he's one of the "managers", which really means more like "team staff". I also talk to him on various social network sites sometimes, so I just wanted to say hi.
I dunno, I said hi to other players and failed to say hi to some players and, whatever. Really, the guys on the Hosei team are pretty nice guys overall. I think the only other Big 6 team I consider even remotely as approachable as them is Todai, and that's mostly because they're irrelevant.
After that all, I went home, dropped off my stuff, and then Kozo and I went off on a Shinjuku dinner and karaoke mission. We had dinner at a random 270-yen izakaya place (Kinnokura or whatever), and then did karaoke at the Crosso Karaoke Kan for 2.5 hours. We had the WEIRDEST ROOM EVER -- it was decorated in Cinnamon wallpaper, like, that bunny rabbit thing from Sanrio, and had weird wall lights too. I rolled dice afterwards and we won some karaoke coupons. And on the way home we saw artwork on the side of a wall by the station that also was trippy and had flying bunny rabbtis. Like a theme for the day...
Hmm.
Tuesday evening was a Fighters game at the Seibu Dome. I went there by way of stopping off in Shinjuku to print a few photos, which turned out to be entirely irrelevant. (Had Rissho won their game, it would have been. I still need to either send these to the dorm there or find some way to stalk Yuta Yoshida another time. Sigh.) Anyway, got to the Dome around 4:30pm. It was NUTS because they had split the rightfield outfield area into half Fighters, half Lions seating. I'd never seen that before -- but since the game was expected to sell out (and did), it was crazy. The Lions had a shot at clinching a playoff spot and it was their last game, so yeah, even at 4:30 it was already PACKED and really crowded. Our group had a decent showing too, though Taicho wasn't there and I've still yet to see Tsuyoshi, not necessarily a bad thing. Akemi was up from Osaka, so when Takuma showed up they chatted a while since apparently HE has the contact info for one of HER friends in Kobe. WTF?
I had a Kataoka bento for dinner. It was pretty good.
OH, and I bought a Hiroyuki Nakajima #3 t-shirt in anticipation of him trying to go to the MLB, just in case.
The game was Lions "ace" Fumiya Nishiguchi against Fighters youngster Mitsuo Yoshikawa. Thanks to an Okawari-kun homer and a Jose Fernandez homer the Lions won pretty handily. It was Okawari-kun's 48th homer of the season, which puts him WAY IN THE LEAD OF EVERYONE IN THE COUNTRY. Kinda scary really. I spent most of the game talking to Takuma in English, and eating a ton of snacks and omiyage that everyone else had brought. Oh, and sneaking off for half an inning to take photos of the Lions balloons and of some Fighters signs that were cool.
After the game, they showed the Buffaloes-Hawks game on the big screen -- since the Lions won, if the Buffaloes lost, the Lions would clinch 3rd place and go to the playoffs. Most of our friends left, but Takuma and I stuck around to watch. Fighters fans were doing Buffaloes cheers, which was funny -- mostly like "we want THEM to win since we can beat them more easily!" Anyway, the Buffaloes lost, so the Lions "final game ceremony" also turned into a "we're going to the playoffs!!!" ceremony. And so we left to get a train home before the crowds rushed out.
I don't usually take Seibu-Shinjuku but that's where Takuma lives, so we rode a few trains together until he reached his home station, and I continued home on my own. I talk too much and really should have asked him more stuff about college life here (he's a sophomore at Keio, so we talk about that a lot). Oh well.
I really ought to get into the habit of writing LJ more.