Catching up on the trip -- Saturday in Sapporo

If I was smart I would have written more while offline to upload now. Whoops. In some ways I was just too busy to write all weekend anyway, so the lack of internet didn't hurt me none.

Anyway, so I got to Sapporo on Friday night after sitting on trains all day Friday. It's already fading out for me as a day; after I sat at the benches outside Sumikawa and uploaded my entry, I used my cellphone to find Phylicia's place... which involved a lot of walking on fairly dark streets. It was entirely a case of "Thank god this is Japan", first for sitting out at a bus stop with my laptop, and second for walking along late at night on dark streets, and not really being THAT worried about either.

She has a huge apartment! It's seriously like a 3LDK... there are 3 rooms that distinctly are bedroom-like, and a middle hall/dining/whatever area and kitchen, as well as bathroom and all. I think she has about as much space as I do actually, but I didn't START with that. The JET program is nice.

On Saturday, I walked to the Sapporo Dome, thinking how totally surreal it was that I took a train to Sapporo and then walked to the Dome. Only thing is, it took like 45 minutes and it was HOT outside, like around 29 C, almost as hot as Tokyo, sheesh. I got there around 12:30, was supposed to meet the Sakurais around 1:30 for a 3pm game). I saw a little bit of a "Sapporo Dome memorial" area while walking from the south to north sides, but that didn't take that long. So I went to the Fighters store and went kind of nuts -- over the course of the weekend I ended up buying 6 t-shirts, 4 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday. The feeling is that this is possibly my last time there before I move back to the US and I need lots of Fighters stuff. 2 of the shirts are actually replacing shirts I already have that I am wearing out from overuse and Japanese laundry machines' abuse. Also while at the store I ran into some blond-haired American baseball (high school?) Team USA boys. They were like "I wanna get a t-shirt but they don't have Darvish, who the hell are all the rest of these guys?"

Anyway, I met up with Sakurai-san, borrowed a season pass from him, and went into the stadium... spent a lot of the pregame trying to do pinbadge crap. Minako's mom found me again and took me down to the trading area and basically one of her friends essentially hooked me up with all the player badges I was missing. Only thing is, me being an idiot, I let them take the rare badge and several popular player badges that I had been given (since they gave me like 24 pins and wanted like 10 in return). Shit. So it meant that getting BB, Cubby, and Nashida-Kantoku was pretty much impossible. (But over the two days I got Nashida and Cubby anyway; M-Mom asked around her friends and managed to come up with those two extras.) So what sucks is, I now still have a TON of extra badges from last year and this year that I totally don't really need. I may just foist them all off on someone back in Tokyo eventually.

The game was good, the Fighters won. It was a little weird for me because Sakurai insisted on either introducing or re-introducing me to like every single person who went by -- their group now has the seats in the very last row of Aisle 98, so everyone walks by behind them. It's nice because we could also keep our bags back there, lots more room, but also a little weird. I brought a box of Fruit Delight thingies from Seattle and Sakurai was giving them to lots of people like "see? meet Deanna, she is the crazy American fan who came up from Tokyo but was in Seattle last week" and some people were like "oh, i've seen you on TV..." but I mean, he even gave one of the omiyage fruit thingies to their COLA BOY! Apparently there's this one college kid who sells cola and oolong tea in the outfield and they've decided he's their preferred vendor. His name's Nakazato but they call him "Ohno-kun" because he bears a passing resemblance to the Fighters catcher. So they're even to him like "Ohno-kun! come meet Deanna! and have a fruit thingie she brought from Seattle! and can we get 3 Cokes?"" and he's like "uh... okay..."

But yeah -- also it was funny because the seat next to me was open and on the aisle, so people kept coming by to say hi and sit down next to me for half an inning or so. If Carl was there he would have made a reference to me "holding court".

After the game, rather than letting me walk back to Sumikawa, the Sakurais gave me a ride back to Phylicia's place (which I helped them find mostly like "I WALKED PAST THIS! AND THIS TOO! WAIT TURN RIGHT HERE!" and such. Mostly I was like "I have no clue where anything is in this city...")

So for the evening, Phylicia and I decided to get ramen and then go to karaoke. We went to a place called "Ramen Shin" which is literally kitty-cornered with her apartment complex. we had really good miso ramen, and talked to the proprietor a bit, who remembered the other ALTs who used to live there.

Then we used my phone to find a Shidax karaoke place about a 15-minute walk from her place... and went there and Phylicia spent a while creating a "member's card" on her phone, which was a pain, but at least it was free, and now she can use that to go again. We did about 2 hours of karaoke and sang a lot of m-flo and Bemani-related stuff and various other things (well, she did Utada Hikaru and Crystal Kay and other things I am unfamiliar with). It was fun, though my throat was totally awful after screaming all day at the Fighters game.

That catches me up to Saturday -- and I'm about to get on a train for a day trip to Yamagata to tag the prefecture, so I'll write more later tonight, maybe (depending on whether the Fighters game gets rained out, ARGH).

Been to 32 prefectures now.

I just got back from a ridiculous trip to Sakata City in Yamagata prefecture. I say ridiculous because I got on a train at 9:51am here in Akita, it got there at 11:39am, I walked around for about 30-40 minutes, found Sakata Minami HS (they went to Koshien a few times but their ballclub actually practices elsewhere, whoops) and then got on a train at 12:39pm out of there to Akita at 2:30ish.

But now I can mark the prefecture off my list.

On my way from Sapporo to Akita yesterday, I stopped in Aomori City and walked to the port and took some photos and then hung out in a department store for a while just chilling out in the AC and ate some inari for lunch. So, that's Aomori prefecture too. I stayed in Akita last night and will again tonight, so that's Akita. Tomorrow I should be getting Iwate, and that'll leave just Fukushima of the Tohoku prefectures.

Sunday, quickly, by the way -- Phylicia and I had breakfast from a bakery near her place. Then I got a ride to the Dome for the game, and went to the game, and the Fighters won again to sweep for the weekend! Hooray! This time I spent the pregame time walking around more than anything -- I did go to the trading area but just traded a few things to get players my friends like, and then left. I didn't even buy any more badges, screw that. I bought some Fighters snack omiyage to bring back to Tokyo, and this time my lunch was waffle fries. Shrug.

The game itself was much of the same EXCEPT it was apparently Guide Dog Day and so the area behind us had a ton of seeing-eye dogs with a bunch of old men wearing dark sunglasses! There were also young women assisting them. The dogs were super-cute, and VERY patient with all the noise... not even reacting to the "Who Let The Dogs Out?" song. The only thing I wonder is, why would you go to a ballgame if you can't see? I guess you could listen to the ouendan...

After the game I went downtown a bit -- stopped in Marui Imai and also at Sapporo Station to get a Seishun 18 pass, and then I came back to Sumikawa weighted down with crap from the game (this time my presents included a photobook and a jersey (no joke) and a tote bag and various other Fighters things I couldn't manage to refuse. Sometimes I think they are not giving me presents so much as foisting off extra crap on me).

Phylicia asked what I wanted to eat for dinner and I said "jingisukan!"

So I looked up a place on my phone that was about a mile from her place. She had borrowed a bicycle and so off we went.

It was called Matsuo, I think, and when we got there it looked dead empty and closed. But no, it was open, there were just no patrons. In the 2 hours we were there it was only us... the guy running the place, Masanori aka Nori, basically spent so long talking to us that we were there until his set closing time of 9:30. I mean, the food was good (he said that he even grew the vegetables himself at a plot nearby) but it was pretty wacky, he told us about the international students who come by sometimes, and also he babbled about his trips to Canada to go skiing, and I babbled about baseball and he was like "Sometimes the players come here! Inaba and Hichori have both fallen asleep on that table over there!"

So, we had a good time and ate a ton of food and it was relatively cheap and now Phylicia has another neighborhood place to go to.

I guess that's about it really.

I came to Akita by train, as mentioned... and if I have forgotten to catch up anything else I'll add it later. I guess the only sad thing was finding out about the Tappi-Kaitei station AFTER I was already on a train and scheduled on my way back to Honshu, that's a station INSIDE the Hokkaido-Aomori tunnel under the Tsugaru strait, it has a museum and stuff in there, and you could only go there if you had a ticket for the station. Sad. I doubt I'll ever get there.