time goes by

I should write about the last two days, huh.

Tuesday, we hung out with Kozo... unlike me, Kozo actually knows a whole bunch of hippie vegetarian restaurants, so we went to one of them, the Brown Rice Cafe, in Omotesando. I had the daily/weekly special lunch, which was agedashi tofu and some other veggies and some soup and some brown rice. It was pretty good but perhaps slightly overpriced. Still, everyone seemed happy with what they got. And we sat on an outside patio despite it being freezing cold outside... they had heaters and blankets.

We decided to walk to the Jingu shrine... on our way out of the Brown Rice complex we passed a store called Franklin and Marshall. What's crazy is, so I'm like "WTF, I've been to Franklin&Marshall college, I played there with my college marching band," so we went in, and... the guys working there have never been to F&M let alone to Pennsylvania, I'm not even sure they've been to the US. And the store has no real affiliation with the college I don't think, it sounded like basically some fashion designer came in like 10-11 years ago and wanted to make a brand to look like classic American collegiate wear, and decided to name it after F&M. WEEEEEEEIIIIRD. Something funny was also that the guys there didn't understand that "MCMIC" was supposed to be 1999.

Anyway, we walked via Takeshitadori, and got to Jingu at 4:30, just in time to discover we couldn't get in due to the fact that it closes at "sundown". Whoops. This kinda sucked because Benoit wanted postcards, but well, so instead we ended up walking to Shinjuku (which took quite a while, but was a nice walk) and doing karaoke for an hour and a half instead. We found a super-ghetto 747 place where it was 60 yen per half hour and did that. SO cheap but SO ghetto, seriously.

Whatever, anyway, we ended up getting okonomiyaki after that. Whee Shinjuku. And then ended up talking until like 10pm.

It was a good day out with Kozo. I'm glad he and Benoit got along. (Though it feels like Kozo gets along with just about anyone. And I figured they had Montreal in common, anyway.)

Hmmm...

So today I really wanted to get sushi. I also woke up with a terrible headache. But, what ended up happening is, Benoit packed up his stuff and we went to get sushi lunch at the place in the station I forget the name of. I suggested it because I knew you can just write down what you want rather than having to talk to order, which makes it easier on me... we got him a few veggie rolls and I got a bunch of fish and was happy. Then he got on the train to the airport and I came home.

Sat at home doing laundry and trying to chill out and stop feeling crappy.

I guess it worked, because by the time I went out to meet up with Shinsuke, I felt a lot better. We met up at the LaQua Carnival arcade to play Block People since he still hadn't. We played the entire normal level and the entire advanced level and he agreed it was a really neat game but that the particular cabinet was in somewhat bad shape in that the Lego blocks weren't always getting good contact with the screen. Shrug. It was still really fun! It also turns out that all the arcades at the Tokyo Dome, including this one, are closing next week. WTF!! No, seriously, WTF! So I wouldn't even have somewhere to play Block People anymore anyway :(

After that he led me to a yakiniku restaurant in Nagatacho; I'd suggested yakiniku for dinner and he said that for my goodbye dinner he'd take me to somewhere nice. Well, this place was very nice! We had our own private booth with a sliding door, and a charcoal grill they put on our table, and aside from a starting course of meats that we had to eat first (though the only gross thing was chicken cartilege I think) we had a lot of very delicious stuff that we ordered there, very good quality... I guess I should have gotten into the habit of sometimes going to nicer places than just Anrakutei or Guts Soul, huh.

And we talked about trains for the entire time there :) I told him about my trip to Kyushu and he told me about the times he'd ridden the same trains, and shared stories about other stuff, and he told me that I apparently missed seeing the Gundam in Shizuoka. Whoops! He rode some interesting little train line around Shizuoka last weekend too, possibly even the same day I went through there, how odd.

It was a really lovely evening, anyway. I'm really going to miss him. Shin's really one of the only people in this country who actually makes any sense to me.

Then when I got back to my station I ran into my friend Ogura, who is organizing some kind of dinner on Friday night as a goodbye for me too. Sounds like plans are coming together. Also sounds like she may have invited a bunch of baseball players again. Oh my :)

Now it is late and I suck because I really was thinking to wake up early and go to Yokosuka tomorrow to stalk Kagami. Oops.

I knew there was a reason I was a Hayata Itoh fan

Keio's baseball team blog, Itoh's intro:

"Hello everyone, I'm the new captain of the Keio baseball team for 2011, Hayata Itoh.
I'm from Aichi, from Chukyodai Chukyo HS.
My special talent is memorization.
I know Pi to 115 places.
3.1415926535897932384626433832975028841971693993751058209749445923078164062862089986280348253..."

Now if only he didn't scare the crap out of me :(

I woke up earlyish today to go to Yokosuka to try to stalk Kagami, but my stomach hurts and so I've been waffling on going. I probably should just stop being an idiot and go, even if maybe I'll be late -- at least then I'll know the lay of the land and how to find the stadium. It's just so damn COLD out that I'm not looking forward to being out there.

Yokohama FAIL

Bleh.

So... I went to the Baystars training ground today to try to stalk Kagami... and I accidentally walked in the staff entrance because I didn't know any better... fortunately I realized my mistake and got out of there ASAP but not before walking by a few people who stared at me in a very WTF way.

I got there around 1pm and of course it turns out that the rookie training was from around 10am-12pm :( So by the time I was there, all the rookies had finished up and gone back to the dorms to eat lunch and work out indoors :( I got to talking with an old guy who turns out to be the Yokohama equivalent of our Kamagaya Ojisan, and with a lady who seemed to be his sidekick (a la Mariko or Hiromi and such), and they turned out to be more curious than anything about me, especially since I had my Fighters bear hanging on my bag. But we got to talking, about the Baystars players who came from the Fighters, and I started babbling about college baseball and about Kagami, and showed I had my custom jersey, and well, I guess they decided I was okay.

But yeah, I have nothing really to show for my 2 hours standing outside in the cold :( We saw Sho Aranami working out a little, and some Baystars players came out to get in their cars and drive off, so we waved hi at Shintaro Ejiri (but I don't think he recognized me from his Fighters days, despite that I talked to him at Kamagaya a few times), and some other players. Taketora Anzai was also working out on the field and he came by to greet the Yokohama Ojisan guy, well, he came to the bullpen but didn't come all the way over to where we were. I might have asked for a photo or signature if he did, but I didn't want to be annoying and make him come over to us otherwise. So I just yelled "ganbatte" along with the others standing there.

I think there were only like 10-15 people hanging around, most looked like they were also hoping for signatures and stuff.

It takes me like 2 hours to get there, and I spent like 2 hours in the cold, and I had been feeling sick in the morning anyway, so I gave up and left around 3pm. I took the Keikyu lines to get there, and took JR to get back.

Well... or more like, I took JR to Ikebukuro and went to get sushi for dinner at Tenkazushi (where they actually acknowledge now that I come in fairly often), and then to Bookoff to look for stuff for Oren and Carl, and for cheap DVDs for me. Ended up not really getting a lot. The main thing was that I was undecided on whether to get some Nintendo DS games for learning kanji. I think, though, that the Kanken DS game I was looking at, might actually be the best one for me to get, so when I hit another Bookoff I'll hopefully pick it up.

Then home to sit under the kotatsu and be warm.

I was debating going back to Yokohama tomorrow -- since everyone was like "if you come here at 10am, you can easily talk to the rookies like Kagami and all", but that requires me getting up at like 6:30am, plus I still feel like crap, plus I feel a lot of time pressure to do a lot of stuff. Tomorrow I was thinking to call Yamato about getting some of my stuff shipped to the airport (I'm thinking to pack a "bag" that is really just a box of books... it seems that paying for an extra checked bag like that is actually cheaper than sending a box of books even with book rate. Not a joke. But getting said "bag" to the airport would SUCK), and maybe also to go talk to au/KDDI about changing my phone plan and all.

So I think I'm not going to do that.

And infact I think what WILL happen is that I'm going to go to Yokohama on Sunday with Mizushima and his dad and with Ms. Tokachi, and we're going to do our regular Hosei ouenstalking, and then Kagami will have no choice but to talk to me! Muhahahaha. I was planning to go to Kamagaya on Sunday and I might still after Yokohama, but only if someone else buys me a damn ticket in the morning, because I don't want to put up with the Saitoh crowds. Seriously.

I am vaguely kinda sorta considering going up to Lotte tomorrow morning for a little while to see if I can chat up Shuhei Fujiya, but that's different because it's only 20 minutes from here, not 2 goddamn hours, and doesn't kill my entire day.

I'm really bad at breaking down all the tasks of things I need to do to get ready to go... and I'm also really bad at actually packing and so on... gotta decide which things I'm willing to leave here, which things I'm just throwing out anyway, which things I'm taking but insist on having in my carryon, which things I'm taking but will check in the bag I take to the airport myself, and which things I'm taking, and am willing to put in a bag or box to be taken by Yamato to the airport. Grar.