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 :)

Dude! Great day out at the Meiji fields

So, Meiji University's baseball dorm and ground are in the middle of nowhere in West Tokyo. Literally, it's out in Chofu, over a mile from the nearest train station, and there are trees and grass all around where it is. I went there once last year for high school baseball, to see my former JHS student's team. At that time I did sit out by the dorm with Ogura, and we did chat with a few passing Meiji players. And... I followed her there and back, so I really had no clue how to get there.

But my friend Kobayashi said she was thinking of going to today's preseason game of Tokai vs. Meiji, and Tokai has this kid named Tomoyuki Sugano who's a surefire draft pick this year, he throws 97mph and his uncle is the Yomiuri Giants manager Tatsunori Hara (who also went to Tokai). And Meiji has a surefire draft pick named Yusuke Nomura, who hates me for some reason.

Anyway, I was meeting Kobayashi at Shinjuku station at 10:45am, so we could ride out there together and I could just follow her there since she knew the way to get to the field. I left early and I stopped at Ikebukuro's Bic Camera to print out a few photos in the hopes of getting them signed (well, and so I'd be able to give some to some players as well). Spent about 1000 yen printing them and hoped it wouldn't be a waste.

We met up at the station and I followed Kobayashi to the Keio lines (not to be confused with the university). We rode out to Tama-Reien station, and then began the 20-minute walk to the Meiji grounds... she said that Ueda-kun had requested us to bring some snacks and drinks and stuff, so we stopped in a supermarket so she could buy like 8 bottles of various drinks. I'm really not making this up -- she was carrying 3 bags with her. One bag was her camera and some photos and whatnot. One bag was full of Japanese snacks and junkfood. And then the third bag was the drinks. She was just going to give them to various players. Me, I had my camera, and I had my normal bag. I brought a bag of chocolate Easter eggs and a package of yellow bunny Peeps, which I intended to give to Ikuhiro Takeda, the captain, and tell him to please share with everyone.

It's funny, I was thinking how in Japan we always bring food/gifts for our friends and for the players, but in the US I don't think people EVER do that kind of thing... like, bringing snacks and drinks and things for baseball players? I was telling Kobayashi how I think that in the US, people don't usually accept food from strangers because you never know if it's going to be okay to eat, like how crazy things happen on Halloween and all. She said it sure sounds messed up, that people would want to do stuff like that. I agreed.

Anyway, we arrived at the field and threw our stuff down on a bunch of seats way off to the side so that we could just spread out. And then... I didn't know he was coming but Toda-kun (a Rikkio 3rd-year non-baseball player friend of mine) was there with a friend of his from Waseda! And so we saw each other in the stands, and as a bunch of people are staring like "WTF is a gaijin doing here" we're both like "HISASHIBURI!!! GENKI?!?" Hehe. He was like "I can't believe you came back after the earthquake!" and I'm like "Some things are just more important..." So Toda put his stuff down with ours too. And he ALSO was keeping score :)

We also ran into Andoh-san. Andoh-san is AMAZING. She's 82 years old or so and still completely mobile and able to walk the mile and back out to the Meiji stadium. She comes to a lot of games and all the players know her and adore her because she's just a very sweet and genki old lady. She told me once how she lived in the US for a few years when she was in her 20's. (Which means in like the 1950's.) So she saw me and she's like "I heard from Kisho's (Kagami) mom that you came out to see him at Yokohama during the winter? I think he was pretty happy about it." "WHAT? He seemed angry at me at the time... I made trouble for him during rookie practice." "Nono, he was really flattered that you made the uniform and came all the way out there. At least that's what his mom said." "Really? I thought I was a big bother to him..." "I don't think so."

When I'm 82, I want to be like her.

Yoneyama was also there. Halfway through the game, Kobayashi and I went over to the Meiji bullpen side to shoot Kumabe (hehe) and found Yoneyama, who was like "OMG WHAT IS DEANNA DOING HERE?" Heh. He had a cool new 2011 Kamagaya hat and told me that the stadium got kinda messed up in the earthquake, but that I should try to come out there anyway if I can.

Anyway, there was a game. Only thing is, due to the power saving measures that everyone is going through, they weren't actually keeping score on the scoreboard, and were only using it for strikes/balls/outs. So, good thing Toda and I were scorekeeping, because people kept asking us "What inning is it? What's the score? Who's up next?" I had gotten an info sheet before the game, fortunately, which made it so much easier to keep score than at the damn Hosei game the other day!

And well, Tokai won 6-4. Though it was tied 4-4 for a while. Meiji's Toshiki Abe hit two triples, that was impressive! My new favorite college catcher, Tokai's Torai Fushimi, hit two doubles. Tokai's Tomoyuki Sugano pitched two innings and was amazing as usual. I got to see Morita and Kumabe (two of the Meiji boys that were at our New Year's dinner) pitch an inning and change each.

After the game I managed to get the courage to go down to where the Tokai players were going to come out... I saw Sugano sitting in the dugout and so with another lady we bugged him for autographs and for photos together. He was quite polite about it, several people were asking him for them, I think he's well aware that he's a hot commodity... and also aware that he's going to be getting 29340390543209 times more fans bugging him for autographs and stuff in the future. So, I was nervous, but I'm glad I managed it. In a year or two when he's playing in the pros here, I'll be able to say I got to meet him when he was still in college :)



He's so tall!!

So, I guess to be fair, I could have considered the day a success right then and there without anything else happening.

I walked around to the Meiji side, where players were getting ready for post-game practice. Yeah, they practiced in the morning, then played a 3-hour game, and then had 1-2 more hours of practice. No joke. I did catch Takashi Uemoto (his brother Hiroki plays for the Hanshin Tigers) and was like "hey, can I get you to sign something?" and he was like "sure," and so I had him sign one photo and gave him the other. I told him I saw his brother play when I was down in Kansai and he was like "Cool, did he have a good game?" and I'm like "Yeah, he played well. He and Araki were both in the lineup."

And well, then there was practice. I gave up on trying to get Yusuke Nomura, he blew me off not once but TWICE out there! Sheesh. I don't know why he hates me :( So instead I went up into the stands again and watched practice. The only people left there by then were me, Kobayashi, Toda, Toda's friend, Andoh, and... Yuka, the lady who I randomly latched onto at the Baystars day that I met Kagami. I have no idea why she was there today but we chatted for a bit, she told me that she's been out there to see Kagami a few more times and that basically he's not even playing in games yet but just building up his strength, basically once ichi-gun starts again and the Baystars get all their higher pitchers out of the ni-gun games they'll hopefully start playing some of the rookies.

Everybody else left except me and Kobayashi. We stuck around until the very very end of practice. It was fun, I got to see them make all the freshmen do base-running stuff, basically the fielders were practicing fielding, and so the freshmen were their targets to throw at, so to speak -- like a coach would hit a fly ball to the outfield, and so it was a freshman's job to tag up and run from 3rd base to home and get tagged out. Things like that. And even funkier was that some freshmen have their names written on their uniforms so I'd be like "Hey wait a minute that's Sano from Nichidai San. And that's Takahashi from Nihon Bunri!" And so on.

(And later on I also saw Imaoka from Yokohama Hayato! I was like "That guy... I've seen him at Koshien... Imaoka?" But I didn't talk to him. I don't want to freak out the freshmen, not yet at least!)

Finally, practice ended and we went down to meet some of the players on their way out. I got Kumabe and Morita and Ueda to sign photos for me :) Kumabe, when he came out, greeted Kobayashi normally and then was like "OMG!" when he realized I was with her. I told him I had some photos for him but wanted one signed, and he's like "oh these are cool, from the rookie tourney right? But I don't think we usually sign stuff until the league starts..." and I'm like "BUT I WON'T BE HERE WHEN THE LEAGUE STARTS, YOU SUCK" so he was like "I'll sign for you but don't look! I suck at writing and I don't want anyone watching me." It was so funny. He told us that he got a job with Honda Kumamoto after he graduates, though! So he's all set and can enjoy his senior year without worrying about job searching. Lucky him! He's actually a really smart kid even if he's a complete weirdo. We let him pick out some snacks from the snack bag and I told him I had chocolate and stuff from the US but it was really sweet and I didn't know if people could eat it and he's like "Sweet stuff is GOOD. I sit there eating raw sugar for the hell of it, you know." If only I had a Japanese phrase that would mean "Well, THAT explains a lot" I would have said it, but instead just said "You're joking," and he's like "Not joking!" Most of the players left while we were talking to Kuma and Morita, and Morita also took off, and then Takeda and Ueda came out and also did a double-take like "Hey! You guys!"

I handed the bag with the Peeps and chocolate eggs to Takeda, very formally like "Please, Mr. Captain, share this pitiful offering that I brought from America with your honorable teammates," and he laughed and bowed and very seriously replied something to the effect of "Why yes, we will happily partake of this wonderful gift." And then everybody laughed and got a lot less formal, like "and here's for you Ueda, all the junkfood you ordered. Hope you don't get fat!" We chatted for a bit. Takeda was wearing a Softbank Hawks #29 sweater and I'm like "Eh? 29? Is this from... Kume?" "No, it's from one of my kohai from high school, Chikada, he gave it to me as a gift." "Wow! That's so cool!"

Anyway, I got everyone to take a photo with me too:



From the left it's captain Takeda, Shogo Shibata, me, Ueda, Kumabe. I don't really know Shibata at ALL but I've seen him play a bit. Of all of them I probably know (and like) Kumabe the best. He's a trip. Though actually Takeda's changed a lot since becoming captain. I remember being surprised when he was named captain, since he'd always seemed kinda like a dorky little kid, but he really carries himself differently now, even in the game today he batted 3rd and was playing a lot more aggressive than I remember. So, cool. Kobayashi later commented that "well, when students reach their final year somewhere they often end up maturing a LOT all of a sudden," and I'm like "...yeah, I guess that's true. My JHS kids certainly were like that -- childish 7th-grade, TERRIBLE 8th-grade, and wonderful 9th grade."

So yeah, it was a very successful day. Lots of signatures, lots of chatting up players, lots of seeing friends, lots of watching baseball, etc, etc. I love these kinds of adventures!

We walked the mile+ back to the station, sat on the train going to Shinjuku, and then Kobayashi headed off to go shopping, and I headed off to go eat sushi in Ikebukuro because I could, and then come home. I sorted through photos a little, and wrote this entry.

Tomorrow is going to be an honest-to-god Swallows vs. Carp game at Jingu!!!! I'm so happy to go back to Jingu. It's not an official game, it's a charity game, and there'll be ouendan, but without trumpets and drums. So, we'll see what happens. I'm still hoping to see a bunch of friends and yell a lot though. And, Jingu! Wheeeeee!