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Japan trip entry wheee
Mar. 31st, 2013 07:58 pmI kinda want to have Japan entries but don't want to write them.
So let's see, I was at work Thurs night till 11pm, stayed up mosto f the night packing, got like 3 hours of sleep, then got up at 7:30 to get on BART by 9 to be at the airport by 10 to get on a noon flight. The people sitting next to me on the flight were a japanese couple who travel abroad a lot and I spent a while talking to them (in Japanese; they were like "i can't believe someone like you exists" and I'm like "that's really weird because you travel a lot and can speak English, why haven't you met more foreigners?" but I guess foreigners who are baseball otaku and train otaku are not so normal). I slept for maybe 1-2 hours on the plane total. EVERYTHING in Narita was seamless. So weird. The flight landed on time, the first thing I did was get a Softbank card for my prepaid keitai, then I went to the post office upstairs where I was picking up the mifi thingy I'm renting this trip and it was also there, and worked with no trouble either! Went to get a Skyliner train and that was also easy. The first problem I encountered at all was when I got to Fontana at 6pm and there was nobody there to show me to the place I'm staying so I had to wait like 15 minutes. Fortunately, Fontana-wise, I had exchanged money in SF so was able to just pay my rent up front. Yay. 60,000 yen for a "month" that I'm only staying for 17 days of, but that still works out to 3500 yen per day for a room in a house in Nakano with a kitchen and internet and all, so I'm pretty sure it's still a very good deal compared to any hotel thing I would have done. The guy who showed me up here was Rafael, and there's another guy in the house named Raphael (different spelling, the first is from Brazil and the other is I'm not sure). I also later on met a french girl named Madeleine who lives upstairs. I think those two are the two here right now, the other room is currently open. They don't seem to hang out in the living room much, which is ok with me. I have the smallest room known to man -- it basically fits a futon and a desk and THAT IS IT. No joke. I have to roll up the futon to have space to actually use the desk with a chair. But again, cheap and good location -- I can get from home to Shinjuku station in 15 minutes. Not sure yet what my time to Jingu is though.
Anyway, I had been emaiilng with Carl so I met up with him in Shinjuku by where the taiyaki place was in Alta. Sadly it has closed. We went to a Kinnokura izakaya for dinner because I was like "they have magic touchscreens! food will just show up!" Which is mostly what happened, we kept ordering things they were out of for some reason. And our waitress was Indian and kind of weird. And the place was smoky. But it was cool to hang out with Carl. We also went to Don Quixote after so I could get a towel and hangers and stuff, and wandered around Shinjuku a bit, and eventually I decided to go home because I was tired,
except I was supposed to stop by at Lodi at Nakano-Sakaue, which is a bar run by a Japanese guy who seems obsessed with country music and with California and Texas (apparently lived there at some point) and is a Hanshin fan. And Kozo and Mac were there. And I ended up there for another 2 hours talking to the people there about baseball and being tired. Walked home with Kozo, I got to see his new place, and we also went into our old house because it's completely emptied out and unlocked. So depressing :( Then came back here and stayed up talking until 1:30am. It's different not being in the same house but he's really just 3 blocks away.
I got up on Sunday and went to the Seibu Dome for the Fighters game. Wore my oldskool Tokyo Dome jidai jersey, ran into many people. Our old "team 52" is apparently now "team Kanto" as a play on "team Konta" now that Konta retired. Shrug. They saved a spot for me though, and we were right near Matsuda and Manabu and their gang (they want me to come to Kobe with them in 2 weeks; I said I'd think about it.) Takuma wasn't there because he's busy job-hunting apparently. Ran into Zawa-san and I can't believe how big his kid Yukio (yes, named for that Yukio) has gotten. I asked the ouendan leaders for a lyrics sheet and they were like "oh hey it's Sweeney's friend" and I'm like "...yeah I guess, and he's still in the US and doing well" and they told me to learn the new songs and I said I would. There's this girl in the ouendan who I first met 5 years ago when she was 17 and a high school student in Sapporo. I guess now she's either in college or out of college but she's actually getting up and leading the section now, which is nuts. So there are 3 main female ouendan leaders now. Crazy.
Fighters lost the game 5-2. New songs are hard. Michel Abreu hit a 2-run homer in the 9th inning to prevent Ken Togame from getting a CG shutout. It's funny because... I remember Togame at Nichidai and then JR East, and now he's pitching for the Lions. Crazy. I hope he does well though. Sad that Tatsuya Ohishi didn't come out as closer. Saw Kagiya throwing in the Fighters bullpen though and... <3! I'm proud of him but sad I can't meet him at Kamagaya, heh. Oh, and Yuji Kaneko started in right for Seibu. I met him at the Nichibei college tourney two years ago too. So weird.
Anyway, after the game, which ended earlyish at 4, I rode home with people, stopped in here, dropped off stuff, then went back to Shinjuku to meet up with Shin and Carl. We got dinner at Nabezo, which was a combination of shabu-shabu and sukiyaki with all the get-your-own stuff so drinks, rice, veggies, etc, as opposed to Momo Paradise where they just bring you whatever. (There was a long wait and we went to Kinokuniya on the way, though) Anyway, we whined about work and hung out there for a while and ate a ton of food, and then went to the Wald 9 theater and saw Wreck-it Ralph. In Japanese, of course. It was a little weird and I was tired but I think I understood all of it. Should watch again in English sometime.
Came home, tired. Decided not to go to Osaka for senbatsu. It's silly, but it just feels like a lot of time and money to make a day trip there now. I guess I'm getting older and jaded. I mean, I like Koshien and all but I've been there and done that and since I don't live in Japan anymore I don't have the same attachments to schools and whatnot.
So let's see, I was at work Thurs night till 11pm, stayed up mosto f the night packing, got like 3 hours of sleep, then got up at 7:30 to get on BART by 9 to be at the airport by 10 to get on a noon flight. The people sitting next to me on the flight were a japanese couple who travel abroad a lot and I spent a while talking to them (in Japanese; they were like "i can't believe someone like you exists" and I'm like "that's really weird because you travel a lot and can speak English, why haven't you met more foreigners?" but I guess foreigners who are baseball otaku and train otaku are not so normal). I slept for maybe 1-2 hours on the plane total. EVERYTHING in Narita was seamless. So weird. The flight landed on time, the first thing I did was get a Softbank card for my prepaid keitai, then I went to the post office upstairs where I was picking up the mifi thingy I'm renting this trip and it was also there, and worked with no trouble either! Went to get a Skyliner train and that was also easy. The first problem I encountered at all was when I got to Fontana at 6pm and there was nobody there to show me to the place I'm staying so I had to wait like 15 minutes. Fortunately, Fontana-wise, I had exchanged money in SF so was able to just pay my rent up front. Yay. 60,000 yen for a "month" that I'm only staying for 17 days of, but that still works out to 3500 yen per day for a room in a house in Nakano with a kitchen and internet and all, so I'm pretty sure it's still a very good deal compared to any hotel thing I would have done. The guy who showed me up here was Rafael, and there's another guy in the house named Raphael (different spelling, the first is from Brazil and the other is I'm not sure). I also later on met a french girl named Madeleine who lives upstairs. I think those two are the two here right now, the other room is currently open. They don't seem to hang out in the living room much, which is ok with me. I have the smallest room known to man -- it basically fits a futon and a desk and THAT IS IT. No joke. I have to roll up the futon to have space to actually use the desk with a chair. But again, cheap and good location -- I can get from home to Shinjuku station in 15 minutes. Not sure yet what my time to Jingu is though.
Anyway, I had been emaiilng with Carl so I met up with him in Shinjuku by where the taiyaki place was in Alta. Sadly it has closed. We went to a Kinnokura izakaya for dinner because I was like "they have magic touchscreens! food will just show up!" Which is mostly what happened, we kept ordering things they were out of for some reason. And our waitress was Indian and kind of weird. And the place was smoky. But it was cool to hang out with Carl. We also went to Don Quixote after so I could get a towel and hangers and stuff, and wandered around Shinjuku a bit, and eventually I decided to go home because I was tired,
except I was supposed to stop by at Lodi at Nakano-Sakaue, which is a bar run by a Japanese guy who seems obsessed with country music and with California and Texas (apparently lived there at some point) and is a Hanshin fan. And Kozo and Mac were there. And I ended up there for another 2 hours talking to the people there about baseball and being tired. Walked home with Kozo, I got to see his new place, and we also went into our old house because it's completely emptied out and unlocked. So depressing :( Then came back here and stayed up talking until 1:30am. It's different not being in the same house but he's really just 3 blocks away.
I got up on Sunday and went to the Seibu Dome for the Fighters game. Wore my oldskool Tokyo Dome jidai jersey, ran into many people. Our old "team 52" is apparently now "team Kanto" as a play on "team Konta" now that Konta retired. Shrug. They saved a spot for me though, and we were right near Matsuda and Manabu and their gang (they want me to come to Kobe with them in 2 weeks; I said I'd think about it.) Takuma wasn't there because he's busy job-hunting apparently. Ran into Zawa-san and I can't believe how big his kid Yukio (yes, named for that Yukio) has gotten. I asked the ouendan leaders for a lyrics sheet and they were like "oh hey it's Sweeney's friend" and I'm like "...yeah I guess, and he's still in the US and doing well" and they told me to learn the new songs and I said I would. There's this girl in the ouendan who I first met 5 years ago when she was 17 and a high school student in Sapporo. I guess now she's either in college or out of college but she's actually getting up and leading the section now, which is nuts. So there are 3 main female ouendan leaders now. Crazy.
Fighters lost the game 5-2. New songs are hard. Michel Abreu hit a 2-run homer in the 9th inning to prevent Ken Togame from getting a CG shutout. It's funny because... I remember Togame at Nichidai and then JR East, and now he's pitching for the Lions. Crazy. I hope he does well though. Sad that Tatsuya Ohishi didn't come out as closer. Saw Kagiya throwing in the Fighters bullpen though and... <3! I'm proud of him but sad I can't meet him at Kamagaya, heh. Oh, and Yuji Kaneko started in right for Seibu. I met him at the Nichibei college tourney two years ago too. So weird.
Anyway, after the game, which ended earlyish at 4, I rode home with people, stopped in here, dropped off stuff, then went back to Shinjuku to meet up with Shin and Carl. We got dinner at Nabezo, which was a combination of shabu-shabu and sukiyaki with all the get-your-own stuff so drinks, rice, veggies, etc, as opposed to Momo Paradise where they just bring you whatever. (There was a long wait and we went to Kinokuniya on the way, though) Anyway, we whined about work and hung out there for a while and ate a ton of food, and then went to the Wald 9 theater and saw Wreck-it Ralph. In Japanese, of course. It was a little weird and I was tired but I think I understood all of it. Should watch again in English sometime.
Came home, tired. Decided not to go to Osaka for senbatsu. It's silly, but it just feels like a lot of time and money to make a day trip there now. I guess I'm getting older and jaded. I mean, I like Koshien and all but I've been there and done that and since I don't live in Japan anymore I don't have the same attachments to schools and whatnot.
