japan day saigo... aka nippon ham fighters baseball day :)
okay, so today was our last full day in japan... sigh.
started out the morning a little late and got early lunch of kaiten sushi. god i love kaiten sushi. had some excellent stuff including oddly california rolls, which i had never seen in japan before. yeah. after that we headed to east ikebukuro for one last day in the sunshine. (Thats a pun because the main drag in higashiikebukuro is called Sunshine 60 Road.) Yeah, so anyway... we stopped by the cheapo CD store again and Gamers again... I got a whole bunch of capsule thingies. (James or anyone who wants an extra Petit Moni button, let me know.) I got a whole set of Maison Ikkoku characters though, HOW COOL IS THAT? Got the PNM book too, so i can be depressed about all the stuff like DJ. Yeah. Went to Sega City and they had changed all the ufo catcher machines around! so i couldnt get the rest of the Hello Kitty set! GRRRR! i did get another different hello kitty just for good measure (took me two tries), but bleh. We hung out at Moai for an hour or so playing bemani games - we saw Cindy from the other day at Muthos again, she was doing BIMP double heavy mirror stealth, no joke, although she failed it about halfway through. Still... yeah.
Someone tell![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
metroid23 that I have been unable to score any IIDX posters or anything this trip except for pamphlets... AND two full sets (10 cards, one for each style and 2 for 9th) of the IIDX machine cards, which you could buy at Moai. I bought two sets because I figured Met would want to buy the second set off me, so if that turns out not to be true, I'll offer it to other people or Ebay it, but Met has priority.
Well, I do also have 3 copies of 3rd style up for sale when I get back, although I think Laura claimed one. I have a 4th and 5th also but I think someone already claimed the 5th and the 4th is for Igene...
i did ask the guy at Moai if I could buy any of his posters and he said no. Same thing happened at the arcade here in nishiikebukuro. Sigh. oh well.
After that we hopped a train to the Korakuen stop on the Marunoichi line. It's right outside the Tokyo Dome. Man, the tokyo dome is cool! Theres like a whole complex there with restaurants and a huge roller coaster and ferris wheel that are sort of interwoven with a big building. Also, there's a HUGE japanese baseball store. I could just feel my pocket exploding as I looked at all the merchandise in there. They had some stuff for EVERY japanese team... and a ton of Hanshin Tigers stuff and a ton of Yomiuri Giants stuff. Oddly even though the Fighters also play there, they had less Fighters stuff than Tigers or even some other teams. Shrug. I hate Japanese shirt sizes. Megan, tell Josh I got him a Nippon Ham jersey because all the t-shirts were incomprehensible at least insofar as sizes go, and I didnt want to buy something that wouldn't fit. I also got some other crap like baseball cards, Tigers & Giants hello kitty plushies, a Giants jersey, and assorted other things. i just kept thinking how i would never be back there, or at least not back there for a long long time, sigh.
Yeah, so we went into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame after that. Its kinda like the american one but much smaller. It does have a similar HoF room with plaques for each player, and rooms with memorabilia from various teams and players, and things about the history of japan major league baseball - did you know it didnt start until 1936, and the Giants are the oldest consistent team, having had that name since 1947? or something like that. Anyway, they did have a room dedicated to players that have gone to america and i saw the ichiro and hasegawa and sasaki stuff. whee!
after that we grabbed dinner at an udonsoba place. mmmm, now THATs good baseball food :)
We got tickets, using my coupons so they were 1000 yen instead of 1500 for outfield unreserved. Now you know what? Whoever said Fighters games are deserted was NOT kidding. I swear there were more people in the outfield than in the infield, and maybe only 2000 people total at the game. (I think the Tokyo Dome seats like 30 or 40 thousand people?) It was scary, i have never seen a game where a baseball goes foul, bounces in the stands because no people are there, and little boys chase after the baseball. However in the outfield it was pretty packed and they had these... cheerleaders or something, well, there were real cheerleaders like girls in skirts dancing on the field, but i mean, there were guys leading songs and cheers in the stands. Everyone had noisemakers and they seemed to know all these songs for each individual player, and someone had brass instruments and so it was like being at a highschool football game or something with people playing fight songs and singing like heck and cheering for EVERY batter, lots of "KATTOBASE IIIIIIIIIIDE!" and such. They had dances for some of the player songs, and they would often just shout lots of random things. it must be SO cool to be a baseball fan in Japan, they REALLY get into it. Imagine a whole stadium shouting "GO GO GO GO GO" for every single player that gets up to bat, and playing music, and waving huge team flags, and... yeah. And I mean, this was with a fairly empty stadium and it still felt like it was a big deal! There was an Orix cheering section in the other half of the outfield too, it was cool, they also played music and sang and cheered, heh.
The scoreboards there are weird, too. They dont keep up the information about players, heck you barely even know anything about the opposing team, they dont even display anything but their last name on the scoreboard. The home team at least they display their info like how tall they are and all. The balls strikes outs thing is not on the board but is actually with a bunch of lights, I took some pictures of it, it's hard to describe.
well, Fighters won 5-4, it was a relatively close game. It was 4-2 going into the 9th inning, then Orix got a 2-run homer, making it 4-4. Bottom of the 9th, Ide led off with a single (or Tsuboi... one of them got a single and one struck out). They walked Ogawasara, and then Angel Echevaria or whatever his name is, the gaijin DH, drove in a run with a single, and the game stopped right then as the Fighters had won. They interviewed Echevaria and he had a translator and the funniest part is, he spoke in English and I could barely understand him!
Yeah, anyway, we came back to Ikebukuro, hung out in Moai some more, I played IIDX for an hour, siiiiiiiiigh. I swear Ive gotten a lot better this week and it's all going to go to pieces when I fall out of practice again. But I mean, I'm regularly getting extra stage, playing mostly 7-key, etc... SIGH. We got curry after bemani, and now am at the arcade. I do NOT want to go to the ryokan to pack, this is going to suck SOOOOOOOOOOO much...
byebye everyone. Dunno if I will check mail or anything tomorrow before skipping the country, so I might just talk to you all on the other side.
started out the morning a little late and got early lunch of kaiten sushi. god i love kaiten sushi. had some excellent stuff including oddly california rolls, which i had never seen in japan before. yeah. after that we headed to east ikebukuro for one last day in the sunshine. (Thats a pun because the main drag in higashiikebukuro is called Sunshine 60 Road.) Yeah, so anyway... we stopped by the cheapo CD store again and Gamers again... I got a whole bunch of capsule thingies. (James or anyone who wants an extra Petit Moni button, let me know.) I got a whole set of Maison Ikkoku characters though, HOW COOL IS THAT? Got the PNM book too, so i can be depressed about all the stuff like DJ. Yeah. Went to Sega City and they had changed all the ufo catcher machines around! so i couldnt get the rest of the Hello Kitty set! GRRRR! i did get another different hello kitty just for good measure (took me two tries), but bleh. We hung out at Moai for an hour or so playing bemani games - we saw Cindy from the other day at Muthos again, she was doing BIMP double heavy mirror stealth, no joke, although she failed it about halfway through. Still... yeah.
Someone tell
metroid23 that I have been unable to score any IIDX posters or anything this trip except for pamphlets... AND two full sets (10 cards, one for each style and 2 for 9th) of the IIDX machine cards, which you could buy at Moai. I bought two sets because I figured Met would want to buy the second set off me, so if that turns out not to be true, I'll offer it to other people or Ebay it, but Met has priority.Well, I do also have 3 copies of 3rd style up for sale when I get back, although I think Laura claimed one. I have a 4th and 5th also but I think someone already claimed the 5th and the 4th is for Igene...
i did ask the guy at Moai if I could buy any of his posters and he said no. Same thing happened at the arcade here in nishiikebukuro. Sigh. oh well.
After that we hopped a train to the Korakuen stop on the Marunoichi line. It's right outside the Tokyo Dome. Man, the tokyo dome is cool! Theres like a whole complex there with restaurants and a huge roller coaster and ferris wheel that are sort of interwoven with a big building. Also, there's a HUGE japanese baseball store. I could just feel my pocket exploding as I looked at all the merchandise in there. They had some stuff for EVERY japanese team... and a ton of Hanshin Tigers stuff and a ton of Yomiuri Giants stuff. Oddly even though the Fighters also play there, they had less Fighters stuff than Tigers or even some other teams. Shrug. I hate Japanese shirt sizes. Megan, tell Josh I got him a Nippon Ham jersey because all the t-shirts were incomprehensible at least insofar as sizes go, and I didnt want to buy something that wouldn't fit. I also got some other crap like baseball cards, Tigers & Giants hello kitty plushies, a Giants jersey, and assorted other things. i just kept thinking how i would never be back there, or at least not back there for a long long time, sigh.
Yeah, so we went into the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame after that. Its kinda like the american one but much smaller. It does have a similar HoF room with plaques for each player, and rooms with memorabilia from various teams and players, and things about the history of japan major league baseball - did you know it didnt start until 1936, and the Giants are the oldest consistent team, having had that name since 1947? or something like that. Anyway, they did have a room dedicated to players that have gone to america and i saw the ichiro and hasegawa and sasaki stuff. whee!
after that we grabbed dinner at an udonsoba place. mmmm, now THATs good baseball food :)
We got tickets, using my coupons so they were 1000 yen instead of 1500 for outfield unreserved. Now you know what? Whoever said Fighters games are deserted was NOT kidding. I swear there were more people in the outfield than in the infield, and maybe only 2000 people total at the game. (I think the Tokyo Dome seats like 30 or 40 thousand people?) It was scary, i have never seen a game where a baseball goes foul, bounces in the stands because no people are there, and little boys chase after the baseball. However in the outfield it was pretty packed and they had these... cheerleaders or something, well, there were real cheerleaders like girls in skirts dancing on the field, but i mean, there were guys leading songs and cheers in the stands. Everyone had noisemakers and they seemed to know all these songs for each individual player, and someone had brass instruments and so it was like being at a highschool football game or something with people playing fight songs and singing like heck and cheering for EVERY batter, lots of "KATTOBASE IIIIIIIIIIDE!" and such. They had dances for some of the player songs, and they would often just shout lots of random things. it must be SO cool to be a baseball fan in Japan, they REALLY get into it. Imagine a whole stadium shouting "GO GO GO GO GO" for every single player that gets up to bat, and playing music, and waving huge team flags, and... yeah. And I mean, this was with a fairly empty stadium and it still felt like it was a big deal! There was an Orix cheering section in the other half of the outfield too, it was cool, they also played music and sang and cheered, heh.
The scoreboards there are weird, too. They dont keep up the information about players, heck you barely even know anything about the opposing team, they dont even display anything but their last name on the scoreboard. The home team at least they display their info like how tall they are and all. The balls strikes outs thing is not on the board but is actually with a bunch of lights, I took some pictures of it, it's hard to describe.
well, Fighters won 5-4, it was a relatively close game. It was 4-2 going into the 9th inning, then Orix got a 2-run homer, making it 4-4. Bottom of the 9th, Ide led off with a single (or Tsuboi... one of them got a single and one struck out). They walked Ogawasara, and then Angel Echevaria or whatever his name is, the gaijin DH, drove in a run with a single, and the game stopped right then as the Fighters had won. They interviewed Echevaria and he had a translator and the funniest part is, he spoke in English and I could barely understand him!
Yeah, anyway, we came back to Ikebukuro, hung out in Moai some more, I played IIDX for an hour, siiiiiiiiigh. I swear Ive gotten a lot better this week and it's all going to go to pieces when I fall out of practice again. But I mean, I'm regularly getting extra stage, playing mostly 7-key, etc... SIGH. We got curry after bemani, and now am at the arcade. I do NOT want to go to the ryokan to pack, this is going to suck SOOOOOOOOOOO much...
byebye everyone. Dunno if I will check mail or anything tomorrow before skipping the country, so I might just talk to you all on the other side.
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