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Japan Day 6 - Speaking, and walking, and baseball...
Okay, so Nykkel and I didn't go to Kyoto today after all. We got up fairly early, and were out of the ryokan by 9am... but... we didn't know where we were going. So first we went to Ueno since I knew shinkansen ran there, but it turned out you can't go to Kyoto from there, you have to go to Tokyo station. So we go there... by this time it's already like 10:30am and it turns out the shinkansen takes 2.5 hours not 2... and bleh... so... we went to get tickets to go to Kyoto on THURSDAY instead. This is where the "I can speak" comes in... the two of us went up to the ticket counter together and I did all the talking to get us tickets to Kyoto, return tickets back the same day, in non-smoking cars, etc. Go me. Nyk was like "You got further than I would have... I would have just written a note and stood there holding it like an idiot."
Yeah, so anyway, we're going on Thursday. From Tokyo station at 8am, which means getting up at like 6:30. Ugh. At least I should be able to sleep on the train.
So we found ourselves in Tokyo station with nothing to do... our choices were pretty much wander Ginza or wander the Imperial Palace, and since I'd been to Ginza before, I recommended the palace. Of course, you can only go to one part of the imperial palace compound, the east gardens. Still. Anyway, we were hungry so we stopped at a bakery in the eki on the way. I had Yakisobapan! At long last! (Kawamoto Makoto had a song called Yakisobapan on her first album and I always kinda wondered about it.) It was good except the mayo. The mini-taiyaki I got were also good. Mmmm...
Food aside, we went to the garden and walked around for 2 hours or so. I dropped my camera at one point and wanted to sit down to make sure it still worked, and we ended up sitting in this nice grove of trees for a while. It was really peaceful, although you could still see skyscrapers behind the trees. There were some pretty nice parts to the garden, and still some cherry blossoms around, too.
We cut across town with the Marunouchi line to get back to Ikebukuro; Nyk wanted his shopping list and to head back out towards Shibuya, and I wanted to change into baseball gear because I WAS GOING TO A BASEBALL GAME!!!
You can read about the baseball game here if you want. It was the Nippon Ham Fighters against the Chiba Lotte Marines at the Chiba Stadium.
So yeah. I got into my Nippon Ham Fighters jersey and went to the station. Got on the Yurakucho line down to Shin-Kiba, then took the JR Keiyo line to Kaihin-Makuhari. Probly took around an hour, hour 15 mins total. It was REALLY cool looking once I got on the JR line... I even got to see Tokyo Disneyland, and the bay, and whatnot. I was crazy early getting to Chiba though so I stopped in the Marines team store. Sadly, I don't really know much of the Marines so there wasn't much I wanted to get there. I mean, I'd heard of a few players on the team but most weren't Japanese. Like Benny Agbayani and Seung-Yeop Lee and Nate Minchey and Bobby Valentine-kantoku. So. Eh. I hopped on a bus and went to the stadium. I got there at like 4:45 for a 6pm game. Whee.
Went to the left field, got my ticket, went inside, got a noisemaker, went up... sat down... got bored, went inside, got some fries, went back out, ate fries... watched batting practice... was still bored, went inside to throw out the cup from the fries, went to the bathroom, went back outside... found a new seat against a railing... sat around... sat around some more... batting practice ended... and then the oendan started showing up. (Oendan are the special cheering people, they have instruments and flags and whatnot.) They had lyrics sheets for the players' themes!!! So I went and got one; the oendan guy looked at me funny but handed me a paper anyway.
So anyway. There was a game, but half of what I remember of it was standing up and shouting and singing at the top of my lungs with the rest of the Fighters cheering section, and the other half is some stuff about baseball. The Fighters won 4-1 after a 1-1 game for most of it; in the 8th inning they pretty much tore up the Marines bullpen; one or two people got on base and then Shimada cracked a good ground rule double to right field and drove in two runs. Wooo. The only run the Marines got was actually when Ryan Rupe walked someone with bases loaded. Although there were a few close calls. Seung-Yeop Lee is actually a really good hitter.
Tsuboi, who's one of my favorite players, is now the leadoff for Nippon Ham. I think he went like 3 for 4; but sadly he got caught stealing twice. Shinjo actually got a hit or two also. Ogasawara did pretty well. Lessee, they have the original lineup listed on the score page, but a bunch of other people got swapped in. Kazuteru Shimada, obviously, as I think he was MVP... and Yukio Tanaka at some point (I remember that mostly because the Yukio cheer is the FUNNEST one, it involves jumping up and down and stuff), and Narahara, and some others. Ueda had a really good game too, he made some great outfield plays and was pretty hot with the bat. Tsuboi on the other hand almost had an error in the outfield (Infact I think he did, I dont know why it wasn't counted as one). Weird day.
Ogasawara has a huge cheering section. There were these three middle-age women with pompoms cheering for him and for Yukio Tanaka. One of the ladies even had a "Guts 2" jersey (Ogasawara's nickname is Guts). I want an Ogasawara jersey too! Sigh. The stand where I bought my noisemaker actually had two t-shirts, of Ogasawara and Shinjo, but I don't trust size L to fit me; Japanese size L is like American size S.
Anyway, yeah. So, baseball. Chiba stadium is outdoors, so by the end of the game it was REALLY COLD. I was shivering up a storm by the 6th inning. One of the oendan, upon starting an inning, was like "It may be COLD but we're gonna CHEER until we're WARM!" Or something... they were always shouting random stuff at the start of innings and to lead the cheering. The cheering is of course the most exciting part of going to Japanese baseball games. I mean, sure, the Chiba cheering people were louder but they had all of the right field bleachers and we had like one third of the left field bleachers and we were LOUD. Dude. Actually, it was really funny, people gave me weird looks at first, but eventually people were just kinda like "Ok, there's a gaijin with a Fighters jersey and noisemaker shouting 'KATTOBASE KIMOTO' just as loud as the rest of us..." when the Fighters got up 4-1 on the Marines, people were doing banzais and high-fives and they even kept high-fiving me too, so hey, whatever.
Seriously, I had a great time. And it's so much better when you have the words to the songs :)
So after the game I ran out to catch a bus. I actually got the wrong bus, sigh... I wanted to go to Kaihin-Makuhari but took a bus to Makuhari-Hongo instead. Oops. There was a guy on the bus who saw me wearing my jersey and was like "Gaijin da yo..." and I said "Hai, demo, yakyuu ga daisuki yo!" and we got into a conversation for a few minutes. Well... like I said, I got on the wrong station on the wrong line. Turns out that same guy was on the Chuo line or whatever, so he came over and talked to me again for like 15 minutes. Apparently he's been a Fighters fan for 18 years and remembers when they won the Japan Series and whatnot. We talked about Japanese baseball players in America, and gaijin players in Japan, and about the Fighters and how they will do well this year, and when he got off at Shin-Koiwa he said goodbye and "When you come back to Japan, make sure you come back to the Fighters cheering section!" Well, at least that's what it sounded like. I was all proud of myself for being able to hold a conversation in Japanese for that long. Takahashi-sensei would be proud of me. Although... I mean... it's baseball... I can go on for hours about baseball in English, so it's not unreasonable for me to go on about it in Japanese :)
Anyway, turns out I could get to Akihabara from Makuhari-Hongo, so I did, and transferred to the Yamanote, and so it took a little longer to get back here than it would have if I'd gotten the right station, but hey, it's all good.
I went to McDonalds because I was starving. Got their new Fish McDippers. They're actually really good. Hmm. I also checked my email and saw I had a private message on the Looterati boards. I am NOT scanning the board, I just read my message from Barrister, so if anyone wants me to know something PP-related, you can feel free to comment here, but I don't really want to think about the game if I can help it. Just don't sink the Famous Blowfish, ok?
Anyway, I'm almost out of time. Gonna reply quickly to those past messages and then go collapse. Tomorrow, Ghibli Museum, and maybe seeing Mr. 2-Belo? I'll call you.
Yeah, so anyway, we're going on Thursday. From Tokyo station at 8am, which means getting up at like 6:30. Ugh. At least I should be able to sleep on the train.
So we found ourselves in Tokyo station with nothing to do... our choices were pretty much wander Ginza or wander the Imperial Palace, and since I'd been to Ginza before, I recommended the palace. Of course, you can only go to one part of the imperial palace compound, the east gardens. Still. Anyway, we were hungry so we stopped at a bakery in the eki on the way. I had Yakisobapan! At long last! (Kawamoto Makoto had a song called Yakisobapan on her first album and I always kinda wondered about it.) It was good except the mayo. The mini-taiyaki I got were also good. Mmmm...
Food aside, we went to the garden and walked around for 2 hours or so. I dropped my camera at one point and wanted to sit down to make sure it still worked, and we ended up sitting in this nice grove of trees for a while. It was really peaceful, although you could still see skyscrapers behind the trees. There were some pretty nice parts to the garden, and still some cherry blossoms around, too.
We cut across town with the Marunouchi line to get back to Ikebukuro; Nyk wanted his shopping list and to head back out towards Shibuya, and I wanted to change into baseball gear because I WAS GOING TO A BASEBALL GAME!!!
You can read about the baseball game here if you want. It was the Nippon Ham Fighters against the Chiba Lotte Marines at the Chiba Stadium.
So yeah. I got into my Nippon Ham Fighters jersey and went to the station. Got on the Yurakucho line down to Shin-Kiba, then took the JR Keiyo line to Kaihin-Makuhari. Probly took around an hour, hour 15 mins total. It was REALLY cool looking once I got on the JR line... I even got to see Tokyo Disneyland, and the bay, and whatnot. I was crazy early getting to Chiba though so I stopped in the Marines team store. Sadly, I don't really know much of the Marines so there wasn't much I wanted to get there. I mean, I'd heard of a few players on the team but most weren't Japanese. Like Benny Agbayani and Seung-Yeop Lee and Nate Minchey and Bobby Valentine-kantoku. So. Eh. I hopped on a bus and went to the stadium. I got there at like 4:45 for a 6pm game. Whee.
Went to the left field, got my ticket, went inside, got a noisemaker, went up... sat down... got bored, went inside, got some fries, went back out, ate fries... watched batting practice... was still bored, went inside to throw out the cup from the fries, went to the bathroom, went back outside... found a new seat against a railing... sat around... sat around some more... batting practice ended... and then the oendan started showing up. (Oendan are the special cheering people, they have instruments and flags and whatnot.) They had lyrics sheets for the players' themes!!! So I went and got one; the oendan guy looked at me funny but handed me a paper anyway.
So anyway. There was a game, but half of what I remember of it was standing up and shouting and singing at the top of my lungs with the rest of the Fighters cheering section, and the other half is some stuff about baseball. The Fighters won 4-1 after a 1-1 game for most of it; in the 8th inning they pretty much tore up the Marines bullpen; one or two people got on base and then Shimada cracked a good ground rule double to right field and drove in two runs. Wooo. The only run the Marines got was actually when Ryan Rupe walked someone with bases loaded. Although there were a few close calls. Seung-Yeop Lee is actually a really good hitter.
Tsuboi, who's one of my favorite players, is now the leadoff for Nippon Ham. I think he went like 3 for 4; but sadly he got caught stealing twice. Shinjo actually got a hit or two also. Ogasawara did pretty well. Lessee, they have the original lineup listed on the score page, but a bunch of other people got swapped in. Kazuteru Shimada, obviously, as I think he was MVP... and Yukio Tanaka at some point (I remember that mostly because the Yukio cheer is the FUNNEST one, it involves jumping up and down and stuff), and Narahara, and some others. Ueda had a really good game too, he made some great outfield plays and was pretty hot with the bat. Tsuboi on the other hand almost had an error in the outfield (Infact I think he did, I dont know why it wasn't counted as one). Weird day.
Ogasawara has a huge cheering section. There were these three middle-age women with pompoms cheering for him and for Yukio Tanaka. One of the ladies even had a "Guts 2" jersey (Ogasawara's nickname is Guts). I want an Ogasawara jersey too! Sigh. The stand where I bought my noisemaker actually had two t-shirts, of Ogasawara and Shinjo, but I don't trust size L to fit me; Japanese size L is like American size S.
Anyway, yeah. So, baseball. Chiba stadium is outdoors, so by the end of the game it was REALLY COLD. I was shivering up a storm by the 6th inning. One of the oendan, upon starting an inning, was like "It may be COLD but we're gonna CHEER until we're WARM!" Or something... they were always shouting random stuff at the start of innings and to lead the cheering. The cheering is of course the most exciting part of going to Japanese baseball games. I mean, sure, the Chiba cheering people were louder but they had all of the right field bleachers and we had like one third of the left field bleachers and we were LOUD. Dude. Actually, it was really funny, people gave me weird looks at first, but eventually people were just kinda like "Ok, there's a gaijin with a Fighters jersey and noisemaker shouting 'KATTOBASE KIMOTO' just as loud as the rest of us..." when the Fighters got up 4-1 on the Marines, people were doing banzais and high-fives and they even kept high-fiving me too, so hey, whatever.
Seriously, I had a great time. And it's so much better when you have the words to the songs :)
So after the game I ran out to catch a bus. I actually got the wrong bus, sigh... I wanted to go to Kaihin-Makuhari but took a bus to Makuhari-Hongo instead. Oops. There was a guy on the bus who saw me wearing my jersey and was like "Gaijin da yo..." and I said "Hai, demo, yakyuu ga daisuki yo!" and we got into a conversation for a few minutes. Well... like I said, I got on the wrong station on the wrong line. Turns out that same guy was on the Chuo line or whatever, so he came over and talked to me again for like 15 minutes. Apparently he's been a Fighters fan for 18 years and remembers when they won the Japan Series and whatnot. We talked about Japanese baseball players in America, and gaijin players in Japan, and about the Fighters and how they will do well this year, and when he got off at Shin-Koiwa he said goodbye and "When you come back to Japan, make sure you come back to the Fighters cheering section!" Well, at least that's what it sounded like. I was all proud of myself for being able to hold a conversation in Japanese for that long. Takahashi-sensei would be proud of me. Although... I mean... it's baseball... I can go on for hours about baseball in English, so it's not unreasonable for me to go on about it in Japanese :)
Anyway, turns out I could get to Akihabara from Makuhari-Hongo, so I did, and transferred to the Yamanote, and so it took a little longer to get back here than it would have if I'd gotten the right station, but hey, it's all good.
I went to McDonalds because I was starving. Got their new Fish McDippers. They're actually really good. Hmm. I also checked my email and saw I had a private message on the Looterati boards. I am NOT scanning the board, I just read my message from Barrister, so if anyone wants me to know something PP-related, you can feel free to comment here, but I don't really want to think about the game if I can help it. Just don't sink the Famous Blowfish, ok?
Anyway, I'm almost out of time. Gonna reply quickly to those past messages and then go collapse. Tomorrow, Ghibli Museum, and maybe seeing Mr. 2-Belo? I'll call you.
no subject
If you get reserved-seat tickets on any Nozomi or Hikari train you'll get here the fastest, because all Shinkansen trains stop at Nagoya. Nozomi is preferable since it's the fastest, and it's only the eentsiest bit more expensive. (Don't take the Kodama; it's a local train, and will take you just shy of forfuckingever to get here because it stops at every station.)
So go to the Tokaido Shinkansen (東海道新幹線) counter and get tickets to Nagoya (a train bound for Shin-Osaka or Hakata) so you arrive here about noon, which means a departure time of around 10 am. Depending on which train it is, it'll probably be the third stop.
If you arrive at about noontime on a Sunday it should be relatively light in the way of passengers, so you needn't worry too much about it filling up. But the return trip may be a lot more crowded, so I'd recommend getting round trip (往復（おうふく)) tickets in Tokyo so you don't have to waltz up to the counter down here and find out that all the reserved seats are full and you have to stand in the aisle in the non-reserved section like a moron, like I had to do a few weeks ago. It sucks. Believe me.
Make the return ticket departure time something around 6 or 7 pm. If you don't want to do that, wait until you get here and I'll help you get return tix.
Anyway, once you arrive in Nagoya you'll be in the Nagoya Station Towers building (recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's tallest railway station, at something like 50 stories), and you'll be over top of the Unimall underground shopping center. If you go out the north exit you'll see a big cone-shaped piece of art at the center of a roundabout; go south and you'll see the obligatory building-size TV screens and whatnot. The north side is probably better for meeting up, since it's a bit larger of an expanse and easy to locate people.
Anyway, you're free to explore that area until I get there, which should be about 2 pm. At about that time, try calling me on my mobile; I'll tell you where to meet then.
If as I suspect I'm a terrible guide and this makes no sense at all, try calling me tomorrow and I'll try again. :)
no subject
I guess the thing is, we'd want to either get there a bit earlier than noon and wander around Nagoya a bit before you get there, or we'd want to get there a bit later whenever you would. That is, it doesn't really make sense for us to schedule getting there sometime when you're not. How far do you live from Nagoya? Eh... I guess we could wander around the area for an hour or two before you show up, it's not too big a deal.
We'd probly get return tickets for 7 or 8pm. Depends, it sounded like you thought we should get dinner in the Nagoya area, right?
no subject
Okay, let's do this: You get there at noon, I'll come pick you both up in the car. Then we can pretty much go anywhere we like; I can show you my house and etc. Howzat?
no subject
I'm out of time at the internet cafe, so tomorrow I'll work out more details or something.