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Yeah, okay, I'm not really moving to Sapporo...
Dude. Today it was something like 75 degrees F when I was waiting in line to get into the Sapporo Dome... and like 50 degrees when the game ended, and dropping.
Marui Imai actually had a bunch of the 2006 Japan Series Champions stuff marked waaaay down, like 500 yen for the commemorative t-shirt, etc. BUT I couldn't decide on a new jersey or new letters so maybe I just won't get any at all. I saw that the letters they sell are iron-on and now I'm not sure whether I would fuck up my jersey trying to put them on. Plus I had this brilliant idea to get Tadano #16 with the idea that if he flames out I can take 3 of the letters and turn the 6 upside down and make it into Oda #9 -- but maybe not with iron-ons. Eh.
I got to the stadium TOO EARLY if you would believe that. I thought the game was at 1pm. It was at 2pm. So I arrived at 11:10am and they were like "uh, you can wait in line here for when the stadium opens in 20 minutes..." and I'm just like "oops." The good part is, I was early enough to beg to get my picture taken with BB as he was escaping the waiting area, so now I have me with the old and the new Fighters mascot! Exciting!
I had an Inaba Bento for lunch. I wish I knew what half the stuff I ate was. Also before the game I got some goofy ouendan goods -- an inflatable pink finger-pointy hand for Kensuke Tanaka, a big green inflatable microphone for Hichori, and a shinsengumi flag in blue of the character шка for Kaneko. Who is still slumping. It pains me to see it.
People in the infield are NOT as cool as people in the outfield. But the Fighters kicked ass again and won the game something like 12-5. I even finally saw a home run, hit by, of all people, Chon-so Yoh.
Got stuck in the usual ridiculous clusterfuck getting the hell out of Sapporo Dome, and made it back to downtown Sapporo around 7:20pm; went to Marui Imai and bought the stuff I'd actually looked at that morning... and decdided against the other stuff. It was FREEZING out and my legs hurt so I took a taxi back to the hotel from there. It cost like Y850. Fine. Then I decided to go visit the Fighters Official Restaurant, which is in the Sapporo Ario mall, near the big Beer Museum which isn't open late enough for me to go to. Except it was going to take me like 30 minutes to walk to Ario, and the website said the Fighters restaurant stopped taking orders at 9pm, and it was already 8:20, so I was worried and took ANOTHER taxi to Ario. This one cost Y970 I think.
The Fighters Official Restaurant, IMO, officially sucks. The people there were fairly rude to me by Japanese standards, and the food is mediocre -- it's not even like special Hokkaido food, or special American food, or even baseball-related food or anything, it's just your average Japanese diner food, mostly featuring Japanese burger plates. Eh. The decor has various Fighters stuff and the tables all have Fighters baseball cards under glass plates but overall, I had a much better experience at Hillman's Hangout and the menu there was ninety times better and more interesting. So I'm going to go write a scathing review on my blog about it! Don't I sound like an internet geek now?
I guess the dumb part is, I could have had some "Sapporo Food" for dinner -- wandered down to Ramen Alley in Susukino or something -- but instead I wasted my dinner time with the Fighters place. Now, to be fair, I don't think I'd appreciate Sapporo food the way Japanese people do in the first place, and my purpose in coming here WAS to be a huge Fighters dork, but... eh. If I have time tomorrow after the game I'll go check out Ramen Alley. Hopefully. (It's at 1pm, my flight home is at 8:30pm... in theory if it's over by 5 and I can get back to downtown by 6, I would have time to eat and then haul ass to the airport, or something like that.)
The other dumbass part is that I tried to walk home, got lost, and ended up spending ANOTHER thousand yen on a taxicab. (Cabs are like these magic teleportation devices here, and they're EVERYWHERE. If you don't know where you are or where you're going, you hop in and tell them where you're going, and they take you there. Except you have to pay a ton of money for the magic.) So not only did I have awful food for dinner but I wasted like 2000 yen in taxi fees getting there and back. For the three taxi rides tonight's cost, I could have bought the letters to make a Kensuke #3 jersey. I suck.
Oh well. Tomorrow, Ryan Glynn starts for the Fighters, and Masahiro "Ma-kun" Tanaka starts for Rakuten, so it can't be all bad.
Marui Imai actually had a bunch of the 2006 Japan Series Champions stuff marked waaaay down, like 500 yen for the commemorative t-shirt, etc. BUT I couldn't decide on a new jersey or new letters so maybe I just won't get any at all. I saw that the letters they sell are iron-on and now I'm not sure whether I would fuck up my jersey trying to put them on. Plus I had this brilliant idea to get Tadano #16 with the idea that if he flames out I can take 3 of the letters and turn the 6 upside down and make it into Oda #9 -- but maybe not with iron-ons. Eh.
I got to the stadium TOO EARLY if you would believe that. I thought the game was at 1pm. It was at 2pm. So I arrived at 11:10am and they were like "uh, you can wait in line here for when the stadium opens in 20 minutes..." and I'm just like "oops." The good part is, I was early enough to beg to get my picture taken with BB as he was escaping the waiting area, so now I have me with the old and the new Fighters mascot! Exciting!
I had an Inaba Bento for lunch. I wish I knew what half the stuff I ate was. Also before the game I got some goofy ouendan goods -- an inflatable pink finger-pointy hand for Kensuke Tanaka, a big green inflatable microphone for Hichori, and a shinsengumi flag in blue of the character шка for Kaneko. Who is still slumping. It pains me to see it.
People in the infield are NOT as cool as people in the outfield. But the Fighters kicked ass again and won the game something like 12-5. I even finally saw a home run, hit by, of all people, Chon-so Yoh.
Got stuck in the usual ridiculous clusterfuck getting the hell out of Sapporo Dome, and made it back to downtown Sapporo around 7:20pm; went to Marui Imai and bought the stuff I'd actually looked at that morning... and decdided against the other stuff. It was FREEZING out and my legs hurt so I took a taxi back to the hotel from there. It cost like Y850. Fine. Then I decided to go visit the Fighters Official Restaurant, which is in the Sapporo Ario mall, near the big Beer Museum which isn't open late enough for me to go to. Except it was going to take me like 30 minutes to walk to Ario, and the website said the Fighters restaurant stopped taking orders at 9pm, and it was already 8:20, so I was worried and took ANOTHER taxi to Ario. This one cost Y970 I think.
The Fighters Official Restaurant, IMO, officially sucks. The people there were fairly rude to me by Japanese standards, and the food is mediocre -- it's not even like special Hokkaido food, or special American food, or even baseball-related food or anything, it's just your average Japanese diner food, mostly featuring Japanese burger plates. Eh. The decor has various Fighters stuff and the tables all have Fighters baseball cards under glass plates but overall, I had a much better experience at Hillman's Hangout and the menu there was ninety times better and more interesting. So I'm going to go write a scathing review on my blog about it! Don't I sound like an internet geek now?
I guess the dumb part is, I could have had some "Sapporo Food" for dinner -- wandered down to Ramen Alley in Susukino or something -- but instead I wasted my dinner time with the Fighters place. Now, to be fair, I don't think I'd appreciate Sapporo food the way Japanese people do in the first place, and my purpose in coming here WAS to be a huge Fighters dork, but... eh. If I have time tomorrow after the game I'll go check out Ramen Alley. Hopefully. (It's at 1pm, my flight home is at 8:30pm... in theory if it's over by 5 and I can get back to downtown by 6, I would have time to eat and then haul ass to the airport, or something like that.)
The other dumbass part is that I tried to walk home, got lost, and ended up spending ANOTHER thousand yen on a taxicab. (Cabs are like these magic teleportation devices here, and they're EVERYWHERE. If you don't know where you are or where you're going, you hop in and tell them where you're going, and they take you there. Except you have to pay a ton of money for the magic.) So not only did I have awful food for dinner but I wasted like 2000 yen in taxi fees getting there and back. For the three taxi rides tonight's cost, I could have bought the letters to make a Kensuke #3 jersey. I suck.
Oh well. Tomorrow, Ryan Glynn starts for the Fighters, and Masahiro "Ma-kun" Tanaka starts for Rakuten, so it can't be all bad.