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WBC Day 2 craziness, etc
Okay, so it was SO cold outside today and raining SO hard that I basically decided I didn't feel like leaving my house, and was going to sit around and write up the WBC Day 1 and other stuff. I dunno. I figured that the errands I had in mind to do were not THAT urgent... like I want to go get some cleaning supplies, but whatever. I dropped off one of my suits at a cleaner in Bivio on Thursday afternoon actually, so I can pick that up tomorrow and maybe go looking for cleaning supplies then. We'll see.
So I logicked my brain into deciding that I'd just leave the house around 3 or 4pm, grab dinner somewhere, catch a train down to the Tokyo Dome, and be fairly early. The original plan was that I'd meet up with my friend Simon at 6pm and we'd just grab tickets and go in then; he didn't expect it to be crowded. Of course, then in the morning my friend Sakamoto emailed me like "Hey, I'm off work today, and I don't really care about Korea vs. Taiwan but I'm bored, you going to the game?" so I told him we were, and then an hour or two after that Matt emailed like "I have OF seats, but I think it'd be more interesting to come sit with you guys, is that okay?"
Of course, other stuff came up... blogstuff to write, someone important to talk to, and so I ended up actually leaving the house a bit after 5pm and got to the Tokyo Dome on the same train as Matt and just in time to meet up with Simon. Oops. I ended up getting some inari and sembei from the "conbini" in the Tokyo Dome, because very little was open in the upper deck.
Simon and I went into the dome at Aisle 5, were debating where to go, and no joke, Sakamoto was sitting right there in front of us, so we sat with him. Matt joined us a bit later. So without Pau, it was pretty much the same gang we had at the second game of the Asia Series. (And as it turned out we totally needed Pau to translate Chinese for us later on, but that is another story.)
Some people handed out Taiwan flags, and we all took them. We were on the Taiwan side, so we were cheering for Taiwan. To be fair, Sakamoto pretty much would never cheer for Korea anyway, and I had decided that I'd cheer for Wei-tzu Lin, who is probably my favorite player on the Hanshin Tigers, but happens to be Taiwanese. (Though former Mariners player Shin-soo Choo was playing for Korea!) So there we are cheering for Taiwan, and...
...and their pitcher gives up 6 runs in the first 7 batters, including a grand slam to Jin Young Lee. Fuck.
We spent the rest of the game basically still cheering Taiwan but it was kind of depressing. They actually did fairly well for the rest of it and only finished down 9-0, but... yeah. There were actually a ton of Taiwanese people around us and they were all of course quite amused having a big group of gaijin in their presence and took a bunch of photos of us with the Taiwan flags, and at one point a lady in our group of new Taiwanese friends even shared these bizarre Taiwanese snacks with us -- kind of like an eggroll skin but covered in honey and sesame seeds and twisted around. It was good but too sticky. I shared sembei with people, and I had brought a box of four Cadbury Creme Eggs too, which I shared with my group. Matt and Simon were just like "dang! I haven't had these in YEARS!" and Sakamoto was like "This chocolate is... really sweet." "Too sweet?" "No... just different."
In the ninth inning some people with a huge 台湾 banner FINALLY got to hold it up and everyone in our section sang some song that we totally couldn't understand of course. But it was nice because the stadium security had been kind of oppressing them all game, sort of.
After the game, Simon had been texting Garrett from the Tsubamegun blog, so we ended up meeting up with him and Christopher. And... Christopher's friend Justin. Who happens to be an actor and yoga instructor, and also happens to be the guy who announces a lot of the international baseball games at the Tokyo Dome. He is apparently in a contest right now to be a model for the Japanese harlequin novels or something, so he was posing for photos with people outside the Dome -- he sang Take Me Out To The Ballgame at the exhibition games, so several people actually came up and knew who he was! Craziness. I asked him about "Watch out for balls", and he said "I HATE saying that." It turns out he also actually played baseball for Kin-chan and the Ibaraki Golden Golds for a season, which is really just plain wacky!
Anyway, poor Sakamoto can't really speak English at all so he kind of ducked out, and then the other five of us went to an izakaya and drank beer and ate monjayaki. I had met Garrett before for like 5 minutes at a game last year, but had never met Christopher (who turns out to also be an actor), and of course never met Justin either. So that was pretty crazy, talking about commercials and announcing, but also about sports and whatnot, and Justin mentions that he met Bobby Valentine once filming a commercial and I whip out my cellphone and my background is the photo of me and Bobby at Chiba. And Justin's like "Wait! You're on the FIELD with him? Wearing a MEDIA PASS?" and I'm like "Yeah... well... I'm kind of a wannabe writer..." and that's when the other guys pipe up like "Deanna's a mad baseblogger, yo."
So, it was kind of funky meeting new people, and especially getting to meet the guy who's responsible for saying "Watch out for foul balls" and "Designated hitter, Shin-soo Choo!" and who apparently pissed off Manny Ramirez by rolling the R's in his name during the MLB series here.
The izakaya owner gave us all free "Wild Turkey Bourbon" glasses on our way out for some reason. I don't really drink, mind you (the joke was actually "I only drink when I'm in Japan") but it's a nice glass.
Got home a bit after midnight... not sure where the last two hours have gone. My brain is kind of spacey today, there's a lot on my mind. I should go to sleep. I was thinking I would actually go to Kamagaya today for a Rakuten vs. Fighters minor-league preseason game, but it starts at 12:30pm and I don't even think there'll be shuttles to the stadium, so I'd pretty much have to be up and out of here by 10:30am or so, which seems unlikely. We'll see, though. I might just do a ridiculous bike ride tomorrow instead, if the weather is acceptable.
So I logicked my brain into deciding that I'd just leave the house around 3 or 4pm, grab dinner somewhere, catch a train down to the Tokyo Dome, and be fairly early. The original plan was that I'd meet up with my friend Simon at 6pm and we'd just grab tickets and go in then; he didn't expect it to be crowded. Of course, then in the morning my friend Sakamoto emailed me like "Hey, I'm off work today, and I don't really care about Korea vs. Taiwan but I'm bored, you going to the game?" so I told him we were, and then an hour or two after that Matt emailed like "I have OF seats, but I think it'd be more interesting to come sit with you guys, is that okay?"
Of course, other stuff came up... blogstuff to write, someone important to talk to, and so I ended up actually leaving the house a bit after 5pm and got to the Tokyo Dome on the same train as Matt and just in time to meet up with Simon. Oops. I ended up getting some inari and sembei from the "conbini" in the Tokyo Dome, because very little was open in the upper deck.
Simon and I went into the dome at Aisle 5, were debating where to go, and no joke, Sakamoto was sitting right there in front of us, so we sat with him. Matt joined us a bit later. So without Pau, it was pretty much the same gang we had at the second game of the Asia Series. (And as it turned out we totally needed Pau to translate Chinese for us later on, but that is another story.)
Some people handed out Taiwan flags, and we all took them. We were on the Taiwan side, so we were cheering for Taiwan. To be fair, Sakamoto pretty much would never cheer for Korea anyway, and I had decided that I'd cheer for Wei-tzu Lin, who is probably my favorite player on the Hanshin Tigers, but happens to be Taiwanese. (Though former Mariners player Shin-soo Choo was playing for Korea!) So there we are cheering for Taiwan, and...
...and their pitcher gives up 6 runs in the first 7 batters, including a grand slam to Jin Young Lee. Fuck.
We spent the rest of the game basically still cheering Taiwan but it was kind of depressing. They actually did fairly well for the rest of it and only finished down 9-0, but... yeah. There were actually a ton of Taiwanese people around us and they were all of course quite amused having a big group of gaijin in their presence and took a bunch of photos of us with the Taiwan flags, and at one point a lady in our group of new Taiwanese friends even shared these bizarre Taiwanese snacks with us -- kind of like an eggroll skin but covered in honey and sesame seeds and twisted around. It was good but too sticky. I shared sembei with people, and I had brought a box of four Cadbury Creme Eggs too, which I shared with my group. Matt and Simon were just like "dang! I haven't had these in YEARS!" and Sakamoto was like "This chocolate is... really sweet." "Too sweet?" "No... just different."
In the ninth inning some people with a huge 台湾 banner FINALLY got to hold it up and everyone in our section sang some song that we totally couldn't understand of course. But it was nice because the stadium security had been kind of oppressing them all game, sort of.
After the game, Simon had been texting Garrett from the Tsubamegun blog, so we ended up meeting up with him and Christopher. And... Christopher's friend Justin. Who happens to be an actor and yoga instructor, and also happens to be the guy who announces a lot of the international baseball games at the Tokyo Dome. He is apparently in a contest right now to be a model for the Japanese harlequin novels or something, so he was posing for photos with people outside the Dome -- he sang Take Me Out To The Ballgame at the exhibition games, so several people actually came up and knew who he was! Craziness. I asked him about "Watch out for balls", and he said "I HATE saying that." It turns out he also actually played baseball for Kin-chan and the Ibaraki Golden Golds for a season, which is really just plain wacky!
Anyway, poor Sakamoto can't really speak English at all so he kind of ducked out, and then the other five of us went to an izakaya and drank beer and ate monjayaki. I had met Garrett before for like 5 minutes at a game last year, but had never met Christopher (who turns out to also be an actor), and of course never met Justin either. So that was pretty crazy, talking about commercials and announcing, but also about sports and whatnot, and Justin mentions that he met Bobby Valentine once filming a commercial and I whip out my cellphone and my background is the photo of me and Bobby at Chiba. And Justin's like "Wait! You're on the FIELD with him? Wearing a MEDIA PASS?" and I'm like "Yeah... well... I'm kind of a wannabe writer..." and that's when the other guys pipe up like "Deanna's a mad baseblogger, yo."
So, it was kind of funky meeting new people, and especially getting to meet the guy who's responsible for saying "Watch out for foul balls" and "Designated hitter, Shin-soo Choo!" and who apparently pissed off Manny Ramirez by rolling the R's in his name during the MLB series here.
The izakaya owner gave us all free "Wild Turkey Bourbon" glasses on our way out for some reason. I don't really drink, mind you (the joke was actually "I only drink when I'm in Japan") but it's a nice glass.
Got home a bit after midnight... not sure where the last two hours have gone. My brain is kind of spacey today, there's a lot on my mind. I should go to sleep. I was thinking I would actually go to Kamagaya today for a Rakuten vs. Fighters minor-league preseason game, but it starts at 12:30pm and I don't even think there'll be shuttles to the stadium, so I'd pretty much have to be up and out of here by 10:30am or so, which seems unlikely. We'll see, though. I might just do a ridiculous bike ride tomorrow instead, if the weather is acceptable.
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Um, you need to teach me how you meet all these people. I need to get out and start doing that. Do you have pixie dust or something?
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I mostly write about work and people I work with, and only a few of them are the kind of people I want to hang out with, and they all lead busier lives than me, so I'm actually sitting around playing video games more often than it might seem by reading my journal, I guess.