![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sunny Days in Kamagaya
Well, I didn't quite get up early enough -- only slept about 5 hours to begin with anyway -- and left my house around 11am for a 12:30pm Fighters-Marines minor-league preseason game. (Yes, I realize that if you have to put more than 2 keywords on the game, you've probsbly wandered into the territory of "WHY THE HELL ARE YOU GOING to THAT?", but that's okay.) Got to Kamagaya Station at 12:24pm, and... and there were no taxis, and since this is technically only an exhibition game, there were no stadium shuttles. Crap.
Rather than wait for a taxi, I walked. I think it's about a mile as the crow flies from the station to the stadium, but since Kamagaya is covered in pear tree fields, by the time you've walked around them all it's more like 3 kilometers, and took me around 20-25 minutes.
Got there just in time to see the Marines go up 1-0 on the Fighters in the top of the second inning. Hotshot19 20-year-old Yuki "Kara-age" Karakawa was starting for Lotte, and the 6'4" Yanuki was starting for the Fighters. I sent Ojisan a mail message saying I was there but couldn't find any of our normal crowd in their normal space... so I just picked a spot at a decent place to take photos, put my stuff down, put my jersey and towel on, and a minute later I hear "Deanna-san?" and it was Mariko, sitting two rows behind. Whew. As usual she was a little weirded out by my presence, but I went up and sat with her and another lady, who I later talked to and learned is nicknamed Waka-chan and is a huge Hideki Sunaga fan -- she was on her phone with someone watching the top team game in Sapporo and was telling us all the details about how Sunaga was pitching there.
Ojisan came over, found me, found everyone -- he knows EVERYONE who sets foot in that stadium -- and chatted for a while. He asked about my dad and I told him the bad news. Then we talked about the players a bit, he caught me up on some of the gossip around Kamagaya (one particular new players' parents were there and he pointed them out) and then asked which Fighters games I was going to next week, and I said "I wanna go to them all!" and he said "Ok, I will give you some tickets since I can't go to some!" and I'm like "WTF?"
But sure enough, he left for a while and came back and gave me a unreserved seat ticket to Thursday's Giants-Fighters game AND two tickets to Meiji Jingu Stadium for ANY Yakult Swallows open-sen games, although he basically said it like this: "here, you can have two of these -- note that there are TWO Fighters games, on the 20th and 25th. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!" So that's really awesome and will totally save me around $50-60, assuming I use them all, which I most likely will. Free tickets rule. Mariko was like "None for me?" and he said "Hold on," went back to his spot behind home plate, and came back with two more for Mariko. No, really. He's like a magic old man.
He said I should go buy a Kamagaya passport, but I'm really not sure I can justify the price of that -- 10,000 yen for it, and all games are free, shuttle bus is free, plus extra cool stuff they give you and some special passport-holder events -- but just on game and bus alone, assuming I can renew my Fighters fanclub membership the games there cost me 700 yen (500 for ticket, 200 for bus rides) so I'd have to go to at least 15 games there this year to make it worthwhile. I went to like 5 or 6 last year and that was with a job that I could sneak out in the afternoons from sometimes.
Uh, anyway, aside from the excitement of seeing a few people I know, and watching the cutest kids on the planet playing with baseballs in the front row (seriously, these two brothers, had to be like around 3 and 5 years old, they kept yelling out hello to some players, and the players would wave, it was adorable), and taking around 500 photos, most of which sucked due to backlighting... that's really about it. The Marines CRUSHED THE FIGHTERS like 14-6 in the end, although oddly enough we saw Satoru Komiyama pitching for the Marines here, after I just saw him with the top team at Yokohama on Wednesday. Weird. Oh, and ALL of my past Marines minor-league boyfriends were there -- SS Shunichi Nemoto and 1B Takumi Kohbe, as well as adjunct boyfriends 3B Hisao Heiuchi and RF Takuma Sadaoka. Kohbe looks really good, Nemoto looks like "Why the hell did they have to sign Iguchi at second base so I'm stuck here?" Unfortunately, I DIDN'T see the boy who I've pre-chosen as my 2009 Marines ni-gun boyfriend, Hiroki Ueno. I'm sure if I stalk enough I'll find him.
Minami, Takehara, and... and Juan Muniz (wtf?) all hit home runs for Chiba. Tomoyuki Oda and Yohei Kaneko hit home runs for the Fighters. Mariko loooooooooooves Yohei (to the point that not only does he know, the entire TEAM knows, but most of the STADIUM knows) so she was really happy, some random lady even came over like "congrats Mari-chan!" It was really funny. But... sadly, Yanuki, the tall guy, is not very good at pitching, and got TOASTED for like 7 runs in the 3rd inning. Then a few innings later they had Romash Tasuku Dass, our half-Indian half-Japanese pitcher out there, and... and Mariko's like "He sucks this year," and sure enough, he came out and HIT the first two batters he faced, then the next one singled, another run scored on a wild pitch that was NOWHERE near the plate (and my Fighters minor-league boyfriend Ryota Imanari had to chase down), then a walk, ANOTHER hit, and he was gone. New Guy Tanimoto came out, so that was exciting, and he pitched two scoreless innings, although all of Dass's runners scored. Oh well.
On the way out of the stadium I got cheap animal-shaped potato cakes, and called Pau to make sure I shouldn't buy a Fighters calendar. And then.. and then I walked back to Kamagaya station, another 1.5 miles, because it was nice out and unlike everyone else there I didn't have a car or bicycle. I should ask for a ride one of these years. But walking through the pear trees in Kamagaya is really nice anyway, even better later in the year.
Went home, falling asleep on most of the trains. Got some food from Yokado on the way, and... when I got here I was so tired I passed out for about 2 hours. I mean, I just sat down on the floor by my table, and next thing I knew I'd fallen asleep on the futon, which I'd been too lazy ro roll up in the morning on my way out.
Problem is I woke up with a really sore stomach, AND I kind of felt hungry, AND I needed to eat the sushi I'd bought from the supermarket... argh. I'm not sure how I didn't throw up, but somehow I got through about 2-3 hours of stomach pain by just kind of... zoning out into PP, looking through my photos, and occasionally getting up and walking around and then sometimes half-lying down, whichever was more comfortable at the time, mostly not moving much. The bad part is, I couldn't concentrate enough to get anything DONE, writing-wise or otherwise. ALSO, since I napped for those two hours, I'm not really tired, and now it's 1am and the Japan-Cuba WBC game starts in 4 hours. Maybe I'll try to make myself nap and get up at 5am. Who knows. My stomach still feels kinda blah, and it hurts when I try to take super-deep breaths, but that's about.
EDIT> Just took out the bag of unburnable trash to the pickup spot a block away, and you wouldn't believe the pain shooting through my lower back every time I took a step. Once I got back home and sat down again in a warm room I mostly feel okay, but that was really weird. I hope some sleep can fix it :( Definitely a good thing I didn't try to go swing dancing today. Yeesh.
Rather than wait for a taxi, I walked. I think it's about a mile as the crow flies from the station to the stadium, but since Kamagaya is covered in pear tree fields, by the time you've walked around them all it's more like 3 kilometers, and took me around 20-25 minutes.
Got there just in time to see the Marines go up 1-0 on the Fighters in the top of the second inning. Hotshot
Ojisan came over, found me, found everyone -- he knows EVERYONE who sets foot in that stadium -- and chatted for a while. He asked about my dad and I told him the bad news. Then we talked about the players a bit, he caught me up on some of the gossip around Kamagaya (one particular new players' parents were there and he pointed them out) and then asked which Fighters games I was going to next week, and I said "I wanna go to them all!" and he said "Ok, I will give you some tickets since I can't go to some!" and I'm like "WTF?"
But sure enough, he left for a while and came back and gave me a unreserved seat ticket to Thursday's Giants-Fighters game AND two tickets to Meiji Jingu Stadium for ANY Yakult Swallows open-sen games, although he basically said it like this: "here, you can have two of these -- note that there are TWO Fighters games, on the 20th and 25th. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!" So that's really awesome and will totally save me around $50-60, assuming I use them all, which I most likely will. Free tickets rule. Mariko was like "None for me?" and he said "Hold on," went back to his spot behind home plate, and came back with two more for Mariko. No, really. He's like a magic old man.
He said I should go buy a Kamagaya passport, but I'm really not sure I can justify the price of that -- 10,000 yen for it, and all games are free, shuttle bus is free, plus extra cool stuff they give you and some special passport-holder events -- but just on game and bus alone, assuming I can renew my Fighters fanclub membership the games there cost me 700 yen (500 for ticket, 200 for bus rides) so I'd have to go to at least 15 games there this year to make it worthwhile. I went to like 5 or 6 last year and that was with a job that I could sneak out in the afternoons from sometimes.
Uh, anyway, aside from the excitement of seeing a few people I know, and watching the cutest kids on the planet playing with baseballs in the front row (seriously, these two brothers, had to be like around 3 and 5 years old, they kept yelling out hello to some players, and the players would wave, it was adorable), and taking around 500 photos, most of which sucked due to backlighting... that's really about it. The Marines CRUSHED THE FIGHTERS like 14-6 in the end, although oddly enough we saw Satoru Komiyama pitching for the Marines here, after I just saw him with the top team at Yokohama on Wednesday. Weird. Oh, and ALL of my past Marines minor-league boyfriends were there -- SS Shunichi Nemoto and 1B Takumi Kohbe, as well as adjunct boyfriends 3B Hisao Heiuchi and RF Takuma Sadaoka. Kohbe looks really good, Nemoto looks like "Why the hell did they have to sign Iguchi at second base so I'm stuck here?" Unfortunately, I DIDN'T see the boy who I've pre-chosen as my 2009 Marines ni-gun boyfriend, Hiroki Ueno. I'm sure if I stalk enough I'll find him.
Minami, Takehara, and... and Juan Muniz (wtf?) all hit home runs for Chiba. Tomoyuki Oda and Yohei Kaneko hit home runs for the Fighters. Mariko loooooooooooves Yohei (to the point that not only does he know, the entire TEAM knows, but most of the STADIUM knows) so she was really happy, some random lady even came over like "congrats Mari-chan!" It was really funny. But... sadly, Yanuki, the tall guy, is not very good at pitching, and got TOASTED for like 7 runs in the 3rd inning. Then a few innings later they had Romash Tasuku Dass, our half-Indian half-Japanese pitcher out there, and... and Mariko's like "He sucks this year," and sure enough, he came out and HIT the first two batters he faced, then the next one singled, another run scored on a wild pitch that was NOWHERE near the plate (and my Fighters minor-league boyfriend Ryota Imanari had to chase down), then a walk, ANOTHER hit, and he was gone. New Guy Tanimoto came out, so that was exciting, and he pitched two scoreless innings, although all of Dass's runners scored. Oh well.
On the way out of the stadium I got cheap animal-shaped potato cakes, and called Pau to make sure I shouldn't buy a Fighters calendar. And then.. and then I walked back to Kamagaya station, another 1.5 miles, because it was nice out and unlike everyone else there I didn't have a car or bicycle. I should ask for a ride one of these years. But walking through the pear trees in Kamagaya is really nice anyway, even better later in the year.
Went home, falling asleep on most of the trains. Got some food from Yokado on the way, and... when I got here I was so tired I passed out for about 2 hours. I mean, I just sat down on the floor by my table, and next thing I knew I'd fallen asleep on the futon, which I'd been too lazy ro roll up in the morning on my way out.
Problem is I woke up with a really sore stomach, AND I kind of felt hungry, AND I needed to eat the sushi I'd bought from the supermarket... argh. I'm not sure how I didn't throw up, but somehow I got through about 2-3 hours of stomach pain by just kind of... zoning out into PP, looking through my photos, and occasionally getting up and walking around and then sometimes half-lying down, whichever was more comfortable at the time, mostly not moving much. The bad part is, I couldn't concentrate enough to get anything DONE, writing-wise or otherwise. ALSO, since I napped for those two hours, I'm not really tired, and now it's 1am and the Japan-Cuba WBC game starts in 4 hours. Maybe I'll try to make myself nap and get up at 5am. Who knows. My stomach still feels kinda blah, and it hurts when I try to take super-deep breaths, but that's about.
EDIT> Just took out the bag of unburnable trash to the pickup spot a block away, and you wouldn't believe the pain shooting through my lower back every time I took a step. Once I got back home and sat down again in a warm room I mostly feel okay, but that was really weird. I hope some sleep can fix it :( Definitely a good thing I didn't try to go swing dancing today. Yeesh.
no subject
Oh, yes I would.