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I went to a hockey game today!
That's pretty much all I did.
Basically, today was Game 6 of the Asia League playoffs or whatever -- Seibu Prince Rabbits against Nippon Paper Cranes. Seibu plays here in Tokyo, and they are folding the team after this year, so this is the last chance to actually see hockey in Tokyo unless someone else starts up a team. The Cranes are actually from Kushiro, Hokkaido, so I found it somewhat comforting to be at a match between a Seibu team and a Hokkaido team... this is normal for me (the Fighters being in Hokkaido and me usually seeing them at Seibu).
Simon said to meet at Higashi-Fushimi station at 3:30pm, and I didn't get up until around noon, so I pretty much got up, did a few things around the house, and left for the train station around 2:30. Met up with Simon and his friends Simon and Kazue (the other Simon being the French pronunciation since he's from Montreal, and Kazue is his girlfriend who understands English but prefers to speak Japanese), and waited in line for a bit, and about 2 minutes before we reached the front gate, Simon's dad showed up too. Apparently another friend of theirs was also supposed to come but he never showed up, so we just had the five of us. We grabbed a bunch of seats in what was actually technically the Cranes side, but Simon put on his Kokudo Bunnies jersey anyway (Seibu Prince Rabbits was actually merged from the Kokudo team a few years back), and Other Simon was pretty loudly cheering for Seibu. I, on the other hand, being a Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters fan, asked for cheer sticks from the Cranes ouendan leader going around with them, and made a point of clicking them together obnoxiously whenever the Cranes did anything cool :)
I went and got some yakisoba and wandered around taking some photos and got a media guide, came back and sat down, and someone walks by like "Deanna! Konnichiwa!" and I'm like "EH??" and it was my friend Kawabata -- I totally can't remember her first name. I've mentioned the Kawabatas here a few times before -- they also keep score at baseball games and are huge diehard Fighters fans. Needless to say the others in our group were kind of surprised that I ran into someone there of all people (since nobody else did, and they're hockey nerds and I'm not). So eventually I went up to talk to my friend, and it turned out she was also surprised to see me, and wasn't cheering for any particular team, just that she and her husband love hockey, and she told me he'd be arriving at the game around 7pm and to come say hi later and all. So, yeah.
The game was really really close. Cranes got up 1-0 in the first minute of the game, but the Rabbits were up 3-2 by the end of the first period. The Cranes tied it up to make it 3-3 in the second period, and the final period was an EPIC STRUGGLE until finally the Rabbits had a power play and ALSO pulled their goalie and forced their way into a ridiculous goal where they just kind of kept hacking at the Cranes' goalie until eventually a rebound got to captain Takahito Suzuki and he slapped it in. I am very bad at describing hockey so I will have to wait for Simon to actually write it up on his blog. Either way, the 4-3 go-ahead goal came with 45 seconds remaining in the entire game, so that was pretty much it.
This was Game 6 of the series and so now it's tied at 3-3 and Game 7 will happen tomorrow night.
There are a bunch of Canadian-Japanese guys on these teams who apparently don't count against the foreigner limit of 2, which is kind of weird. Like Ryan Kiyoshi Fujita, or Darcy Takeshi Mitani, or Joel Dyck Oshiro... I guess maybe it makes more sense in hockey than in baseball to do such a thing like that. (Apparently there are also Canadian-Korean guys playing for the Korean teams, only they don't WANT to get Korean passports due to having to serve in the army and all, heh.)
Also, Joel Prpic, who is just Canadian, is very, very tall.
After the game, I ended up going to the Hub bar/pub in Takadanobaba with our group from the game. Everyone except me drank quite a bit, and Simon's dad smoked, too, and I told him about my father dying over the winter and said he should stop. I had one drink -- amaretto gingerale, which was pretty tasty and Kazue recommended it to me. I guess we were there for about 2 hours, until the entire place got overrun by crazy drunken Waseda students and so we decided to leave. Splitting up on the JR platform, they were like "are you coming tomorrow?" and I replied, "I'll think about it..." I think what might happen is, if I can get laundry done in the afternoon while watching the WBC and Koshien and all, I'll go. Yeah.
Whee, hockey.
Basically, today was Game 6 of the Asia League playoffs or whatever -- Seibu Prince Rabbits against Nippon Paper Cranes. Seibu plays here in Tokyo, and they are folding the team after this year, so this is the last chance to actually see hockey in Tokyo unless someone else starts up a team. The Cranes are actually from Kushiro, Hokkaido, so I found it somewhat comforting to be at a match between a Seibu team and a Hokkaido team... this is normal for me (the Fighters being in Hokkaido and me usually seeing them at Seibu).
Simon said to meet at Higashi-Fushimi station at 3:30pm, and I didn't get up until around noon, so I pretty much got up, did a few things around the house, and left for the train station around 2:30. Met up with Simon and his friends Simon and Kazue (the other Simon being the French pronunciation since he's from Montreal, and Kazue is his girlfriend who understands English but prefers to speak Japanese), and waited in line for a bit, and about 2 minutes before we reached the front gate, Simon's dad showed up too. Apparently another friend of theirs was also supposed to come but he never showed up, so we just had the five of us. We grabbed a bunch of seats in what was actually technically the Cranes side, but Simon put on his Kokudo Bunnies jersey anyway (Seibu Prince Rabbits was actually merged from the Kokudo team a few years back), and Other Simon was pretty loudly cheering for Seibu. I, on the other hand, being a Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters fan, asked for cheer sticks from the Cranes ouendan leader going around with them, and made a point of clicking them together obnoxiously whenever the Cranes did anything cool :)
I went and got some yakisoba and wandered around taking some photos and got a media guide, came back and sat down, and someone walks by like "Deanna! Konnichiwa!" and I'm like "EH??" and it was my friend Kawabata -- I totally can't remember her first name. I've mentioned the Kawabatas here a few times before -- they also keep score at baseball games and are huge diehard Fighters fans. Needless to say the others in our group were kind of surprised that I ran into someone there of all people (since nobody else did, and they're hockey nerds and I'm not). So eventually I went up to talk to my friend, and it turned out she was also surprised to see me, and wasn't cheering for any particular team, just that she and her husband love hockey, and she told me he'd be arriving at the game around 7pm and to come say hi later and all. So, yeah.
The game was really really close. Cranes got up 1-0 in the first minute of the game, but the Rabbits were up 3-2 by the end of the first period. The Cranes tied it up to make it 3-3 in the second period, and the final period was an EPIC STRUGGLE until finally the Rabbits had a power play and ALSO pulled their goalie and forced their way into a ridiculous goal where they just kind of kept hacking at the Cranes' goalie until eventually a rebound got to captain Takahito Suzuki and he slapped it in. I am very bad at describing hockey so I will have to wait for Simon to actually write it up on his blog. Either way, the 4-3 go-ahead goal came with 45 seconds remaining in the entire game, so that was pretty much it.
This was Game 6 of the series and so now it's tied at 3-3 and Game 7 will happen tomorrow night.
There are a bunch of Canadian-Japanese guys on these teams who apparently don't count against the foreigner limit of 2, which is kind of weird. Like Ryan Kiyoshi Fujita, or Darcy Takeshi Mitani, or Joel Dyck Oshiro... I guess maybe it makes more sense in hockey than in baseball to do such a thing like that. (Apparently there are also Canadian-Korean guys playing for the Korean teams, only they don't WANT to get Korean passports due to having to serve in the army and all, heh.)
Also, Joel Prpic, who is just Canadian, is very, very tall.
After the game, I ended up going to the Hub bar/pub in Takadanobaba with our group from the game. Everyone except me drank quite a bit, and Simon's dad smoked, too, and I told him about my father dying over the winter and said he should stop. I had one drink -- amaretto gingerale, which was pretty tasty and Kazue recommended it to me. I guess we were there for about 2 hours, until the entire place got overrun by crazy drunken Waseda students and so we decided to leave. Splitting up on the JR platform, they were like "are you coming tomorrow?" and I replied, "I'll think about it..." I think what might happen is, if I can get laundry done in the afternoon while watching the WBC and Koshien and all, I'll go. Yeah.
Whee, hockey.
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One team next year.
Two teams the following year...
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I'm thinking of going back for Game 7 though, and I expect to see some serious fighting.