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Tales from the left field rainy bleachers and stuff
Today was a relatively good day. I went to Chiba for the Fighters game, and decided to just say screw it and actually BOUGHT a bleachers ticket rather than trying to figure out how to sneak around Lotte and get into the bleachers (I had kind of promised Larry a long time ago that I would never cheer against Lotte when they had let me into the stadium for free). Since it was forecasted to be horrible and rainy, I didn't really want to carry my big camera and be media for the day, so I didn't.
I was supposed to sit with my friend Sakamoto in theory, but couldn't find him at first, and instead ran into Mineji, one of my crazy Hokkaido friends, who led me up to where Ojisan and Waka-chan and Chizaki and Takapi and all of those people were sitting, so I just sat with my normal gang instead. Plus when we asked Kawabata if any seats were free over there, he seemed to think there weren't, so whatever.
It started raining pretty much as the game was starting, and it never actually stopped. Somehow they managed to slush through 5 innings of that crap, and the Fighters were up 2-0 at that point, and there was a rain delay, and we all spent that time yelling and singing and cheering (I was actually sad, we did the 1998 lineup songs, which I knew like 3 of, and then we were going to do 2004's, which I know ALL of, except at that moment the umpires announced they were calling the game and instead we did victory songs!)
The Fighters mascot BB was wandering through the outfield stands, and this lady Tomoko who was sitting next to me today basically was like "hey, let's go get our photo with him, let's go let's go!" She's from Hokkaido so I don't see what the big deal is, but hey, it was still sort of amusing. Maybe she just wanted to be able to tell her friends back home that she met that freaky foreign Fighters fan that everyone sees on TV.
Oh yeah, and I forget exactly when, maybe a little after the game started, a group of about 4 or 5 gaijin showed up. I *think* I saw one of the women before, at the Tokyo Dome, but I didn't recognize the others. And they were wandering around looking for seats looking truly astounded that there simply weren't 4 or 5 free seats together in UNRESERVED SEATING on a NATIONAL HOLIDAY in the VISITOR'S CHEERING SECTION when they showed up AFTER THE GAME STARTED. Sheesh, and here I was originally feeling guilty because I arrived at 11:45am for a 1pm game, which was pretty late, compared to most people I knew. Anyway, due to bizarre chance, they ended up sitting next to Sakamoto (because naturally those seats WERE free), and we were texting back and forth for most of the game anyway, and I was teasing him like "Are you talking to the other gaijin? I know how much you LOVE English!" and he was like "bah, they're not talking to any of us anyway."
I foisted all of my remaining Kobe omiyage off on the people in the stands.
We yelled a lot of really funny stuff while the rain was pouring down, most of which I think I'll just talk about when I write it up on Marinerds, but some of the funnier ones were things to the effect of "IF YOU'RE GOING TO CALL THE GAME, HURRY UP AND CALL IT ALREADY!" or we yelled at the dugout, "SOMEONE COME OUT, WE DON'T CARE WHO! COME OUT COME OUT! HOW ABOUT NASHIDA-MANAGER?" Also, the ouendan made up a cheer song for Darvish which makes absolutely no sense. Maybe someone else who speaks Japanese can enlighten me?
７＋４は お前の背番号 １４－３は 日本のエース
His uniform number is 11, but other than that I don't see the significance of it being 7+4 and 14-3.
Sakamoto and I walked back to the train station together after the game because the lines for the buses were way too long. We got soaked to death in the rain, despite umbrellas, and we rode the train back to Tokyo Station together. He wrote down the new Darvish lyrics for me but even he didn't really get why the hell they picked those numbers. He was also telling me about how Arakawa is one of the worst parts of Tokyo, though not nearly as bad as Adachi, so I should consider myself lucky. Huh.
I got dinner at Ito Yokado, at a place on the 6th floor called Famil Court, which sucked. Good to find that out at least. I got taiyaki in the basement grocery to make myself feel better.
I kind of did laundry when I got home. I had pondered dropping my jersey off at Sports Authority to get the numbers put on, but realized that my jersey was kind of... probly not that great after being worn like 3 or 4 times in the last week and being soaked from rain. So I washed it, also to make sure the signature wouldn't wash off, and it didn't, so yay. Maybe tomorrow.
I can't decide what to do tomorrow, either. Kamagaya has stuff, and Yukio Tanaka will be there as a guest, but the stuff starts at like 10am, which is crazy early. Chiba has Brian Sweeney vs. Shunsuke Watanabe, and I could basically get there whenever I feel like it. But I told everyone today I'd be at Kamagaya tomorrow. Argh!
I was supposed to sit with my friend Sakamoto in theory, but couldn't find him at first, and instead ran into Mineji, one of my crazy Hokkaido friends, who led me up to where Ojisan and Waka-chan and Chizaki and Takapi and all of those people were sitting, so I just sat with my normal gang instead. Plus when we asked Kawabata if any seats were free over there, he seemed to think there weren't, so whatever.
It started raining pretty much as the game was starting, and it never actually stopped. Somehow they managed to slush through 5 innings of that crap, and the Fighters were up 2-0 at that point, and there was a rain delay, and we all spent that time yelling and singing and cheering (I was actually sad, we did the 1998 lineup songs, which I knew like 3 of, and then we were going to do 2004's, which I know ALL of, except at that moment the umpires announced they were calling the game and instead we did victory songs!)
The Fighters mascot BB was wandering through the outfield stands, and this lady Tomoko who was sitting next to me today basically was like "hey, let's go get our photo with him, let's go let's go!" She's from Hokkaido so I don't see what the big deal is, but hey, it was still sort of amusing. Maybe she just wanted to be able to tell her friends back home that she met that freaky foreign Fighters fan that everyone sees on TV.
Oh yeah, and I forget exactly when, maybe a little after the game started, a group of about 4 or 5 gaijin showed up. I *think* I saw one of the women before, at the Tokyo Dome, but I didn't recognize the others. And they were wandering around looking for seats looking truly astounded that there simply weren't 4 or 5 free seats together in UNRESERVED SEATING on a NATIONAL HOLIDAY in the VISITOR'S CHEERING SECTION when they showed up AFTER THE GAME STARTED. Sheesh, and here I was originally feeling guilty because I arrived at 11:45am for a 1pm game, which was pretty late, compared to most people I knew. Anyway, due to bizarre chance, they ended up sitting next to Sakamoto (because naturally those seats WERE free), and we were texting back and forth for most of the game anyway, and I was teasing him like "Are you talking to the other gaijin? I know how much you LOVE English!" and he was like "bah, they're not talking to any of us anyway."
I foisted all of my remaining Kobe omiyage off on the people in the stands.
We yelled a lot of really funny stuff while the rain was pouring down, most of which I think I'll just talk about when I write it up on Marinerds, but some of the funnier ones were things to the effect of "IF YOU'RE GOING TO CALL THE GAME, HURRY UP AND CALL IT ALREADY!" or we yelled at the dugout, "SOMEONE COME OUT, WE DON'T CARE WHO! COME OUT COME OUT! HOW ABOUT NASHIDA-MANAGER?" Also, the ouendan made up a cheer song for Darvish which makes absolutely no sense. Maybe someone else who speaks Japanese can enlighten me?
７＋４は お前の背番号 １４－３は 日本のエース
His uniform number is 11, but other than that I don't see the significance of it being 7+4 and 14-3.
Sakamoto and I walked back to the train station together after the game because the lines for the buses were way too long. We got soaked to death in the rain, despite umbrellas, and we rode the train back to Tokyo Station together. He wrote down the new Darvish lyrics for me but even he didn't really get why the hell they picked those numbers. He was also telling me about how Arakawa is one of the worst parts of Tokyo, though not nearly as bad as Adachi, so I should consider myself lucky. Huh.
I got dinner at Ito Yokado, at a place on the 6th floor called Famil Court, which sucked. Good to find that out at least. I got taiyaki in the basement grocery to make myself feel better.
I kind of did laundry when I got home. I had pondered dropping my jersey off at Sports Authority to get the numbers put on, but realized that my jersey was kind of... probly not that great after being worn like 3 or 4 times in the last week and being soaked from rain. So I washed it, also to make sure the signature wouldn't wash off, and it didn't, so yay. Maybe tomorrow.
I can't decide what to do tomorrow, either. Kamagaya has stuff, and Yukio Tanaka will be there as a guest, but the stuff starts at like 10am, which is crazy early. Chiba has Brian Sweeney vs. Shunsuke Watanabe, and I could basically get there whenever I feel like it. But I told everyone today I'd be at Kamagaya tomorrow. Argh!
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Also, "freaky foreign Fighters fan". I like this.