Monday at Meiji Jingu
I went to Jingu for the afternoon as planned, and since Soukeisen ended yesterday, today was the first day of the "rookie taikai", ie, a mini-tournament for the 6 colleges where only freshmen and sophomores can play. It turns out that for rookie games in the Big 6 college league, they only open up the area behind home plate. I got there like 10:40 for the 11am start, so at first I was in the second row... then some guys moved up because it was too sunny, so I moved to the front row.
First game was Keio-Todai. It was 0-0 until the 4th inning when Todai pitcher Wada just started giving up the ship, and Keio eventually won 11-0. There was a lady down the row from me basically yelling the entire game at the Todai dugout like "What's with you pansies? Why aren't any of you cheering? Why don't I hear anything from you guys? You're too fucking quiet!" The Japanese equivalent, which was only slightly less blunt than that. Halfway through that game, two totally crazy guys moved into the front row as well. More on them in a second. The disappointing thing to me is that I saw freshman Kei Tamura warming up but he didn't actually pitch in the game. Very sad. I really enjoyed watching him in Koshien last year.
Second game was Meiji-Rikkio, which was at least marginally more interesting. It turns out that Yusuke Yamada is on Rikkio's team -- last year he almost made me late for work during a Koshien game by hitting the first pitch of the game out of the park. So I was kind of psyched to see him, except that... as it turns out... those crazy dudes in my row were all huge Meiji supporters. The one guy is some sort of musician and graduated from Meiji, and then there was a really old dude whose son-in-law graduated from Meiji, and a younger guy who currently goes to Meiji, and then another guy who recently graduated from Meiji and kinda plonked down behind us like 2 innings into the game and stuttered really badly and also was a walking meikan kind of like me. But anyway, if there's one kind of person I have no trouble talking to at all, it's crazy baseball fans, so I basically spent the entire second game chatting with these guys, watching the game, and cheering for Meiji. It was a very surreal experience. They all pretty much entirely gave up on trying to speak to me in English after like five seconds, once I started rambling about Koshien and high school baseball and about players from Urawa Gakuin and so on -- and once I said that I'm a Tatsuya Ohishi fan, they went on at length about yesterday's Soukeisen game, where he was the starting SHORTSTOP, played 7 innings there and made some fantastic plays apparently, also hit a triple, AND then went to the mound to close out the game. Dude. He's too cool.
The old man in the group was pretty much completely crazy. At one point he apparently went up to where several other non-rookie Meiji players were sitting and just started talking to them. He came back down like "Shashiki-kun says hi" to one of the other people in the group, and I'm like "Shashiki from Osaka Toin? You talked to him?" and the guy's like "Yeah, you want me to introduce you?" and I'm like "ohmygod no that's ok I'm too shy."
Meiji won 8-2, and after the game a young guy came up to me like (in Japanese) "can I see your scorecard?" and he started reading the Tokyo-Keio game. He said in English, "I want to talk to you in English but I can't speak English," and I replied in Japanese, "that's ok, I can speak Japanese. What university do you go to?" and he answered in Japanese, "I'm a ronin. I'm studying to try to take the Tokyo University entrance exam again next year. My weak point is English and if I don't learn it I can't go to Todai. I feel terrible."
I actually felt kind of bad for him. And then he looked through more of my scorecard and was like "wait a minute, you went to the WBC? and all these other college games? and these Lotte games and... wow!" And then we got kicked out of the stadium because they needed to clean up.
I walked back to Shibuya to take the train home. I stopped at Kua'aina on the way, to get dinner, because I hadn't eaten all day, and then I pretty much just came home after that and did laundry and stuff. Whoosh. I've been looking through my photos, confirming scores, etc.
Actually, one obnoxious thing. I got something in the mail that looks like a "please pay us city taxes" paper. Which I guess isn't that out there, EXCEPT that it's from Kawaguchi city, where I no longer live. I cannot figure if this is their "please pay us taxes for LAST YEAR" bill or if it's for this year. It says 平成２１年度市民税 but I have no clue what that really means. Argh. Times like this where I wish![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kawaru worked in Tokyo instead of Nagoya :P
But the obnoxious part is, today was Monday and I had it off because of the Sports Day. I won't have another weekday off until July, but the first payment on this thing is due June 30, so I don't know if/when I can go to the shiyakusho and try to straighten things out, if it's a mistake...
First game was Keio-Todai. It was 0-0 until the 4th inning when Todai pitcher Wada just started giving up the ship, and Keio eventually won 11-0. There was a lady down the row from me basically yelling the entire game at the Todai dugout like "What's with you pansies? Why aren't any of you cheering? Why don't I hear anything from you guys? You're too fucking quiet!" The Japanese equivalent, which was only slightly less blunt than that. Halfway through that game, two totally crazy guys moved into the front row as well. More on them in a second. The disappointing thing to me is that I saw freshman Kei Tamura warming up but he didn't actually pitch in the game. Very sad. I really enjoyed watching him in Koshien last year.
Second game was Meiji-Rikkio, which was at least marginally more interesting. It turns out that Yusuke Yamada is on Rikkio's team -- last year he almost made me late for work during a Koshien game by hitting the first pitch of the game out of the park. So I was kind of psyched to see him, except that... as it turns out... those crazy dudes in my row were all huge Meiji supporters. The one guy is some sort of musician and graduated from Meiji, and then there was a really old dude whose son-in-law graduated from Meiji, and a younger guy who currently goes to Meiji, and then another guy who recently graduated from Meiji and kinda plonked down behind us like 2 innings into the game and stuttered really badly and also was a walking meikan kind of like me. But anyway, if there's one kind of person I have no trouble talking to at all, it's crazy baseball fans, so I basically spent the entire second game chatting with these guys, watching the game, and cheering for Meiji. It was a very surreal experience. They all pretty much entirely gave up on trying to speak to me in English after like five seconds, once I started rambling about Koshien and high school baseball and about players from Urawa Gakuin and so on -- and once I said that I'm a Tatsuya Ohishi fan, they went on at length about yesterday's Soukeisen game, where he was the starting SHORTSTOP, played 7 innings there and made some fantastic plays apparently, also hit a triple, AND then went to the mound to close out the game. Dude. He's too cool.
The old man in the group was pretty much completely crazy. At one point he apparently went up to where several other non-rookie Meiji players were sitting and just started talking to them. He came back down like "Shashiki-kun says hi" to one of the other people in the group, and I'm like "Shashiki from Osaka Toin? You talked to him?" and the guy's like "Yeah, you want me to introduce you?" and I'm like "ohmygod no that's ok I'm too shy."
Meiji won 8-2, and after the game a young guy came up to me like (in Japanese) "can I see your scorecard?" and he started reading the Tokyo-Keio game. He said in English, "I want to talk to you in English but I can't speak English," and I replied in Japanese, "that's ok, I can speak Japanese. What university do you go to?" and he answered in Japanese, "I'm a ronin. I'm studying to try to take the Tokyo University entrance exam again next year. My weak point is English and if I don't learn it I can't go to Todai. I feel terrible."
I actually felt kind of bad for him. And then he looked through more of my scorecard and was like "wait a minute, you went to the WBC? and all these other college games? and these Lotte games and... wow!" And then we got kicked out of the stadium because they needed to clean up.
I walked back to Shibuya to take the train home. I stopped at Kua'aina on the way, to get dinner, because I hadn't eaten all day, and then I pretty much just came home after that and did laundry and stuff. Whoosh. I've been looking through my photos, confirming scores, etc.
Actually, one obnoxious thing. I got something in the mail that looks like a "please pay us city taxes" paper. Which I guess isn't that out there, EXCEPT that it's from Kawaguchi city, where I no longer live. I cannot figure if this is their "please pay us taxes for LAST YEAR" bill or if it's for this year. It says 平成２１年度市民税 but I have no clue what that really means. Argh. Times like this where I wish
kawaru worked in Tokyo instead of Nagoya :PBut the obnoxious part is, today was Monday and I had it off because of the Sports Day. I won't have another weekday off until July, but the first payment on this thing is due June 30, so I don't know if/when I can go to the shiyakusho and try to straighten things out, if it's a mistake...
no subject
Taxes: Japanese residency taxes (basically, local income tax) are paid the following year. Therefore, you owe Kawaguchi City (and Saitama-ken, but it is all included in that one bill) taxes for your income for fiscal 2008 (April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009). This is a totally screwed up system which especially hurts if your income tends to fluctuate like a free-lance translator who just happens to sell some land, and forgets all about local income tax! Anyway, you have to pay it or else the tax man cometh, and they are really coming now because of all the money the government is spending.
no subject
I *think* if it had been one of the players I'm actually a big fan of, I would have gone for it nonetheless. Shashiki just intrigues me because he was one of Nakata Sho's classmates.
Anyway, so you think that this is definitely for last year? I was worried because I never went to Kawaguchi and told them I moved -- I just told the post office, and I went to the Kita-ku kuyakusho and had my alien card changed. I didn't know if they like, contact the old place and tell them "she no longer lives in your area" or not.
no subject
The Japanese government can be mindbogglingly inefficient, but when it comes to knowing who lives where they do a very good job -- which is kind of scary when you think about it, but also assures that you are always registered to vote and stuff if you're Japanese. Of course, it is also a way to assure that they get their taxes, so....