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I'm a baseball socialite?
No, I dunno, but... I spent the morning/afternoon doing laundry, and I headed down to Jingu around 3-4pm for the Fighters-Swallows game, which started at 6pm. To be fair I wasn't really sure exactly what was going to happen, because I knew my normal gang wasn't going to be in the outfield. Pau was meeting me at the game though and I just hoped I'd be able to find a group of friends to cheer with that he could join.
Well, the first person I ran into was Waka-chan, who was waiting for the infield gates to open, and I chatted with her for a little while, and I mentioned that Pau was joining me and that I hoped I'd find some friends in the outfield, so, after I waited in line to get in for like 10 minutes, I saw Akki-kun, asked him if he'd seen Mineji, and then it turned out Mineji saved me two seats! I bet Waka-chan told him to, though I'm not sure, but it was still super-awesome of him. We were right up next to the ouendan, which is often a lot of fun. I was sitting next to a girl they call Mori-chan who I'd never met before, she's from Hokkaido (and used to work for the Fighters!!) but lives here now, and was very friendly. (I've noticed that people who've lived in Hokkaido are ALWAYS uniformly nicer to gaijin than anyone else in the country.) There was an entire row of fangirls in front of us, all either Hichori or Inaba fans as it were. Mineji is a big Tsuboi fan and I like Tsuboi too, so we kind of had a Tsuboi line in our row as well.
I spent about half an hour before the game doing "aisatsu", aka greetings... it's a very Japanese thing that you are supposed to go try to say hello to everyone you know, if possible. I haven't gotten to do that in a while because I'm always showing up after work and have like 5 minutes before the game starts, but this was a Sunday so it was possible. I wanted to go up and say hi to Sweeney and Botts but you can't go to the front thanks to it being reserved seats. Instead I ran into my friend Ikuko and another friend of hers and they were like "why not just go shout hello to Sweeney anyway?" So I did, kind of... I stood there behind where he was with the pitchers, and I swear to god his TRANSLATOR actually tapped him on the shoulder and pointed towards me, and so he waved hi and I waved back, we shouted a few "hey what's up" kind of stuff back and forth, I asked if he was pitching tomorrow, he said no. Doh!
But yeah, I caught up with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in ages. Ran into Mushiga, who didn't give me anything this time but instead asked me to help one of the college boys with his English homework! OMFG! That was really really weird. I tried my best, but refused politely when they were like "can you write down the translation of this sentence?" I did explain the phrases though.
A bit later, Pau showed up, and a bit after that they announced lineups and so on, and then there was a game, and it was crazy fast. There were no hits in the first 3 innings on either side, and only 3 baserunners total in the first 5 innings. Pretty nuts. The Fighters eventually scored some runs and won the game 3-0, which made me pretty happy after watching them lose for two days. Masaru Takeda started and won for the Fighters, and Shota Ohno was catching again, so yay.
We sang "kutabare Yomiuri" with Tokyo Ondo, and got to do some Inaba jumps, and the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang chance music, all without drums, which was kind of weird. Oh, and there was an ouendan fight at one point, kind of -- Glasses Dude was standing up on a railing and, I'm not sure exactly what happened but I THINK that some guy complained that he was in his way, because next thing I knew, the ouendan were taking off their jackets and running up to this guy in a "WHAT did you say?" kind of thing. It was just far enough away that I couldn't hear what they were saying, though. Very weird. But the ouendan were in a grumpy mood the rest of the day, and at one point I saw the guy I always think of as "Shaggy" basically go up to a lady who was filming the ouendan, and he kind of just grabbed her camera and yelled at her for filming. REALLY weird, I've never seen them quite so grumpy before.
The guys sitting to our right were total oldschool fans -- one was wearing a Kataoka #8 jersey and another had a Nishizaki #21 jersey, so when another dude came up in a 1980's Shimada #8 jersey, I said to the Kataoka guy, "excuse me -- Shimada #8 was Makoto Shimada, right?" and the guy didn't even do the "whoa, this is a weird gaijin" thing but just started talking about the old Fighters with us. I also asked what year Nishizaki left the team since I thought it was 1997, and yeah, I was right, and so we talked a little bit about the old players. It was cool. I actually feel like I can talk about the old Fighters with people, and I rarely think "who the heck was that?" when I see someone wearing a name/number combination on a jersey anymore.
After the game we did a bunch of songs and then I stopped to say "otsukaresama" to a whole bunch of people, and a lot of "are you coming tomorrow too?" and so on. Two of the ouendan guys actually waved "bye bye!" at me, so I yelled up "mata ashita!!" at them. I ran into Yoshizawa outside again which made me really happy because I hadn't seen him since the Tokyo Dome series in April, and his group was there with him so I got to say hi to them too, including the long-haired dude who always tells me jokes that make absolutely no sense to me.
In short, I saw a lot of people today that I am vaguely acquainted with because we cheer for the Fighters, and it was fun feeling social, even if sometimes the formalities of aisatsu can be kind of confusing.
Then, finally, I made Pau walk to Shibuya with me and we shared school stories. It was fun. I can't believe he's leaving Japan in two months. Crazy.
Speaking of Pau, he made me take this photo:
It's really amazing how many amusing ways Japanese people find to translate the phrase "be careful of foul balls".
In return, I made him take this photo:
Maybe I really should turn in my Hichori and Kaneko fangirl member cards and just switch allegiance to Shota Ohno already. Of course, I'm not sure how to resolve my inner ni-gun Imanari fangirl, as they're both catchers and There Can Be Only One Thanks To The Fact That Sho Nakata Can't Field A Baseball. Sigh.
Well, the first person I ran into was Waka-chan, who was waiting for the infield gates to open, and I chatted with her for a little while, and I mentioned that Pau was joining me and that I hoped I'd find some friends in the outfield, so, after I waited in line to get in for like 10 minutes, I saw Akki-kun, asked him if he'd seen Mineji, and then it turned out Mineji saved me two seats! I bet Waka-chan told him to, though I'm not sure, but it was still super-awesome of him. We were right up next to the ouendan, which is often a lot of fun. I was sitting next to a girl they call Mori-chan who I'd never met before, she's from Hokkaido (and used to work for the Fighters!!) but lives here now, and was very friendly. (I've noticed that people who've lived in Hokkaido are ALWAYS uniformly nicer to gaijin than anyone else in the country.) There was an entire row of fangirls in front of us, all either Hichori or Inaba fans as it were. Mineji is a big Tsuboi fan and I like Tsuboi too, so we kind of had a Tsuboi line in our row as well.
I spent about half an hour before the game doing "aisatsu", aka greetings... it's a very Japanese thing that you are supposed to go try to say hello to everyone you know, if possible. I haven't gotten to do that in a while because I'm always showing up after work and have like 5 minutes before the game starts, but this was a Sunday so it was possible. I wanted to go up and say hi to Sweeney and Botts but you can't go to the front thanks to it being reserved seats. Instead I ran into my friend Ikuko and another friend of hers and they were like "why not just go shout hello to Sweeney anyway?" So I did, kind of... I stood there behind where he was with the pitchers, and I swear to god his TRANSLATOR actually tapped him on the shoulder and pointed towards me, and so he waved hi and I waved back, we shouted a few "hey what's up" kind of stuff back and forth, I asked if he was pitching tomorrow, he said no. Doh!
But yeah, I caught up with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in ages. Ran into Mushiga, who didn't give me anything this time but instead asked me to help one of the college boys with his English homework! OMFG! That was really really weird. I tried my best, but refused politely when they were like "can you write down the translation of this sentence?" I did explain the phrases though.
A bit later, Pau showed up, and a bit after that they announced lineups and so on, and then there was a game, and it was crazy fast. There were no hits in the first 3 innings on either side, and only 3 baserunners total in the first 5 innings. Pretty nuts. The Fighters eventually scored some runs and won the game 3-0, which made me pretty happy after watching them lose for two days. Masaru Takeda started and won for the Fighters, and Shota Ohno was catching again, so yay.
We sang "kutabare Yomiuri" with Tokyo Ondo, and got to do some Inaba jumps, and the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang chance music, all without drums, which was kind of weird. Oh, and there was an ouendan fight at one point, kind of -- Glasses Dude was standing up on a railing and, I'm not sure exactly what happened but I THINK that some guy complained that he was in his way, because next thing I knew, the ouendan were taking off their jackets and running up to this guy in a "WHAT did you say?" kind of thing. It was just far enough away that I couldn't hear what they were saying, though. Very weird. But the ouendan were in a grumpy mood the rest of the day, and at one point I saw the guy I always think of as "Shaggy" basically go up to a lady who was filming the ouendan, and he kind of just grabbed her camera and yelled at her for filming. REALLY weird, I've never seen them quite so grumpy before.
The guys sitting to our right were total oldschool fans -- one was wearing a Kataoka #8 jersey and another had a Nishizaki #21 jersey, so when another dude came up in a 1980's Shimada #8 jersey, I said to the Kataoka guy, "excuse me -- Shimada #8 was Makoto Shimada, right?" and the guy didn't even do the "whoa, this is a weird gaijin" thing but just started talking about the old Fighters with us. I also asked what year Nishizaki left the team since I thought it was 1997, and yeah, I was right, and so we talked a little bit about the old players. It was cool. I actually feel like I can talk about the old Fighters with people, and I rarely think "who the heck was that?" when I see someone wearing a name/number combination on a jersey anymore.
After the game we did a bunch of songs and then I stopped to say "otsukaresama" to a whole bunch of people, and a lot of "are you coming tomorrow too?" and so on. Two of the ouendan guys actually waved "bye bye!" at me, so I yelled up "mata ashita!!" at them. I ran into Yoshizawa outside again which made me really happy because I hadn't seen him since the Tokyo Dome series in April, and his group was there with him so I got to say hi to them too, including the long-haired dude who always tells me jokes that make absolutely no sense to me.
In short, I saw a lot of people today that I am vaguely acquainted with because we cheer for the Fighters, and it was fun feeling social, even if sometimes the formalities of aisatsu can be kind of confusing.
Then, finally, I made Pau walk to Shibuya with me and we shared school stories. It was fun. I can't believe he's leaving Japan in two months. Crazy.
Speaking of Pau, he made me take this photo:
It's really amazing how many amusing ways Japanese people find to translate the phrase "be careful of foul balls".
In return, I made him take this photo:
Maybe I really should turn in my Hichori and Kaneko fangirl member cards and just switch allegiance to Shota Ohno already. Of course, I'm not sure how to resolve my inner ni-gun Imanari fangirl, as they're both catchers and There Can Be Only One Thanks To The Fact That Sho Nakata Can't Field A Baseball. Sigh.
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And yeah, weekday game at Jingu, tickets will be no problem.
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1. Fighters
2. Marines
3. Dragons
... everybody else
11. Lions
12. Giants
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