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Sasebo Adventures
What a day.
Okay, so it started out in the morning in Tobata... where I didn't buy anything to eat for breakfast and there was no food on the platform, so oops, I ended up on a train for 2 hours with nothing to eat. Train transfer at Tosu, I manage to get a bento box of shumai there. Another train transfer at Hizen-Yamaguchi, and finally I get to Sasebo after 4 hours of train time total, having had no bathroom breaks and only some shumai to eat all day. Whooosh. Fortunately Sasebo is a nice big train station. I got some information and maps and was on my way.
(Note: the lady at the information desk didn't even remotely try to talk to me in English, which was nice, but what was odd is that she kept recommending I take buses places. Like "It's so hot, you don't want to walk 6 blocks in this, do you?" and I'm thinking "It's only 33-34 out... that's not SO bad in the shade...")
Sasebo is a lot like Seattle, but hot. You have mountains on one side, ports on the other, and everything is freaking beautiful.
First stop: the Yonkamachi covered shopping street, because I wanted a damn Sasebo burger for lunch. Finally found a place called "Big Man" on a side street. Had a bacon cheeseburger. It was fantastic.
Second stop: the Kenji Johjima museum, even though I knew it'd be closed. Of course, this involved taking the Matsuura Railway out to Kamiaiura, which was like half an hour away by this tiny one-track one-train line, and then walking for 10 minutes on a random residential street in the aforementioned 34-degree heat. Indeed, it was closed and deserted when I got there, but I took some photos anyway.
Third stop: the Sasebo Stadium, to see the Nagasaki Saints play the Kagawa Olive Guyners. I got there at like 5pm and the place was EMPTY. I mean, I ended up saying hello to players and the manager and all because I mean... they were looking up in the stands and nobody was there. Was kinda weird that I couldn't surreptitiously take photos of guys (one guy was even like "did you take it? should I hold this bat higher?") but whatever.
As the game started I heard people talking English behind me -- turned out to be two guys who work at the Sasebo navy base international school. The one guy is American and teaches Spanish, and the other guy was Japanese and teaches Japanese. The Japanese guy, we'll call him Y, was hella cool and knows the Nagasaki baseball team inside out and was telling me all about the players. Also, he was happy to speak in either Japanese or English, which is weird for Japanese people who are fairly fluent in English -- they tend to simply not speak Japanese to white people at all, but he seemed okay switching back and forth.
After the game (it was a 2-2 tie) all the players line up and say goodbye to people leaving the park and you can bug them for photos and signatures so I got my photo with a few of the guys. Funny part is, Y has a season pass to the Nagasaki Saints games, but he'd never actually gotten his photo with the players before -- and he's a big fan of this one guy Nerei -- so we both went up and bugged the guy for photos.
Yuji Nerei. After we took the photo, he said in perfect English, "Hey, I like your shirt, that's cool." I said "Thanks! I love baseball." I always get so idiotified around ballplayers. Nerei went to Hosei and then actually spent several years playing baseball in other countries, even Mexico and Canada, so he supposedly speaks several languages fluently. He's 36 though and will probly retire and become a coach soon.
Yoshinori Fujioka, the Nagasaki starting pitcher.
The other cool thing about Y is that around 8:45pm in the top of the 9th inning of a tied game I was saying I'd have to miss the end of the game in order to walk back to Daigaku train stop to get the last train back to Sasebo, and he's like "what time is your train out of Sasebo? I'll give you a ride to the station." And he did. Funny how in the US you would never ever accept a ride from a stranger at a ballgame, but here I didn't even give it a second thought.
So yeah. Got to the station with plenty of time. Had a 2-hour ride to Nagasaki, and for about 15 minutes a random somewhat-older English dude sat down across from me and started talking to me... he apparently basically does nothing and just hangs out in Kyushu with his Japanese wife. He was trying to tell me that the economy is going to make it possible for him to buy real estate in Nagasaki soon enough. Whatever. It is weird how all sorts of random weirdoes ride these local trains in the middle of nowhere. Like me, of course.
At Nagasaki station, was almost midnight, couldn't figure out how to get anywhere from there, I think the trolley was over for the day, so I took a taxi to the hotel. Carl was still up so we chatted about plans and then went to the convenience store across the way so I could get something to eat (since I hadn't really eaten anything tonight). There's a bunch of weird shanty-looking things bordering Chinatown here. Weird.
I should sleep -- I'm supposed to be ready to leave here in like 7 hours to go do sightseeing. Yikes.
Okay, so it started out in the morning in Tobata... where I didn't buy anything to eat for breakfast and there was no food on the platform, so oops, I ended up on a train for 2 hours with nothing to eat. Train transfer at Tosu, I manage to get a bento box of shumai there. Another train transfer at Hizen-Yamaguchi, and finally I get to Sasebo after 4 hours of train time total, having had no bathroom breaks and only some shumai to eat all day. Whooosh. Fortunately Sasebo is a nice big train station. I got some information and maps and was on my way.
(Note: the lady at the information desk didn't even remotely try to talk to me in English, which was nice, but what was odd is that she kept recommending I take buses places. Like "It's so hot, you don't want to walk 6 blocks in this, do you?" and I'm thinking "It's only 33-34 out... that's not SO bad in the shade...")
Sasebo is a lot like Seattle, but hot. You have mountains on one side, ports on the other, and everything is freaking beautiful.
First stop: the Yonkamachi covered shopping street, because I wanted a damn Sasebo burger for lunch. Finally found a place called "Big Man" on a side street. Had a bacon cheeseburger. It was fantastic.
Second stop: the Kenji Johjima museum, even though I knew it'd be closed. Of course, this involved taking the Matsuura Railway out to Kamiaiura, which was like half an hour away by this tiny one-track one-train line, and then walking for 10 minutes on a random residential street in the aforementioned 34-degree heat. Indeed, it was closed and deserted when I got there, but I took some photos anyway.
Third stop: the Sasebo Stadium, to see the Nagasaki Saints play the Kagawa Olive Guyners. I got there at like 5pm and the place was EMPTY. I mean, I ended up saying hello to players and the manager and all because I mean... they were looking up in the stands and nobody was there. Was kinda weird that I couldn't surreptitiously take photos of guys (one guy was even like "did you take it? should I hold this bat higher?") but whatever.
As the game started I heard people talking English behind me -- turned out to be two guys who work at the Sasebo navy base international school. The one guy is American and teaches Spanish, and the other guy was Japanese and teaches Japanese. The Japanese guy, we'll call him Y, was hella cool and knows the Nagasaki baseball team inside out and was telling me all about the players. Also, he was happy to speak in either Japanese or English, which is weird for Japanese people who are fairly fluent in English -- they tend to simply not speak Japanese to white people at all, but he seemed okay switching back and forth.
After the game (it was a 2-2 tie) all the players line up and say goodbye to people leaving the park and you can bug them for photos and signatures so I got my photo with a few of the guys. Funny part is, Y has a season pass to the Nagasaki Saints games, but he'd never actually gotten his photo with the players before -- and he's a big fan of this one guy Nerei -- so we both went up and bugged the guy for photos.
Yuji Nerei. After we took the photo, he said in perfect English, "Hey, I like your shirt, that's cool." I said "Thanks! I love baseball." I always get so idiotified around ballplayers. Nerei went to Hosei and then actually spent several years playing baseball in other countries, even Mexico and Canada, so he supposedly speaks several languages fluently. He's 36 though and will probly retire and become a coach soon.
Yoshinori Fujioka, the Nagasaki starting pitcher.
The other cool thing about Y is that around 8:45pm in the top of the 9th inning of a tied game I was saying I'd have to miss the end of the game in order to walk back to Daigaku train stop to get the last train back to Sasebo, and he's like "what time is your train out of Sasebo? I'll give you a ride to the station." And he did. Funny how in the US you would never ever accept a ride from a stranger at a ballgame, but here I didn't even give it a second thought.
So yeah. Got to the station with plenty of time. Had a 2-hour ride to Nagasaki, and for about 15 minutes a random somewhat-older English dude sat down across from me and started talking to me... he apparently basically does nothing and just hangs out in Kyushu with his Japanese wife. He was trying to tell me that the economy is going to make it possible for him to buy real estate in Nagasaki soon enough. Whatever. It is weird how all sorts of random weirdoes ride these local trains in the middle of nowhere. Like me, of course.
At Nagasaki station, was almost midnight, couldn't figure out how to get anywhere from there, I think the trolley was over for the day, so I took a taxi to the hotel. Carl was still up so we chatted about plans and then went to the convenience store across the way so I could get something to eat (since I hadn't really eaten anything tonight). There's a bunch of weird shanty-looking things bordering Chinatown here. Weird.
I should sleep -- I'm supposed to be ready to leave here in like 7 hours to go do sightseeing. Yikes.