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weekend
so, yeah, Saturday I largely did nothing and tried to rest and be not sick.
Finished reading "Ugly Americans", which was a good light read, but had a few gaping plotholes and some character motivation issues, which is bad when you consider that it's supposedly non-fiction.
Oh, one thing I accomplished on Saturday: I... bought transportation tickets and baseball tickets to go to Osaka on the 19th-20th. I'm a moron, but I feel very unsatisfied with my final Fighters series of the year being that lousy Seibu one. Plus a bunch of my baseball cheering friends are going, so I'll just tag with them in theory. (Though one friend I really want to see ISN'T going... alas.) I need to make a hotel reservation. I should stop putting that off.
In order to not spend an even more unreasonable amount of money, I got a shinkansen ticket down at like 6:30am on Saturday (because that's the latest I could do it without spending an extra $50 for a Green Car seat), and am taking a night bus back on Sunday night, which is half the price of a shinkansen, so hooray.
Today I woke up and felt not sick, so I went to Kamagaya for the Futures game.
The game itself was free, but getting there and back cost like 2500 yen total (730 on trains there plus 800 on a taxi since I made a bus error, then 380 for the late bus to Nishi-Funabashi and another 500 yen home). On the other hand, Ojisan had saved seats for Hiromi and some other person, neither of whom were coming after all, so I sat with him behind home plate in the front row! The two guys behind us were also really awesome and had also gone to Sendai and whatnot. Wish I'd gotten their names. I saw Tomoko and she gave me photos of me throwing a baseball on the Seibu field (but I look really awful). And Ojisan gave me an ice cream sandwich. It was really hot outside -- good thing I'd remembered to bring sunscreen and a frozen water bottle, seriously.
The Fighters guys won the game, mostly because a Marines pitcher named Hayashi managed to give up 8 runs in one inning (1 earned I think). I saw Takanori Suzuki coaching for the Futures, it was really odd, at first I was like "why does that first-base coach look familiar... OH MY GOD IT'S TAKANORI". He only retired last year but he already looks kind of old and fat, it's really weird.
What sucked is, I really wanted to get Ryota Imanari to sign my jersey again today since the old signature faded (I have since bought a Japanese marker and I hope it works better). But see... it seems that his broken hand has mostly healed, fine, but now apparently he somehow injured his LEG. WTF. So he wasn't out there for the game. Ojisan said he expected Imanari would come out anyway because he should have been videotaping/scoring the game, but noooooooooo.
I waited for an hour and 20 minutes after the game, outside the training center / dormitory. I got my photo with a few more players...
Yoshihiro Satoh. I'd actually had a few chances to catch him in the past but had nobody to take a photo at the time.
Kazuya Murata! I was mostly wondering if I actually am taller than him :)
Coach Kiyoshi Yamanaka... really, Mariko and her friend got photos with him so I was like "me too!" He was all Englishing at me and I was just like "Whatever".
Yes, I seem to be playing "collect 'em all" with the Fighters minor-league team.
Actually, sadly, Ryuichi Watanabe was standing there for a while talking to two people but I felt bad bugging him for a photo. I forget who else I missed that went by. I also said hi to Yohei Kaneko and he actually seems to remember who I am now, he's been in a really happy-niceguy mood lately every time I've seen him. (Later on I saw him give a bat to a high-school boy who had been hanging around watching practice and all.) We waved goodbye to players who got in their cars and went off wherever. Shintaro Ejiri drives a big black SUV-looking car, surprisingly. Yataro Sakamoto drives a little white sportscar. Jason Botts left in a taxi. Things like that.
But after all the waiting around, and seeing some players go in and come out of the sports facility, and bowing to the coaches and to Mizukami-manager and all, and more waiting... no Ryota :( I felt remarkably disappointed when I got on the bus to leave. Sad sad sad sad. Maybe I am becoming like all of the Japanese fans, really fixated on one player. (But I feel that's not true since I do shift from time to time, especially this year shifting from Hichori to Kaneko at ichi-gun.) Maybe I should just switch my ni-gun boyfriend to Yohei Kaneko, then I'll just have a Kaneko at both levels.
I stopped in Akihabara for dinner because it was the transfer point between the Sobu line and the Keihin-Tohoku. Went to the further-down kaitensushi place where they treat me like a human instead of a gaijin, and was pretty happy with it. Went into Don Quixote with the intention to play a game of Pop'n in the arcade on the 6th floor, but ended up buying laundry detergent and Pringles too... they have a lot of import stuff there. Some dude tried to stop me and make me talk to him in English, and I told him off in Japanese. Gaijin SMASH.
(In case I just sound like I am just being obnoxious, it was a case where I was walking down the street trying to get somewhere and this guy just kind of started walking alongside me like "Hello, excuse me, you speak English? With me?" and kept following me. It was kinda creepy.)
I have been cropping photos from the game for like 3 hours. This is why I really shouldn't do this kind of crap anymore. I need to sleep, so zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
WTF am I going to do with my weekends once baseball season ends? Argh.
Finished reading "Ugly Americans", which was a good light read, but had a few gaping plotholes and some character motivation issues, which is bad when you consider that it's supposedly non-fiction.
Oh, one thing I accomplished on Saturday: I... bought transportation tickets and baseball tickets to go to Osaka on the 19th-20th. I'm a moron, but I feel very unsatisfied with my final Fighters series of the year being that lousy Seibu one. Plus a bunch of my baseball cheering friends are going, so I'll just tag with them in theory. (Though one friend I really want to see ISN'T going... alas.) I need to make a hotel reservation. I should stop putting that off.
In order to not spend an even more unreasonable amount of money, I got a shinkansen ticket down at like 6:30am on Saturday (because that's the latest I could do it without spending an extra $50 for a Green Car seat), and am taking a night bus back on Sunday night, which is half the price of a shinkansen, so hooray.
Today I woke up and felt not sick, so I went to Kamagaya for the Futures game.
The game itself was free, but getting there and back cost like 2500 yen total (730 on trains there plus 800 on a taxi since I made a bus error, then 380 for the late bus to Nishi-Funabashi and another 500 yen home). On the other hand, Ojisan had saved seats for Hiromi and some other person, neither of whom were coming after all, so I sat with him behind home plate in the front row! The two guys behind us were also really awesome and had also gone to Sendai and whatnot. Wish I'd gotten their names. I saw Tomoko and she gave me photos of me throwing a baseball on the Seibu field (but I look really awful). And Ojisan gave me an ice cream sandwich. It was really hot outside -- good thing I'd remembered to bring sunscreen and a frozen water bottle, seriously.
The Fighters guys won the game, mostly because a Marines pitcher named Hayashi managed to give up 8 runs in one inning (1 earned I think). I saw Takanori Suzuki coaching for the Futures, it was really odd, at first I was like "why does that first-base coach look familiar... OH MY GOD IT'S TAKANORI". He only retired last year but he already looks kind of old and fat, it's really weird.
What sucked is, I really wanted to get Ryota Imanari to sign my jersey again today since the old signature faded (I have since bought a Japanese marker and I hope it works better). But see... it seems that his broken hand has mostly healed, fine, but now apparently he somehow injured his LEG. WTF. So he wasn't out there for the game. Ojisan said he expected Imanari would come out anyway because he should have been videotaping/scoring the game, but noooooooooo.
I waited for an hour and 20 minutes after the game, outside the training center / dormitory. I got my photo with a few more players...
Yoshihiro Satoh. I'd actually had a few chances to catch him in the past but had nobody to take a photo at the time.
Kazuya Murata! I was mostly wondering if I actually am taller than him :)
Coach Kiyoshi Yamanaka... really, Mariko and her friend got photos with him so I was like "me too!" He was all Englishing at me and I was just like "Whatever".
Yes, I seem to be playing "collect 'em all" with the Fighters minor-league team.
Actually, sadly, Ryuichi Watanabe was standing there for a while talking to two people but I felt bad bugging him for a photo. I forget who else I missed that went by. I also said hi to Yohei Kaneko and he actually seems to remember who I am now, he's been in a really happy-niceguy mood lately every time I've seen him. (Later on I saw him give a bat to a high-school boy who had been hanging around watching practice and all.) We waved goodbye to players who got in their cars and went off wherever. Shintaro Ejiri drives a big black SUV-looking car, surprisingly. Yataro Sakamoto drives a little white sportscar. Jason Botts left in a taxi. Things like that.
But after all the waiting around, and seeing some players go in and come out of the sports facility, and bowing to the coaches and to Mizukami-manager and all, and more waiting... no Ryota :( I felt remarkably disappointed when I got on the bus to leave. Sad sad sad sad. Maybe I am becoming like all of the Japanese fans, really fixated on one player. (But I feel that's not true since I do shift from time to time, especially this year shifting from Hichori to Kaneko at ichi-gun.) Maybe I should just switch my ni-gun boyfriend to Yohei Kaneko, then I'll just have a Kaneko at both levels.
I stopped in Akihabara for dinner because it was the transfer point between the Sobu line and the Keihin-Tohoku. Went to the further-down kaitensushi place where they treat me like a human instead of a gaijin, and was pretty happy with it. Went into Don Quixote with the intention to play a game of Pop'n in the arcade on the 6th floor, but ended up buying laundry detergent and Pringles too... they have a lot of import stuff there. Some dude tried to stop me and make me talk to him in English, and I told him off in Japanese. Gaijin SMASH.
(In case I just sound like I am just being obnoxious, it was a case where I was walking down the street trying to get somewhere and this guy just kind of started walking alongside me like "Hello, excuse me, you speak English? With me?" and kept following me. It was kinda creepy.)
I have been cropping photos from the game for like 3 hours. This is why I really shouldn't do this kind of crap anymore. I need to sleep, so zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
WTF am I going to do with my weekends once baseball season ends? Argh.
no subject
I feel like this particular book only got published because it is about Japan and stocks and the yakuza, and there just aren't a lot of books out there on the topic. Most of the writing was good, I just felt like "Wait a minute, this situation makes no sense" for the entire second half of it.
no subject