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back in tokyo
hm, gonna be another night short on sleep...
anyway, today I went back to the Sapporo Dome for the game, of course. I bought omiyage beforehand (and got myself another Yakyu-do t-shirt. I know I shouldn't, but the first one is already getting ragged from overwearing after only 2 months, it's my favorite t-shirt), and went into the stadium a bit after it opened up (we had to wait in a long line).
I got an Inaba bento for lunch. It's a little different from last year but still pretty good.
I spent the hour and a half before the game going around to say hi to people, and I also spent another 20-25 minutes on the trading floor trying desperately to get BB and Cubby pinbadges. I finally did succeed, though I had to trade a whole bunch of stuff for them. BUT -- not only did Sakurai give me his entire bag of pinbadges, like 20 of them, the ones you get for just coming to the stadium as a fanclub member, but then Minako's mom ALSO gave me a HUGE bag of pinbadges, like maybe 30 or 40 of them, doubles that her and a friend had. yikes! Most are minor-league players so I think what'll actually happen is that I'm going to take them to Kamagaya early next season, maybe, and give them to people. But yeah, I've got the entire 2009 pin set now... well, no Jimenez pin because those are super-rare, but all the other players. (I just don't care about the rare pins like the month pins and whatever, is the thing.)
It turned out one of the ladies I traded pins with was in Osaka, I remembered her son's Inada wristbands. And then I got the Cubby badge from a guy in a dyed pink Kensuke jersey, and I'm like "Wait, you live here? I've seen you at Chiba..."
I was too late to get the special super-rare limited-edition helmet keychains, BUT my friend Yume came up to me in the 2nd or 3rd inning like "hey! I have an extra Inaba and an Itoi, were you able to get any? no? here! have these!" so I gave her a Hichori pinbadge, my only double of it, but man, it was nice of her to give me the keychains.
Oh, while I was in the trading area, a girl came up to me and just gave me an Imanari pinbadge. She said she was surprised to see my jersey since she thought nobody else had one... well... she ALSO had a kanji Imanari jersey! A home one, since she's in Sapporo, but that was really weird. She pointed out another friend of hers who had a green Kamagaya jersey with "Imanari #62" in sequinned lettering.
This time I also said hello to several ouendan members as I walked by. It's always a bit weird because I don't know what to say to them, but I think it's important for me to try to acknowledge them more rather than being scared. (Also to make it clear that I'm nuts enough to see the team in EVERY city, really.)
The Fighters beat the Hawks today, 4-2. Unlike the Marines, there was no ouenka exchange after the game. Stupid other teams not as cool as Lotte.
So the nice thing was seeing two wins, but the bad thing is they didn't get the victory today -- the magic number is 1 going into tomorrow's game. Sigh. Everyone was like "Can't you stay here one more day?"
This may have been my last Fighters game of the year unless I can somehow get to the postseason, which seems unlikely :(
Anyway, after the game, Ikeda convinced me that it'd be a good idea to ride the bus to the airport instead of the train, so I took the bus with him and Matsushima (another guy from Kanto, more like Tochigi). Only Ikeda fell asleep, so I ended up spending the hour-long bus ride chatting with Matsushima about random crap. Nice guy, really young though (I didn't realize he was 24 -- unlike most Japanese people who look younger than they are, he looks older, I would have thought upper 20's).
The three of us got dinner at the airport -- "jingisukan", which is Japaneseish for "Genghis Khan", or basically, another one of these meals where you cook raw meat at your table, only in this case it's lamb meat and the thing you cook it on isn't a grill per se, it's a weird round heated dish and you put stuff on the side of it. I'd always heard about it as it's a special Hokkaido food, but this is the first time I actually really had it. It was REALLY good! And lots of fun, though we were all kind of pressed for time until our flights, of course.
The flight home wasn't too bad, I pretended not to understand English when the FAs insisted on speaking it to me, and I fell asleep for a bit. Shrug.
I can't believe this baseball year is coming to an end. Seriously. It's been an insane adventure all the way.
anyway, today I went back to the Sapporo Dome for the game, of course. I bought omiyage beforehand (and got myself another Yakyu-do t-shirt. I know I shouldn't, but the first one is already getting ragged from overwearing after only 2 months, it's my favorite t-shirt), and went into the stadium a bit after it opened up (we had to wait in a long line).
I got an Inaba bento for lunch. It's a little different from last year but still pretty good.
I spent the hour and a half before the game going around to say hi to people, and I also spent another 20-25 minutes on the trading floor trying desperately to get BB and Cubby pinbadges. I finally did succeed, though I had to trade a whole bunch of stuff for them. BUT -- not only did Sakurai give me his entire bag of pinbadges, like 20 of them, the ones you get for just coming to the stadium as a fanclub member, but then Minako's mom ALSO gave me a HUGE bag of pinbadges, like maybe 30 or 40 of them, doubles that her and a friend had. yikes! Most are minor-league players so I think what'll actually happen is that I'm going to take them to Kamagaya early next season, maybe, and give them to people. But yeah, I've got the entire 2009 pin set now... well, no Jimenez pin because those are super-rare, but all the other players. (I just don't care about the rare pins like the month pins and whatever, is the thing.)
It turned out one of the ladies I traded pins with was in Osaka, I remembered her son's Inada wristbands. And then I got the Cubby badge from a guy in a dyed pink Kensuke jersey, and I'm like "Wait, you live here? I've seen you at Chiba..."
I was too late to get the special super-rare limited-edition helmet keychains, BUT my friend Yume came up to me in the 2nd or 3rd inning like "hey! I have an extra Inaba and an Itoi, were you able to get any? no? here! have these!" so I gave her a Hichori pinbadge, my only double of it, but man, it was nice of her to give me the keychains.
Oh, while I was in the trading area, a girl came up to me and just gave me an Imanari pinbadge. She said she was surprised to see my jersey since she thought nobody else had one... well... she ALSO had a kanji Imanari jersey! A home one, since she's in Sapporo, but that was really weird. She pointed out another friend of hers who had a green Kamagaya jersey with "Imanari #62" in sequinned lettering.
This time I also said hello to several ouendan members as I walked by. It's always a bit weird because I don't know what to say to them, but I think it's important for me to try to acknowledge them more rather than being scared. (Also to make it clear that I'm nuts enough to see the team in EVERY city, really.)
The Fighters beat the Hawks today, 4-2. Unlike the Marines, there was no ouenka exchange after the game. Stupid other teams not as cool as Lotte.
So the nice thing was seeing two wins, but the bad thing is they didn't get the victory today -- the magic number is 1 going into tomorrow's game. Sigh. Everyone was like "Can't you stay here one more day?"
This may have been my last Fighters game of the year unless I can somehow get to the postseason, which seems unlikely :(
Anyway, after the game, Ikeda convinced me that it'd be a good idea to ride the bus to the airport instead of the train, so I took the bus with him and Matsushima (another guy from Kanto, more like Tochigi). Only Ikeda fell asleep, so I ended up spending the hour-long bus ride chatting with Matsushima about random crap. Nice guy, really young though (I didn't realize he was 24 -- unlike most Japanese people who look younger than they are, he looks older, I would have thought upper 20's).
The three of us got dinner at the airport -- "jingisukan", which is Japaneseish for "Genghis Khan", or basically, another one of these meals where you cook raw meat at your table, only in this case it's lamb meat and the thing you cook it on isn't a grill per se, it's a weird round heated dish and you put stuff on the side of it. I'd always heard about it as it's a special Hokkaido food, but this is the first time I actually really had it. It was REALLY good! And lots of fun, though we were all kind of pressed for time until our flights, of course.
The flight home wasn't too bad, I pretended not to understand English when the FAs insisted on speaking it to me, and I fell asleep for a bit. Shrug.
I can't believe this baseball year is coming to an end. Seriously. It's been an insane adventure all the way.