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July 24th, 2008
12:51 am - Earthquakes and stuff
Yeah, so apparently another huge earthquake (Shindo 6+) just hit Iwate. My apartment here in Saitama was shaking for about 2 minutes. That's no fun.
Also, the weather is very hot lately now that rainy season is over. The high near here was something like 34 today (which is like 93 for the rest of you), and it's only going to get hotter, supposedly.
My coworker Jon apparently decided to quit GEOS, and started telling us and students today. He said his last day is August 6th, two weeks from now, exactly 6 months from when he started. Crazy. Also, Fukuoka-manager got transferred out of Urawa, which is very sad. Dunno if I'll ever see him again.
Yesterday, I bought mini-taiyaki from the sweets stand outside Daiei. That is not so strange. What is strange is that there was a tall blonde-haired Russian girl manning the Daiei stand. She speaks impeccable Japanese and I didn't bother trying to communicate otherwise, even once I got over the momentary "hey, the blonde girl is actually FOREIGN" shock.
UFO catchers make me unhappy lately, although sight-reading level 28's on Pop'n makes me a little more happy, I suppose.
My brain is hopelessly behind on everything I need to do, it feels like. This system of having super-packed exciting baseball weekends and then feeling guilty for not writing about them all week is starting to take a toll on my brain, I think. And this weekend is no different as I'll be going off to Kyushu. Yargh.
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July 22nd, 2008
02:30 am - 海の日。。。 浜の日？
Spent the afternoon doing laundry, and then went to Jingu in the evening with Kohei so we could watch the Baystars actually win a freaking game for once! They beat the Yakult Swallows 10-5, Yoshimura hitting 2 home runs and Daisuke Miura getting the start but not the win. (Doesn't matter, I <3 Bancho.) The weather was great, it wasn't too hot for once, and there was a nice breeze. We sat in the Yokohama cheering section but not in the main part.
In the 8th inning I went off to go hunt down this dude who I always see walking around the Baystars cheering section with signs that say various things. Today he had a few, including "this is an away game, please throw away your garbage", but more importantly, "today is Ocean day! so let's have a big Beach victory!" since Yokohama means "by the beach" essentially, we often have "hama" beach puns in the cheers and whatnot. Anyway, I came up to him and asked if I could take some pictures of him, and also asked his name, and told him I love his signs and he's really cool and stuff. He seemed happy but sort of like "WTF" about it all.
As I was walking off from embarrassing myself talking to Sign Guy, another guy comes down from the stands and says, "Are you Deanna?"
"Yeah, I am."
"I thought so! Cool. I post to Westbay's site as No 1. Bay Fan. I recognized you from your photos."
"Oh! I know who you are. Matt?"
"Yeah!"
We talked for a while and did a few cheers. He remembered me from an open-sen Baystars-Marines game in Chiba back in March, since he was apparently like "WTF, there is another gaijin here AND SHE KNOWS ALL THE SONGS??" but I remembered him from that game because he was yelling rude things at Bobby in English. It's funny to say things like "Don't diss my friend Bobby!" and mean it. :) Anyway, Matt is moving to Saitama soon, as part of transferring in the JET program, but we agreed to go to a Baystars game together sometime down the line, probably in September at this rate due to their schedule and our schedules. He's going to the "local" game in Hamamatsu next week. I was like "Oh, against Chunichi? On the 28th? That's Morino's birthday." (YES I AM A DORK. SHUT UP.) He was like "Morino? Oh... the DRAGONS guy." "Yeah, him. I'll be in Fukuoka that day seeing the Fighters anyway."
I come back and Kohei's like "Where were you for all that time? Did you find Sign Guy?"
"Yeah, I found him. And then another guy came up to me who recognized me from my blog."
"Wow, you're famous."
Anyway, the game ended a little after that and we hiked to Sendagaya station. Except we got lost. I'm a dumbass. I hope he didn't get home too late.
I got home around 11pm myself, and then hung out to watch Ainori, where Kuro made the shortest confession ever, and Kosuke turned her down because he's a complete fucktard. I thought I didn't understand his response because of the Japanese but it turns out that in reality, NOBODY has any fucking clue what the hell was going through his head. Apparently next week they will "analyze his response" or something to that effect.
And then I ate some ice cream. Yum.
Whee! What a weekend!
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July 21st, 2008
01:48 am - today at chiba marine stadium
i talked to 4 japanese players
2 foreign players
1 ouendan leader
1 irish dude who has been part of the lotte ouendan for 4 years
various other folks
oh yeah, and of course bobby and larry and frank and paul and the whole gang.
this week, Bobby gave me his business card! and he gave our little trio of fangirls a box of cakes. which we forgot to take most of. oops.
and I got a business card from a PR person with Seibu. cool.
the guy in uniform is Lotte second baseman Shunichi Nemoto. i LOVE this guy. he might very well surpass my love for Satozaki and Shunsuke... well... okay... maybe no...
the other two are Yayoi and Ono-san. Yayoi really, really, really wanted to meet Nemoto last time but couldn't. and despite being totally outgoing and a LOT bolder than me in general, she seemed kind of nervous... and I was chatting with Alex the intern and explained that Yayoi really wanted to meet Nemoto, and he said that the guys were going to go on the field pretty soon. so I swear to god, it was ME who went up to him and said (in Japanese), "excuse me, Mr. Nemoto-player, but err... can my friends and I take a picture together with you?"
here's us with Yusuke Kawasaki, a lefty relief guy. I also asked him about taking a photo :)
Kawasaki was signing stuff for fans in the stands, so as he came through the dugout after, I asked him if we could take a picture with him and he made a big smile and said of course we could. Funny part is that I'm not sure my friends actually knew who he was, but I was psyched. It's a terrible picture of me though, but that's ok.
the other two Japanese players I talked to -- well, one I am not sure who it was sadly. it was a ni-gun pitcher, I asked him when the game was starting, and who the starting pitcher would be, and commented how it was hot outside and a few other things. I know I will recognize him next time I see him but, oops.
the fourth was Yasutaka Hattori, the lotte #1 pick in last year's industry/college draft. he was also out in the press room for charting. he has a really distinctive face and I went back in to say goodbye to Rob from the Asahi shinbun and I look up and I'm like "Hattori! whoa!" and he looked at me and smiled and all I could think of to say was "ganbatte kudasai."
the two foreign players I talked to:
Jose Ortiz, I just saw him a few times and each time said hi and wished him good luck and all.
Benny Agbayani, this was our conversation:
Me: "Hey Benny?"
Benny [looks at me kinda funny]: "Yeah? What?"
Me: "Err... do you know where Bobby is?"
Benny: "hm.. I think he's still in his office."
Me: "Thanks! Good luck today!"
Yayoi seriously gave Nemoto her business card and introduced herself and all. She's nuts. So then I took her and Ono over to Bobby's office, and she traded business cards with Bobby too!! So I asked him for one too. Figured it couldn't hurt. And now I have Bobby's business card :)
I'm not joking about the Irish dude in the ouendan. His name is Declan and he has been part of the group since 2005. he's really nice, and I'm still kind of surprised, mostly that Larry and Bobby weren't aware of him. He looks a lot like ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) damienroc actually, oddly enough.
The ouendan leader guy, thanks to Larry, got us hooked up to sit in the middle of the ouendan group and gave us flags to wave and all. fun stuff. Another guy came up to me and talked in pretty good English and said "we're all crazy but please write nice things about us in your blog, okay?"
here's me and Ono with our flags.
ANYWAY, the best part is--
It was Shunsuke Day, and Shunsuke RULED -- complete game shutout in 88 pitches.
But it gets better.
The Marines scored SIXTEEN RUNS. SIXTEEN. SIXTEEN!! So we spent most of the game on our feet jumping up and down and yelling.
Funny how this happens to me every now and then.
I hope they don't expect me to go sit in the stands EVERY time now.
but, I'm also rethinking my Kyushu plan and thinking that catching a Marines game might be pretty cool. Sigh! Maybe I should see what day my boyfriend Shunsuke Watanabe is pitching. (Or as Larry said, "Given the way he pitched for you today, I'm going to start calling him your husband instead.")
Oh yeah, Larry gave me a bunch of interleague art posters and a Shunsuke/Imae poster. Wheeeeee! So awesome.
after the game I met up with Lisa -- and her friends in Kemigawahama -- and they had a dinner party. it was 2 couples plus me and Lisa, thus 6 people, of which there were 3 americans, 1 canadian, and 2 japanese. Everyone spoke both english and Japanese, so a weird mix of conversation. fun though. It was almost like being in a normal country where people come over to someone's apartment to hang out and eat dinner and chat and all. amazing!
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July 20th, 2008
01:39 am - WeeeeeeeK?
Tuesday: Got a haircut. Mentioned.
Wednesday, day off from work, went to Tokyo Dome with Lisa. Blogged more about it on Marinerds of course.
Thursday: Normal day at work I suppose... debated going down to Tokyo Dome to get gatchapon pinbadges and see start of Fighters game. Didn't. Vague regret. After work met up with the2belo and we hung out at Denny's and ate dinner. As a result I kind of had three full meals for the day (kaitensushi lunch, katsudon dinner, and then Denny's sandwich). Oh well.
Other note about Thursday is that I had a successful new student interview. Haven't done those in a while. Go me.
Friday: Went to Shinagawa in the afternoon and picked up my new visa stamp. They'd sent me a postcard the other day. What is annoying is, when you arrive you stand in line for like 5 minutes for them to process that you have the postcard, the payment stamp, and your passport. THEN they take your stuff and give you another number and tell you to wait for an hour so they can give you your passport back with a sticker in it saying your visa is extended. Got kaitensushi from the expensive place in the station afterwards. Was totally worth it.
Most of my students cancelled class that evening and I only had my 8pm. After it, at 9pm, klari and samuelp came to Akabane and we went for yakiniku dinner at Anrakutei and I did the ordering and was the Grillmaster, which was fun. Good to see Kirstin before she flies bsck to the states. I'm sure she'll be back soon.
Saturday: Went to Pia in the morning to try to get All-Star tickets, but they don't sell them in person on the first day. GRR. Instead, bought tickets to the July 28th Fighters-Hawks game in Fukuoka and the August 3rd Fighters-Eagles game in Sendai. Inaba's birthday!!! Now I just need to figure out how the fuck I will get to/from Sendai and if I will stay anywhere.
Had a bazillion classes today and then also a trial lesson, with a 9-year-old boy. He was really eager to speak English and tried very hard, and I taught him many store names and "go left" "go right" "go straight". He kept directing me out of the classroom, haha. We did the map game with Doraemon and I levelchecked him some more. Smart kid. It went something like:
"Where is the library?"
[points]
"Great! What place do you like? I like the toy store."
"I like the zoo."
"Oh, zoo is good! What animal do you like? I like tigers."
"Hmmm... I like elephant."
[puts Doraemon on the candy store] "Where's the zoo?"
"Go right-- jaa. Go left! Stop! Go right!"
His mother signed him up for a year of studying with me, I think. Dang. I'm a little worried whether he'll fit in with the other student on Friday, who's a girl and doesn't seem to like boys, but we'll see. She is also very high level for a 9-year-old so maybe they can actually learn together, I hope.
After work for whatever unknown reason I decided to hang out in Kawaguchi. Did the circuit of arcades, won some stuff out of UFO catchers, half of which is not Stitch and will go to my kid students. Ate katsudon at the cheap friendly place I hadn't been to in a while. Then stopped by in the big arcade and played Pop'n'Music. I noticed another foreign chick at the Pop'n machine next to me...
...and then I realized it was the person who had sent me a message on Mixi a while back. Her name's Naomi and she has the same last name I do, bizarrely enough, but is a lot younger than me, and I'm pretty sure we're not related. She likes Bemani and stuff like that, and so we hung out in front of the arcade for a while talking. Weird conversation, but we exchanged cellphone emails, maybe hang out again some other time, we'll see.
Ugh, why is it almost 2am? I need to be in Chiba in like... 9 hours... to sneak into the Marines-Seibu game... it's Shunsuke Day... yay...
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July 17th, 2008
02:34 am - Fighters vs. Eagles @ Tokyo Dome - Homecoming.
Fighters fans are the most amazing people on the planet. Today I got to renew and refresh everything that I absolutely love about Japanese baseball, and the Fighters, in the exact very same place where it all started, six seasons ago. My Fighters friends made room for us in the FRONT ROW and we had an absolute blast cheering and chatting with everyone.
These guys came up to me and Lisa after the game like "You gaijin are amazing, we watched you cheering your guts out for the entire game, it's just a shame the Fighters didn't win! Can we pose for a picture with you?"
More later. Today was just one of the best days ever.
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July 16th, 2008
01:34 am - I got a haircut today
I think I did not have the typical experience, especially since I went to a busy salon and Kanae called to make the appointment for me. I went to a place that gave out coupons by Akabane station but was actually located way the hell back in Lala Garden, called Miq.
Anyway, they shampooed my hair and then cut it and then spent a long time blowing it dry. (I have heard that supposedly they give you a scalp massage or something like that but apparently not at this place, or not for gaijin that don't know what the hell is going on.) The cut, well, I said I just wanted some shape and some layering but I didn't really know what exactly. She cut about 1-2 inches off my hair in back and a little more in front, and did some layering as requested. She said my forehead is too small for bangs, so she gave me these semi-bangs things that are actually kind of annoying and I'm not sure what's gonna happen with them tomorrow. The thing is, they blow-dried my hair and made it all straight and Japanese-like and it looked pretty good, but I think tomorrow it's all gonna turn back into my normal hair.
Oh yeah, and with the coupon it all cost 3000 yen. Normally I get the impression a haircut costs around $40-50 most places anyway.
I did go and buy a cheap hairdryer from Ito Yokado afterwards but...
( cut for more haircut pictures )
Tomorrow (er, today?) I'm taking a day off. I'm going to meet up with Lisa, the Chiba CIR who is moving back to Canada in 3 weeks, and we're going to watch the Fighters vs. Eagles game at the Tokyo Dome. So I'll meet her for the first time for the last time. Weird. She's friends with like half of the Marines players (and came up with the nickname Karaage-kun for Karakawa). It should be interesting.
Oh yeah, and today the Dragons killed the Giants in an afternoon game and Masa got the win and Morino was freaking awesome. <3 <3 <3. I have just realized, though, that my joke about Masa getting 200 wins on his birthday, August 11, is totally dumb because the Dragons don't PLAY on August 11. Oops.
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July 15th, 2008
11:45 am - Whee
So, last night I tried to clean my apartment and mostly failed. I mean, I cleaned a lot but the place still looks cluttered. Small apartments suck.
I also dyed my hair dark brown. You might be asking, "Deanna, you already have dark brown hair, don't you?" Yes, that is true, but in reality what happened is I got totally sick of seeing so much GRAY hair. I've been going gray since I was 13, but something about being in Japan makes it all the more depressing. Anyway, I didn't do a skin allergy test or anything, but I am still alive so I assume I'm okay. Also, it does look slightly better to me, with this darker shade of brown, than with the mixed sunlighted brown I had before.
I also think I have done something NOBODY in Japan ever does these days: intentionally dyed my hair a shade DARKER. It might be illegal and I will be banned from Japan.
Which leads me to another note: I just got my postcard saying "Come down to immigration and give us money and get your new visa". Awesome! I should do that soon I suppose, before they deport me for dyeing my hair darker. I thought it'd take 2-3 weeks but it basically took 1.5 weeks.
And Warabi is a big pile of FAIL, or at least it was yesterday. First, I can't find a place to put air in my bike tires since the mall got rid of their pump, so I might go buy a pump sometime in Akabane, maybe today. I would have yesterday in Warabi, but all the bike stores close at 5 or are closed on Mondays, I dunno. And then I found out Ito Yokado in Warabi no longer has a big-size clothes section. And I finally tried the new kaitensushi place by the station and it's not that great and the staff are pretty rude.
And on a final note, we watched Ainori last night and Momo turned down Miya. Depressing, not entirely unexpected (she even said "I think of you more as a little brother and best friend than anything"), but I think she's kind of an idiot for doing it. Because basically, Kuro is going to go confess to Kousuke next week and be off the show, and then Momo's probably just going to hang around and pine about how her two best friends are gone, and retire. So if she's going to do that anyway, why the hell couldn't she give it a try with Miya? Sigh. Anyway, I guess the show's gonna move to a new country soon so they want new people and new plots, but... it's kind of sad, those guys have been around for the last 6 months since I started REALLY watching religiously (I was realizing that Momo and Kuro replaced the psycho hose beasts that were stalking Teppei, and Ryo and Miya came on to replace Teppei and the other dude whose name I forgot). So I hope they get equally cool new people. Soon.
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July 14th, 2008
05:08 pm - I'm going to Kyushu
July 26 Saturday:
Depart Tokyo 9:30am
Arrive Fukuoka 11:20am
July 29 Tuesday:
Depart Fukuoka 10:00am
Arrive Tokyo 11:35am
(Which should be enough time for me to get from Haneda to Akabane GEOS in time to sign in for 1pm on Tuesday.)
I am staying at the JAL Resort Seahawk Hotel. Which is right next to the Yahoo Dome.
This was not my original idea, because it is fucking expensive (well... I mean... like $120-130 per night on average, as opposed to the $60-70 at the hotel I WANTED to stay at). But the problem is, all the cheap hotels in Fukuoka were booked up for the night of July 26th. Other nights were fine but the Saturday night was booked. And the way I figure it... switching hotels is a royal pain in the ass, so there's no point in staying 1 night at an expensive hotel and then 2 at a cheap one.
The other way I figure it is, if the weather sucks I'm going to spend a lot of time at the Yahoo Dome anyway, and this hotel is right next to the Yahoo Dome.
(I wonder if the baseball players stay there actually. I will have to ask... though I bet it'll sound a bit weird to be like "I'm staying at the hotel by the stadium, will I run into any of you guys there?" The Marines are in town for the Sat/Sun of my stay, and the Fighters for the Monday. The other problem is that I think it'd sound lame for me to say "Hey, so uh, I want to go see the Marines if the weather sucks, but if the weather is good I am going to go to Nagasaki and Hiroshima instead. Can you sneak me in if the weather sucks?")
What sucked is, I went to the mall, and went to JTB, and JTB lady said "We have no hotels. Period. The July 26th is booked. Why not go ask the nice people at KNT over there?" So I go to KNT... and they DID have rooms at the cheap hotel by the station that I was looking at! And, I am NOT making this up... in the 15 minutes between her saying "we have rooms" and drawing up the form and trying to make reservations, ALL OF THE ROOMS GOT BOOKED. She even printed out a paper to show me where they got booked -- there's some kendo tournament that a bunch of people were suddenly booking for. WTF.
I also couldn't really switch to do July 27-30 instead because I had already taken the 26th off from work... plus I think shiguma is supposed to be coming through down on the 29th on his way back to America.
But, dang. It's seriously like $200 more expensive for this hotel. It better be good!
So, I am going to Kyushu. Yay.
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12:19 pm - Sleep
Last night I got home at 7pm, went to sleep at 8pm, woke up this morning at 8am. I suppose I needed the sleep.
Yesterday I went to a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome. I didn't even have a working pen, so I couldn't keep score. I sat in the middle of the Baystars cheering section, and they got shut out by the Giants 3-0, so nobody even talked to me. That was super-unfun. I mean, as unfun as it can be to be at a baseball game, at least... I enjoyed being there, and singing and cheering, and learning some new songs and all, but I hate the Giants and I hate seeing them win, so it was grumpy in that aspect.
After the game, I met up with Kirstin and Sam again, and Sam dragged us halfway around Shinagawa, first to a Kura Sushi (it really is Kura, he wasn't making that up) that had a 2-hour wait, and then to a little Ramen Town on the other side, where I said "let's go to that one called Saijo, it's from Asahikawa". So we had Hokkaido style ramen, which was good.
I wish I could say I caught up with Kirstin, but every time I tried to ask her about her work, Sam started talking about random other unrelated things. It does sound very exciting though, she was off to Ichinomiya (the one between Gifu and Nagoya) to go see some factories there. I'm all like "can I come with you to Nagoya??"
As for today, I don't have a plan, but I am going to go find a travel agent and book a trip to Fukuoka. I was thinking I would go to the plaza in Akabane, but I think I could actually do it here, maybe even in the Diamond City mall. I looked up the hotel that all the ads recommended as the cheapest place, and it looks reasonable, so I think I will go for that. I was also debating getting a haircut, but I actually don't know how much it'll help. The problem with my hair is that it is frizzy more than anything... I suppose I could get it straightened. I dunno if that'd help either, though.
Also I am grumpy because my Kyushu plan involved going to Nagasaki for a baseball game except that now the retarded league moved the game from Nagasaki to Sasebo and now I'm not sure it's worth it. Well... I mean, basically, the game is at 6pm and I would have to leave at like 8:15pm to get the last train back to Fukuoka. On the other hand if I go to Sasebo I can see the Kenji Johjima museum. Hmmmm.
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July 13th, 2008
02:04 am - We're with the Band
Long day, I guess. Work was work. Next week is K's last day because I'm taking a vacation day on the 26th and he's going off to UC Davis at the start of August. How sad :( Another student is moving to Singapore in August, and we spent our class talking about Singlish.
I wanted to go try to get my plane tickets to Kyushu today but failed to have enough time in my break hour. I might head to the travel agent on Monday afternoon, maybe. The pamphlets say 10 days in advance is enough, so I should be ok until the 16th, but... it's gonna be fun walking into a place and plunking down $500 in cash for a vacation again :)
T gave me weird wooden pens from Indonesia. I think I am obligated to use them.
Yoshida was around today from Head Office, so I told my 16-year-old student who wants to move up to Sprint 7 (seriously) to go talk to her. I had told Yoshida that I had a student who wanted to take Sprint 7 on Saturday and we'd need to make a new class... but I had not told her that said student was a 16-year-old. (And she'd told me basically we can't make a class.) So when my student went up to her she was acting like he was one of the lower students of Kanae's or something, maybe doing the Junior classes, and he's just like "Uhh.. no... I'm Deanna's student, and I want to take Sprint 7." Greatest. Look. Ever. Upshot: we're gonna create a new class for him starting in mid-August.
I finally got out of work at 7:30 (technically I was done at 6:45pm but well...) after having to answer some grammar questions and whatnot for said student. He and T were both still around hanging out after class and I changed out of my work clothes into my "I'm going to Shibuya" clothes, which today consisted of a lace-collar tank top, a grey short-sleeve hooded jacket, khaki shorts, and black lace-cuff tights, and black maryjane shoes. It's one of those attempts I make to mimic fashion here. My students were all like "omg my English teacher is pretending to be a Japanese person".
Met up with klari and samuelp at Hachiko. Shibuya was really full of foreigners, but it wasn't hard to find those guys. Kirstin is visiting Japan for work this week and finally had a free night to hang out, and Sam's a grad student at Todai. And we all were in Kiltie Band together at CMU. Hence, "with the band".
We went to a sushi place that Sam was raving about (Zanmai?) and well, I had kinda protested super-expensive sushi, so Sam ended up buying me dinner (Kirstin gets to expense her dinner). We had all kinds of random things, including a platter of all tuna stuff, like aburitoro and whatnot.
After that we went to an arcade, and I made them do purikura with me, because I think I have decided it is totally The Thing To Do when random people visit Japan now. :) Kirstin had this brilliant idea on our sixth shot to do Hear No Evil Say no Evil See No Evil, which came out really well, too.
I forget exactly why, but after that we decided to go to Karaoke so Kirstin could see that too. So we did one hour in Pasela. I must admit, Sam was right about them having a great selection of songs, so I got to do Fighters Tamashii at long last (but, you know what is disappointing? the back track does NOT have the "GO GO LET'S GO! GO GO FIGHTERS!!" in it. Alas). I did 猫になりたい for a change, and I sang along to some English songs with Kirstin, and various other stuff.
And then we went home.
I bought a ticket to tomorrow afternoon's Baystars-Giants game at the Tokyo Dome a long time before I knew Kirstin was coming to town, and I'm sitting in the DEAD MIDDLE of the Baystars cheering section, which should be... uh... an experience. Yeah. I hope Takuro Ishii is playing. Seems I might need to latch onto someone new... but, either way, I'll probly try to catch up with those guys again tomorrow night or something. We'll see.
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July 12th, 2008
12:47 am - Back to the Fighters Futures
Let's see. Thursday was a largely uneventful day mostly consisting of work stuff. I ran the bug-bombing piggy again at night, and then the next day when I woke up there was a gigantic spider in my bathtub. I guess when they flee the main room, they end up in the bathroom... so I opened the separator door in my apartment and moved the piggy somewhere more central.
Friday was today. It was pretty wacky. See, I don't have classes until 6pm on Fridays. Usually I just spend the afternoon getting a nice leisurely lunch, and preparing classes, but today since Jon was away for the week and so I'd be the only person in Akabane, I decided to go down to Fighters Town Kamagaya for the Fighters vs. Futures minor-league challenge match game. This is basically where the Fighters minor-league team takes on a squad of guys from various minor-league teams in the Eastern League... although as it is, most of them were Yomiuri Giants guys. Sheesh.
Anyway, since Kamagaya is in the middle of fucking nowhere in Chiba, I had to get to Akabane by 10:30am to sign in and catch a train there. I wanted to be at Kamagaya Station at noon for the bus to the stadium. And I was...
...except there WAS no bus. WTF?
Turns out though, at the stop, there were some other people waiting for it and I overheard their convo and was like "wait are you guys going to the stadium too?" and they said "yeah, we're splitting a taxi, wanna come with us?"
So, I rode a taxi to the stadium with these people. Two of them were a couple (Hashimoto), they were vacationing in Tokyo, they are from Tomakomai (a city in Hokkaido). They went to the Fighters game in Chiba on Wednesday, then a day at Disneyland, then today at Kamagaya, then were flying back to Hokkaido tonight. Awesome. It was their first ni-gun game, too. The third person was this lady named Kiyomi, who brought TWO NIKON CAMERAS WITH HER to the game, one with a 70-300 VR lens and I forget what the other had. She made me feel lame :) I think she is also from Sapporo but was staying in Kanto a bit longer than the other two. I have noticed that Fighters fans who come from Hokkaido are nicer to me than pretty much any other fans in baseball here, hands down.
Anyway, that was crazy. We got to the stadium and it turned out the GAME WAS FREE. More awesome, because it raises my ratio of games I do not pay for. Since it's technically an exhibition game, that's why it's free, and they have no charter buses, and so on, I guess. BUT there was a ton of food, and mascots, and all sorts of fun. I got ambushed by the mascot Cubby yet again. He patted me on the top of my head. I guess I should try to become Kamagaya's pet gaijin. Hmm.
As for the game, I took a bazillion pictures (Shinji Takahashi was DHing <3) and hung out with the aforementioned people. I had put on sunscreen but they were all really worried I was going to get burnt because I didn't have a hat on. As it is, what got burnt was a bit of my arm, but I think the rest of me is okay.
Oh yeah, and Sho Freaking Nakata was actually making faces at me while I was taking pictures before the game. Man! One of the other players even made a V sign at me and Kiyomi while we were standing there with our cameras (she took the picture but I was not quick enough, so I can't even remember who it was). Minor league is funny that way. Kiyomi even yelled at Yohei Kaneko, "Hey, can you smile for me again Yohei-kun? I always get great shots of you!"
I ended up having to leave halfway through the 8th inning, so I have no clue who won, though the Fighters were up something like 10-3 at the time. Basically I had to leave around 3:45pm to get a train at 4:19 in order to be in Akabane at 5:15 so I could be ready for 6pm. BUT as it turns out the Hashimotos also had to leave to catch their plane back from Haneda. EXCEPT, there were no buses. And no taxis. We basically had to go call for a taxi. Thank god for them, because if it was just me I would have ended up walking the 2.5 kilometers back to the station, I bet, and that would have SUCKED in the heat. So we split a taxi back. They were explaining all this stuff about Hokkaido, and were so totally surprised that I actually KNOW where cities like Tomakomai, Obihiro, Kushiro etc are. I told them "Well, ever since the Fighters moved to Hokkaido I have been studying Hokkaido stuff..."
I guess I screwed up my Japanese speech a few times (notably I accidentally said "I have only been to Yahoo Dome" rather than "I have been to every stadium BUT Yahoo Dome") BUT overall it was, as usual, great speaking practice for a few hours, and, hey, baseball, Fighters, yay! I ended up on a tokkyu skyliner train back to Nippori and that was really nice to get to sit down in a cushy seat in a nice airconditioned train, to cool down and relax on my way back up to work.
My student showed up early as usual -- like 25 mins -- but I guess things went okay. And then at 7pm I had the student who just got transferred to me but who I have known since my first day at GEOS (she's like 15 years old, she was Sprint 4 back then, then went to Sprint 5, now I am doing Sprint 6 with her). And at 8pm my class was good too -- one guy brought in some weird cherry soda because he has been lamenting the lack of Cherry Coke in Japan. Go figure.
Only catch is, I had a headache all night. I wonder if I had vague heatstroke. I drank two bottles of water and a bottle of Gatorade during the game, but still. I think sunburn makes me feel sick in general.
When I came home I took some tylenol, and I did some laundry. I was early enough to go throw all of my pairs of jeans into one of the big machines at the coin laundry, basically. And then I spent 400 yen for 20 minutes sitting in the big new massage chair at the laundromat. That chair rules, though my right shoulder still feels weird. Oh well. It's been weird for like a week now, and this morning I rolled my left ankle so I'm just one big pile of injury or something.
The midnight dorama on channel 12 just started a new season tonight. This one is called Walking Butterfly and it's about a girl who is 180cm tall (almost 6') who acts like a boy, plays basketball, and likes to beat people up... and through a bizarre set of circumstances, decides she wants to be a model. It is DEFINITELY a midnight dorama and very cheesy, but I think I will enjoy it kinda like I enjoyed Guren Onna (but skipped the one inbetween because it was all about some slutty secretary, which just didn't seem interesting or funny to me).
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July 10th, 2008
02:00 am - This little piggy went to...
This is my newest addition to my apartment:
You are probably thinking, "Aww, a cute little black piggy."
Actually, this is an ANGRY ELECTRIC DISPENSER OF CHEMICAL INSECT GENOCIDE.
Or something like that. It's the 電池でノーマット 90日用 蚊とり黒ブタ, which basically means it is supposed to dispense a chemical into the air that will keep bugs away, or kill them, or both, I'm not really sure. We'll see how well it works. I have seen a bunch of little flying bugs in my apartment lately and I'm not too happy about it, so I figured it was time to take drastic measures. Hence, the pig. Heat the pig. Ziggy ziggy ziggy zig.
That aside, this afternoon I went up to Saitama Shintoshin and watched the Hana Yori Dango Final movie. Since it was Wednesday, which is "Ladies Day", the movie was only 1000 yen instead of the normal 1800 yen for me. But, the mall was unfortunately PACKED with ditzy Japanese women, which makes sense, but I was kind of hoping that maybe at least in the afternoon I could have a nice relaxing time, get lunch at Kua'Aina, etc. But no. Lunch took longer than usual due to being crowded, so I was 5 minutes late to the movie, which means I arrived in the midst of previews (yeah, the new Ghibli movie, whatever-the-heck-PONIO PONIO PONIO PONIO is coming out this weekend, but I'm not sure I care).
The Hana Yori Dango Final movie itself could be pretty much summed up as such:
Domyouji and Makino: We're getting married! Hooray!
Domyouji's mom: I am suddenly inexplicably not a complete bitch, and I'm giving you this super expensive tiara to wear at your wedding, Makino.
Mysterious Ninja Man: Oh NO you aren't, I'm stealing that thing. Whee.
Domyouji and Makino: Crap, we better go on a trip halfway around the world to recover it!
F4: And we're coming with you! Las Vegas looks like fun!
Akira and Soujiro: Except we seem to have become merged into "those other two dudes in F4" again. Goddamnit.
( and maybe the rest of this is a spoiler, but it's short )
After the movie, I went back to work. I stopped at the bakery to get some bread to eat for dinner, and arrived at Akabane GEOS at 4:15pm. And my 10-year-old boy student was standing on the GEOS doorstop looking very confused, because it was closed, because I am the only person working there today, and I was out at the movie. Keep in mind his class starts at FIVE OCLOCK. Hence getting back at 4:15 should be plenty of time, but didn't I mention that he tends to show up really early and make it my problem to babysit him?
The kids class went ok though I guess. It was review of the last chapter, which involved money, and kids like money, especially when the money also involves me "selling" them prizes like Stitch pencils and toys, and candy. They also played my vocab color boardgame that I invented a few weeks ago and seemed to enjoy it.
Anyway, I guess today was an okay day. After work I played one round of Pop'n (sight-read and passed a level 28 for the first time ever, but I think it was a fluke), and then I went to the supermarket and got soda, and cute piggies disguised as bug killers, and a buncha Bikkuriman snacks, which I have been eating lately so I can collect the Japanese Baseball stickers that come inside them; it's my latest bad habit, to take over for Calbee chips. I ended up taking the last 4 snacks in a box, so I also took the empty box. Explaining to the cashier that I wanted an empty box was more difficult than you'd think, but eventually she got the idea and was like "I do not know why you want this box that should go into the trash, but go ahead."
Also big feature interview in Shukan Baseball this week about Kazuhito Tadano. But it was mostly about him throwing the eephus pitch. Still, I am all ♥ Tadano, so it's all good.
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July 9th, 2008
02:55 am - wherein our heroine starts writing song parodies in Japanese
I haven't written in two days. Hmm.
So Monday was my day off, and I didn't really plan anything. I had some things to get done, but... ended up going to Jusco and clothes shopping. Found a pair of shorts I liked (necessary, it's hot here) and got some more of the shirts I liked from Uniqlo. Then went to Krispy Kreme and tried the seasonal Star donuts they had, which were not good, BUT also got a vanilla mango-filled donut that was pretty great. I ate Subway for lunch and, well, pretty much had donuts for dinner.
Oh yeah, I also did a ton of laundry. It's nice being able to hang things outside and all. My dad called me on Skype while I was hanging stuff and babbled at me about how he doesn't have any burn marks from the radiation treatment yet.
I bought some big plastic containers at the 100-yen shop. I should buy more, and organize things better a little. The thing is, I have a TON of stuff now. I don't know whether to try harder to get rid of things, or try harder to store them efficiently, or what. My apartment is super-cluttered. A big debate is what to do with old clothes that don't fit anymore. Do I throw them out, or ship them back to the states, or just save them for when I inevitably gain back 25 pounds? I don't know.
Watched Ainori. Awwwwwwwwwwwww Miya-kun is gone as of next week :( Good to see how he's grown up in the last 6 months on the show BUT bad that he STILL has no spine but good that he wrote such a sweet letter to Momo. I hope she says yes and goes back to Japan with him and Kuro is the maid of honor at their wedding next year or something like that.
Today was work. Eh. Got lunch at Heiroku. Ran into the nicer old sushi chef guy (Hamaguchi?) on my way there, oddly enough. After lunch I stopped in at a convenience store and tried some of that Diet Coke with Vitamin C. It tastes... odd. To say the least. Not bad, just odd.
Yoshida was at GEOS today too, which is always a little stressful, but I guess it was okay. It was too hot to wear my jacket anyway.
Oh, yeah, so I have been writing up a storm the last few days too. Yesterday was a Batgirl-style entry humor story about Sunday's Chiba Lotte Marines game. I haven't written one of those in a loooooooong time. And then to resume another creative writing endeavor that I have taken a long hiatus from, today I also wrote an actual song parody in Japanese -- "Shunichi", about Lotte 2B Shunichi Nemoto in honor of his birthday today, to the tune of "Shuuchishin" (羞恥心), this completely retarded current hit pop song that he uses as his at-bat music. Whatever. It was quite a challenge. the2belo helped me sanity-check my lyrics. Considering how dumb they sound translated back into English, I consider this endeavor successful.
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July 7th, 2008
01:29 am - Wherein our heroine meets various baseball folks and doesn't faint
Today I did many things and I have no photo proof of them. Sorry.
I went to the Lotte-Softbank game. Showed up around 11, got snuck in, went to the field, and was like... hmm. Sunny, hot.
I hung out for BP on the Hawks side. After standing there like a dork taking pictures for a while, Rob Smaal from the daily Asahi came over and talked to me.
With him, I met CJ Nitkowski, Mike Restovich, and Rick Guttormson, and talked to them a little. They were all really nice. I told Guttormson I saw him play in Tacoma and he was like "Whoa." And I told CJ I love his website. Stuff like that.
Rob also introduced me to a woman named Yayoi. She's a little younger than me, and went to college in NYC... she's a foreign correspondent for TBS. She likes the Marines and this was her first time on the field at the stadium, so I ended up showing her around. That was kind of crazy.
With her, I stood in the media throng around Sadaharu Oh, so this time I was *10 FEET* from the living legend. Yay. Still too scared to say anything to him though of course.
(If I had been on the Marines side, I would have been standing next to Shunsuke Watanabe, who was literally just hanging out by the dugout for a while, but I didn't want to leave the Hawks side for fear I wouldn't get to say hi to the foreign players. Bugger.)
Went around the back path to the Marines dugout with Rob and Yayoi, and we ran into Brian Sikorski. Rob introduced us and he'd actually heard of me (and thanked me for the box scores and stuff like that). That was cool. Sikorski is also a nice guy.
Went outside, and Bobby came by and pulled my hair and was like "How're you doing?" We chatted a bit. He wanted to know where I was sitting, and I said I'd be in the media room. "Why are you going to be there? Why don't you go to the rightfield stands?" he said.
"Uhhh.... because I don't want to get any more sunburnt than I am right now?" I replied.
"Do you want sunscreen? I have some in my office..." said Bobby.
"Uh... sure?"
So Bobby comes back. "I'm not sure this is actually sunscreen. My wife left it here."
It turns out to be a bottle of foundation makeup that has SPF 15. It was actually pretty gross-looking. "Err..."
Uh, so anyway, a bit after that Bobby kicked us off the field, which was fine with me because I wanted to go get a Bobby Burger from Lotteria. Turns out they had blocked off the stairs though. SO randomly wandering around I found Larry and I met the Lotte ouendan leader guy again. He remembered me and was like "why are you not coming out to cheer with us?" Then I found Alex the Intern and we went up in the elevator instead. Stupid stairs. After getting food I went to the camera well and camped out there for the whole game. It worked remarkably well and nobody said anything to me even though it was obvious that I was sitting there with my inferior camera and just kind of lurking.
The Marines lost the game 7-6, it was frustratingly close. The biggest deal was when they were up 5-3, and Bobby put in Kubo to pitch, and Oh pinch-hit Shibahara for Restovich. And I'm thinking "Wow, that is a really good move there by Oh," thinking Shibahara would probably get a hit. I did NOT expect him to blast a 2-run homer. This is why I will forever think of him as Hiroshi Freaking Shibahara. He always comes up big at the weirdest/worst times.
Okay, so after the game I'm standing in the tunnel between the dugouts and the kankeisha exit, and Paul Pupo is talking to this guy, they're sharing bizarro stories about baseball stuff. So I come over and listen, because Paul is used to me listening to his wacky stories. I'm thinking I should know who the other guy is, but I totally do not. So finally I ask who he is and he's like "Oh, sorry I didn't introduce myself. My name is Mike Pagliarulo."
MIKE PAGLIARULO?
Yeah. THEN the bells go off in my brain. So I totally accidentally met a former Yankees and Twins and Seibu Lions player. How wacky is that? I ended up talking to him for like 15-20 minutes about some baseball consulting stuff he's doing with Dugout Central and whatnot. Pretty crazy. He said he didn't have a card, but I gave him mine (and he actually emailed me! whoa!).
Yayoi and her friend came up after that and were like "where the hell is Rob? can you help us find him??" and I'm like "uhh... uhh... do you know who this guy is?" and even after he told her, she totally didn't care. ("So you played for Seibu in the mid-90's? Like with any famous people?") It was kinda funny. But just as well because I think Mike wanted to go talk to Bobby anyway.
So I showed them how to get to the media room to say hi to Rob... and there was a Marines-Swallows minor-league game starting, and so it turned out these guys sitting behind Rob were all minor-league pitchers. Boy, did we sound like idiots. Oops. Yayoi and her friend Ono-san (never caught the girl's firstname) wanted to go meet Nemoto. I like Nemoto, so I volunteered to at least show them to where they should go. Unfortunately, most of the players were either leaving the back way, or were already gone, or whatnot. (Shirtless, shoulder-iced Satozaki walked by us and I nearly fainted.) We did say an otsukaresama to Saburo, and eventually Larry came by and introduced us to the Marines publicity guy, saying that if we do want to get in touch with a player, it's best to go through him as a channel. Oh, and Mike and Bobby came out too. So eventually they decided to give up on meeting Nemoto for the time being. I advised just coming early some game.
(I wonder if I could do an interview with Nemoto for my blog and have Yayoi as my interpreter. Then we can both meet him and even have an official reason. Hmm... to be honest... that's really not a bad idea...)
Oh yeah, Yayoi went to high school with Kazuhito Tadano, they graduated in the same year. I told her I was a Tadano fan and she was like "He's totally gay. Seriously."
Anyway, Yayoi and her friend left, and I went back to the press room to watch the ni-gun game a bit with Rob. Still sitting in front of the minor league pitchers charting pitches. Who were probably laughing at us for being dumbasses. I talked to Rob a bit, watched about 2 innings of the game, and then left. Yoshinori Satoh was pitching for Yakult, and I was all psyched at one point because I got to see Kohbe standing next to Miyade at first base. They are both 191cm tall and I do love them both so much for it. But it was too dark to be worth sneaking back to the camera well, I thought, so I decided to just leave.
Went around Makuhari area. Played a buncha UFO catchers... yeah, I suck. One really fucking funny one was, they had these huge Stitches in the corners of a machine as display, and I actually managed to knock one of them loose. It fell down and got kinda stuck in the chute, so I pulled it out, and quickly got a plastic bag to hide it, because I was like... "wait a minute, I am totally not supposed to have done that."
Then I went to Outback for dinner. I sat at the bar, and got a Queensland salad, and it was big and salady and that was good. Yay.
Came home. Accidentally took a tokkyu train to Tokyo. It cost 500 yen more but it was nice to have a big comfy chair to sit in. Transferred to the K-T line and got a seat there too, which was lucky.
Now I have been enjoying the AC, looking at the pictures dumped from my camera, and zoning out. I have many emails to write and stuff to do, but I feel a little apathetic and exhausted, which is bad.
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July 5th, 2008
02:43 am - A Stitch in Time Saves Ninety [photopost for muppetaphrodite]
This afternoon I went down to the immigration office in Shinagawa and applied to renew my visa. It took around 4 hours total, which mostly consisted of a 40-minute train ride, 10-minute bus ride, then filling out a form and then sitting there and waiting for 70 minutes, and the remaining time was spent getting kaitensushi to chill out afterwards.
That is boring.
So let me tell you instead about my collection of Stitches that have come out of UFO catchers. It has gotten so big they no longer fit on the top of my bookcase at GEOS:
( Stitch wants to LJ-Cut! (more detail) )
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July 4th, 2008
01:51 am - July 4th is just the day after July 3rd
It's the 4th of July here now! But it has no meaning in Japan, so today I'm going to be extremely patriotic and... go down to Immigration and apply to renew my work visa. Hrm.
Today lunch at Heiroku was nutso. I don't know if it was because it was the last day for the coupon special (there's a new one starting tomorrow until 8/21, so no big deal) or what, but it was CROWDED as all hell. And Ohba-san, the crazy sushi chef who I used to think hated me but then decided that wasn't true, was behind the counter, going nuts because there were so many people ordering so much. I actually tried to get his attention to order at one point and he totally either didn't hear or ignored me. The old lady sitting next to me finally was like "hey! this girl wants to order." So then he looked at me like "I'm so VERY sorry, what can I get you?" It was weird. I know he was stressed out, so I don't hold it against him, but... seriously, I think next time if I go by and it looks super-crowded like that, I'm only going in if Onodera (the younger chef) is behind the counter, because he is always super-nice to me.
I went and got some travel brochures today. Seems I need to give 10 days lead time if I want to reserve flight/hotel to Fukuoka, so for a trip from 7/26-28 it seems I should go in before July 16th. Looking at the prices, they actually are expensive on the holiday weekend of 7/21, then get HORRENDOUSLY expensive through August for some reason, so my timing is actually great in some ways, it seems.
I'm never going to the Kawaguchi arcade again. They got rid of the easy UFO catchers and replaced them with impossible ones, plus they moved all the Bemani together so it's complete noise pollution and you can't hear a fucking thing while you're playing PNM or anything else. So screw that. I checked out the Akabane south exit arcade again. Good UFO catchers, but no Pop'n. The Lala Garden arcade has Pop'n but no UFO catchers. I'm gonna go check out the further Kawaguchi arcade sometime maybe too. What bugs me about the Warabi arcade is that the Bemani is now on the floor with the medal games and slot machines, which means it's always full of smoke, and that kind of sucks, even if the acoustics are pretty good.
Tonight I said goodbye to my student who is moving to Seattle for a year to study law at UW. We traded email addresses so we can stay in touch. I told her I'd see her at New Year's or whenever I end up back in town, heh. Very sad though, she's a really nice person. Her English is going to go through the roof when she lives in America, I think.
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July 3rd, 2008
01:33 am - Fighters minor league games are fun
Wheeee.
So today I spent the afternoon at Lotte Urawa stadium for a Fighters-Marines minor-league game. I mean, I didn't have class until 5pm, so a 1pm game in Musashi-Urawa was pretty doable. (It'd be even more doable on a Friday - no class till 6 - but for some reason they don't seem to have minor league games on Friday up here very often. There's a few upcoming Friday games in Kamagaya but maybe that is pushing it...)
I got there, looked for an empty seat, and... my friend (?) Hiromi found me. She's a crazy Fighters fan who goes to like 4-5 games a week, mostly minor-league in the Kanto area. I met her in Kamagaya in mid-May, saw her again at the Tokyo Dome, she gave me her card, and we exchanged an email or two but I didn't write back because I suck at Japanese and she doesn't speak English.
So she said to come sit with her! So I did.
She has a D80 and an awesome 18-200 VR lens and I have a D200 and a crappy 70-300 lens. So I'm like "dude! I want your lens", and she's like "dude! I want your camera!"
We took pictures of Fighters players for the whole game and chatted with the people around us. To my right was this old guy who had been a Fighters fan for like 40 years or so. He was talking about the 1981 Japan Series. That was pretty crazy. And we were having a discussion about high socks, and about whether the Fighters have any "cool young players" like so many other teams do, and so on. Oh, and a bit about Jason Botts, the new pickup by the Fighters. Hiromi wanted me to cheer for him in English but I was too scared to say anything!
I also had to admit I am really familiar with the Marines. I was babbling about how Kohbe is my ni-gun boyfriend, so Hiromi decided that Sadaoka was really cool, and we both took pictures of those guys. Oh yeah, and she was at the Swallows ni-gun game last week where Hichori came back. She said he was even out signing stuff! Arrgh!
Koichi Hori hit a homerun, so did Sadaoka, and so did Fighters catcher/2B Ozaki, and the Fighters team won 10-7.
It was really kind of neat to just talk in Japanese for like 4 hours straight, but my brain was bursting by the end. The other neat thing was feeling like "hey! I have a Japanese friend to watch the Fighters with! Awesome!" I really should answer her email and maybe hang out at another Fighters game sometime.
Anyway, I came back to GEOS and the 5pm kids' class target was "How much is it? / N dollars." SO what I had done was, I bought play money at Daiso and I also bought a bunch of candy and some pencils and erasers. And I put price tags on all the stuff. And then made vocabulary cards with stuff they should know already, and the other side had a money value. So after getting all the stuff done, they had to be like "How much is the ______" about each vocab card. If they got the right word, they got the money value on the back. Then when they had a lot of money I had them ask "How much is the pencil?" and such and actually BUY the prizes from me.
Kids like money. It went well.
I just hope their parents don't ask them why they came home with a ton of gummies and Ramune candies and all.
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July 2nd, 2008
02:41 am - I really have nothing in my life to talk about except baseball
Holy crap holy crap holy crap Morino played in a farm game today and so did Ibata and maybe the curse won't last forever wooohoooo!
Not sure what else to say about today. I don't know where the hell the afternoon went. Frustrating, I had many things to get done and didn't get them all done. Hoping to go to a ni-gun Marines-Fighters game tomorrow afternoon at least for some time, so... whee.
I've decided in my brain on going to Kyushu on July 27-28, even if I haven't actually made any real plans. Just gotta find a hotel to stay in.
I also think that maybe what I will do is... my original plan was to go take a train down and stop in Shikoku and Hiroshima on the way. That's not happening. But instead it might work to make a 3-day weekend, fly to Fukuoka, and if the weather is nice, take a train to Hiroshima for an afternoon, and maybe a train to Nagasaki for an afternoon, and otherwise, if it's rainy, just hang out in Fukuoka the whole weekend at the Yahoo Dome. It'd technically be cheating to see a Shikoku Island League baseball game in Nagasaki, I know, but I just don't think I'm gonna get out to Shikoku this year.
Or I could wait until mid-August and go to Fukuoka then. I dunno. I just don't want to put it off too much or I might never go and complete my baseball tour.
ugh, there really are much more important things to worry about, but this is what's on my mind, I guess.
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July 1st, 2008
11:38 am - trading baseball cards in shibuya
Oops I fell asleep without updating last night.
I spent the afternoon on a particular errand, then ended up in Akabane GEOS for an hour or two, where I wrote my baseblog about Sunday's game.
Went down to Shibuya, met up with Pau around 8pm near Hachiko. I was trying to dress trendy-like, but it's just as well that he beat me there, heh. We went to Momo Paradise for dinner -- it's this tabehoudai (all-you-can-eat) shabu shabu place that Krispy showed me a looooong time ago. I actually had no clue where it was per se, but I had a general idea of the vicinity -- "go towards Outback, find that place that looks like a TV studio, walk to the next building, go up". Except what really happened is we went towards Outback and suddenly I said "Hey, I think this is the building", and amazingly, it was.
Tabehoudai shabu shabu is fantastic when you haven't really eaten anything all day, and BOY did we eat a ton -- something like 6 plates of meat -- but it is not conducive to our actual purpose for meeting up, which was trading baseball cards. So we found a McDonald's with several floors, bought cheap drinks, and took over a table on the second floor. Lots of people walked by us like "why the hell are there two gaijin opening up 2003 BBM baseball card packs and sorting and trading them and saying things like 'dude! I got Hiyama!'?"
Yeah, so I literally opened somewhere around 40 packs of 4 cards each, two whole boxes of 2003 BBM 2nd Light packs. I got two Matsuzaka cards on my own, and then ended up getting two Fukudome cards from Pau. I felt really bad that I didn't get a Matsuzaka double to give him, though I did trade him an Akahoshi for a Hillman... eh. I'll have to see if I can make up more of the set either from Koshigaya or see if Ikebukuro gets more boxes. Who knows.
At one point I asked him to check to see if Hichori Morimoto actually had a card in this set. And I swear, while he was looking, the NEXT pack of cards I opened had a Hichori card. I'm psychic! I tried to summon a Morino card after that, but no luck.
Oh yeah, and I *finally* opened the Tigers card from Koshien that Oren gave me a few weeks ago from when he went there. If it was a player Pau really liked I was going to give it to him. But guess who it was? LEW FORD! Hahahahaha so now I have an Official Tigers Card from Koshien of Lew Ford. That's pretty cool I think :)
Ended up on the nearly-last-train home, then totally zoned out for like an hour or two. Oops.
We really need more friends in Japan to trade cards with, argh.
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June 30th, 2008
12:41 am - Lotte dumping and Indiana Jones and whatnot
I'm really dead tired and zonking out fairly soon.
Today I went to the Seibu Dome to see the Lotte-Seibu baseball game. The bad side is that it was a horribly rainy day outside and there was a lot of confusion for my situation before the game, wandering around the dome. Also, the Marines lost 9-5 after Hiroyuki Kobayashi had one really awful inning and just melted down.
The good side is that I eventually did get in for free once Larry finally got there and found me, and I met a guy who works in the Seibu front office who was really nice and said to let him know when I want to come back to the Seibu Dome and he'll sneak me in. Oh yeah, and where we were sitting, we were next to Julio Zuleta's girlfriend, and a few rows behind Bobby Valentine's wife, who came to talk to us for a while. I went to get lunch with Julio's girlfriend, and we talked a bit during the game, but I wasn't really sure what to say to her exactly, I think I'm too big a nerd.
After the game I had some train confusion and eventually got to Seibu Shinjuku station and met up with Shinsuke, and we wandered around Shinjuku a bit, and got dinner at Wendy's, and then went back to the Wald theater or whatever it's called, and we saw Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull or whatever it's called exactly. I liked it, I thought it was really fun, and since I hadn't read any reviews I was really surprised to see one particular main character, not Indy, but someone else from the Raiders movie. Hard to believe that was 27 years ago now. Harrison Ford really can still pull off the Indy role though, which is really impressive given that he is 64 now, 5 years older than Sean Connery was as his father when they filmed Last Crusade. There were some big gaping plotholes in this movie, which Shin cared about a lot more than I did, I think.
And then I came home. Very tired.
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June 29th, 2008
02:28 am - The Magic Hour
Normal Saturday. Had classes pretty much straight from 11am to 8pm with an hour or so in the middle break. Technically I didn't have a 7pm class but instead I had two students and a visitor asking me questions for that time. Whee.
After work I went up to Saitama Shintoshin and ate a BLT sandwich at Kua'Aina and then went to see a movie called The Magic Hour, which is Koki Mitani's newest comedy and stars like half the famous people in Japan. Okay, not really, but I recognized pretty much everyone in the main cast from various other stuff.
Satoshi Tsumabuki plays a... gangster of sorts, who gets caught fooling around with Eri Fukatsu, the girlfriend of a major mafia boss. (Somehow, despite that this is Japan, and the city is called "Sukago", the entire thing reeks of a weird combination of Guys And Dolls and well, Chicago.) The boss and his gang are out to kill Satoshi, aka Bingo, until Bingo says that he knows this hit man that they've been looking for. Or something. Anyway, Bingo has 5 days to find the hit man. And he fails. Until he comes up with this brilliant plan...
...enter Koichi Sato, who is an actor named Murata who has been reduced to bit parts and such, and isn't even doing so well at that. Bingo decides to hire Murata to be the "star" of this "mafia film" that he is making. Murata's character will be the legendary hit man Della Togashi. With the help of a bartender and waitress from a local club, who pretend to be the film crew, and various other random people, they start pretending to "film" this movie.
And well, then it becomes funny. Because, I mean, you can imagine what happens -- the actor goes in there and talks to all of the mob guys, armed with nothing but a rubber gun... but since he thinks they're other actors too, and that he's the major hero of this movie, he completely stuns and intimidates them. Then of course the mob guys think that he's the real hit man, so they "hire" him to off someone. Which naturally, Bingo convinces him is part of the movie plot. (There are these great scenes where Bingo just yells "CUT!!" and for whatever reason, all the mob guys actually let him just drag Murata out of there.)
Oh yeah, and in the meantime you have Eri Fukatsu playing pretty much the most annoying character I have ever ever ever seen her play. I mean, the entire movie comes down to the fact that she's a pain in the ass and makes trouble for everyone, essentially. On the other hand she does this great stage performance of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles", while sitting in a suspended crescent moon that looks like it's right out of some 1930's movie.
But anyway, really, this movie is incredibly funny, mostly just because of the way that nobody knows who is acting and who is real and who is what and all. Like at one point, after one of those "CUT!!" scenes, one of the gangsters (played by Susumu Terajima, one of my favorite supporting actors ever) is like "why did you yell 'Cut'?" Bingo explains, "Oh, it's a nickname I have for him... you saw how he was with that knife, right?" So later when Terajima's character tries to call him Cut, Murata goes mad like "WHY ARE YOU SAYING CUT? ONLY HE IS ALLOWED TO SAY CUT. DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW THIS WORKS?" Which is just hilarious because I mean, you know he means that it's a movie and only the director is allowed to cut the scene, but of course the mobsters all think that it means that this Della Togashi guy is asserting that only his good friend Bingo can call him by a nickname.
Or the best is probably when the mobsters put Bingo and Murata in the basement and put their feet in cement, and Murata keeps taking his feet out, and the mobster is like "Dude, put your feet back in," and Murata says "But uh, this prop seems to be made out of cement, and it's going to harden and our feet are going to be stuck here," and the mobster's like "What kind of fucking moron are you? Of COURSE they are, that's the idea!" and punches him. And then Murata turns to Bingo like "Uh... director... THAT was NOT in the script..."
Anyway, I swear it does have a happy ending. And a funny one. Really, a pretty good movie. Go see it and stuff.
(I will go see the Hana Yori Dango movie, but it opened today and there's just NO way I was going to see it on opening weekend. Maybe next week.)
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June 27th, 2008
11:56 pm - I need subject title
Kazuyoshi "Mr. Dragons" Tatsunami hit a home run tonight!
I'm not sure I can think of anything else momentous that happened today. I brought my laptop with me to GEOS and I hacked perl. I have schedules 95% parsed but need to make a database and some other stuff.
Oh, I went down to the Tokyo Dome to investigate Fighters tickets next month, but it turns out I can only get my fanclub membership discount on the day of the game itself. That's kind of dumb. On the other hand I discovered what I thought was just a coupon to get one 180-yen plate free at the kaitensushi place by Suidobashi station is actually a coupon to get a 180-yen plate free every time I go there until September! Wow. I know where I'll be eating near the Tokyo Dome from now on... ;)
also this week's Shukan Baseball is the Great List Of Gaijin Players. Pretty wacky stuff.
This weekend is going to be rainy again. Sigh.
I would do that 3 things meme except basically I am pretty sure I just win with my Japanese baseball stuff so it's kind of silly.
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02:04 am - Genkin
There are some little things about Japan that sound kind of crazy if you haven't lived here, but seem perfectly normal if you have.
Take just now -- at 2am -- I put the Japanese equivalent of around $300 cash in my pocket and rode my bicycle a kilometer to the nearest convenience store so I could pay my bills.
I can't imagine doing that in America. And I know I was definitely prone to carrying more cash with me than most of my friends were, but that was still not usually more than $100 at a time. But here I don't even think that much about it, and infact if I have *less* than the equivalent of $100, I start thinking I better hit up an ATM, since I pretty much always pay cash for everything.
Earlier tonight I rushed home from work so I could put my clothes in the hour-long wash-and-dry machine at the nearby laundromat. (I barely made it; the place closes at midnight and my clothes were in at 10:56pm and out at 11:56pm.) I forgot to lock my apartment door on the way to the laundromat, but it apparently wasn't that big a deal either.
Something funny -- Kanae and I both regularly go to Heiroku Sushi, the kaiten place a few blocks from GEOS. But I guess I have been a regular there for like 8 months now and she has only been here a month. BUT she is Japanese, so I figured that trumps everything, right? Well, apparently no... I have a ton of coupons for the place because every time I go there, the cashier lady always gives me more and says "see you next time".
Kanae asked me today how many plates I had at sushi. I told her like 7 or 8. She was surprised, thought it'd be higher. And she said if she had a lot of money she would totally eat like 20 plates, but she usually just gets 6 or 7. So I said, "Well, I tend towards 8 now because of all the free plate coupons."
"Free plate coupons?"
"Yeah, they have those coupon fliers there, didn't they give you some? You can use one coupon each time for a free 130 or 160 plate."
"No! Really? I've never seen them at all!"
So I gave her some of my coupons. It was really funny to me for some reason. I guess that I stick out a lot more because I'm a foreigner, so they know I come there all the time, so they give me coupons. I know it's only like 30 minutes a week I spend in that place, but it is really going to be one of the major things I miss about Akabane whenever I move away from here someday.
Hrm, I just got an email saying that Great Big Sea is playing at the Moore Theater in Seattle on October 1st. I obviously probably can't go but I highly highly recommend others to. Like dvarin.
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June 26th, 2008
12:48 am - Busy busy?
the2belo is in town for a business trip, so I hung out with him the last two nights after work. Yesterday we went to Denny's and sat around eating stuff for a while, and I pretty much went home around the time of last train.
Tonight we met up again in Akabane, and I had invited Sam along since I hadn't seen him in forever. He brought his new toy (a Nikon D3) and so when I got out of GEOS, he and Jeff were already standing there geeking out about cameras. I figured they might have plenty in common to geek out about, so that was good. Unfortunately, though, Jeff was coming down with a pretty bad cold -- probly something going around, I felt sniffly today and a lot of my students have been a little sniffly too. So we hung out for around an hour at a Chinese food place before Jeff just had to get going to pass out at his hotel. Still, it was neat to hang out for a bit.
I went shopping at Uniqlo a bit this afternoon. I intended to get some more shortsleeve t-shirt-like shirts, but instead ended up getting two dress-like shirts. I'm still not sure whether they look good on me or not, but they seem kind of in style, so maybe that'll help, who knows. I also got spaghetti for lunch at Dona. The lunch set is a crazy good deal (840 yen for my eggplant spaghetti plus a salad and a drink) and I should go there more.
Hrmm... I really need to do laundry since I didn't do it this weekend. I might have to see if I can rush home after work tomorrow and get it done then, maybe. If I can split the laundry up in the morning and get back here by 10:30-40pm, I would have time to throw it into the big machine at the laundromat. (It seems that my machine doesn't want to deal with jeans, basically.)
Also I installed ActivePerl on my laptop and am hacking perl for some baseball schedule stuff and it makes me happy even though I am writing messy code. Yay.
Ugh. On second thought perhaps I am a bit more than sniffly and might end up spending the next day or two with a cold. That sucks :(
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June 24th, 2008
04:14 am - yokohama baaaaay staaaaaaaazu
Ugh, I just spent the last 3 hours involved in Mariners blogosphere drama. It's my fault for opening my mouth, but still... I miss people, but I'm also kinda glad to be out of that all.
As for today... went down to Kamakura to meet up with Jay again. We got Indian food for lunch. I had chicken tikka masala and it was terrible. :(
Krispy came down a bit after that, and the three of us went to Tsuruoka Hachimangu, the big temple that Carl and I tried to go to on New Year's and failed due to big crowds of people. This time there weren't really crowds. It was okay, I guess, it's a nice enough temple. I got a bad omikuji though :(
Afterwards, they were going to the daibutsu and maybe geohashing, and I went to Yokohama Stadium and saw the Baystars BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF THE SEIBU LIONS WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. It was really, really satisfying. I sat in the outfield and yelled and sang with everyone around me; it took a wihle for my surrounding people to warm up to having a gaijin in the midst but by the end it was pretty cool, and people shook my hand and said goodbye and otsukaresama when the game ended. I'm sure the Baystars winning had a lot to do with that -- when you're high-fiving everyone around you whenever they score a run, it makes a big difference. There were two obnoxious teenage or early-20's guys a few rows behind me who spent the entire game yelling "Kimochiiiii! GG Sato!!!" which was really fucking annoying and I don't know why anyone else didn't yell at them, but whatever.
I learned a bunch of new songs (I even bugged the ouendan for lyrics sheets), which was kinda the point, so that is good.
Shuuichi Murata almost hit a home run out of the park, which was hilarious, and Yoshimura hit a home run that landed about 3 meters away from me! one row ahead and about 5 seats over. Seriously!
Murata was a game hero, along with Mike Wood. Oh yeah, and Yuya Ishii finished out the game, that was cool. Takuro Ishii might have gotten injured though, so that is bad. And Kazuhisa Ishii started for the Lions. Lots of Ishiis (Yoshihito Ishii also pinch-hit at a point).
After the game I bought a ticket holder thingy -- I'm gonna put all of my pinbadges on it. I also got 3 new badges -- Yoshimura, Ohya, and... Koike. Hahaha. Does that count as Chunichi goods now?
Got a seat on the Keihintohoku line right from Kannai and just sat there for 80 minutes for the train ride home. Whee.
I didn't do laundry at all this weekend, whoops. Going to need to find a time to do it...
Oh, and this morning I got international mail. Postcard from Llyne from Europe, and then a box from Carl that had jeans and some mail from Seattle, including my driver's license. Yay. Not that I really need it here but I like to have the ID card, I guess.
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