The Day of Baseball and Sorting my CV Out.

(see the comments section for the corrections to this post regarding Japanese language)

So today was the 'printing all my junk out' day that I had planned.  I aimed to get it done well in advance, but didn't have the motivation really; then I suddenly woke up in a cold sweat last night worrying about what would happen should I not  be able to print anything out, or I not be able to find where the station is.

I tried printing my CV off in the hostel, but it wouldn't download the files from Hotmail for some reason.  I then ventured out into the world of internet cafe's here.  It's absolutely crazy.  The one I went to was half internet cafe, one quarter manga cafe, one quarter DVD rental place.  It's absolutely incredible.  Everyone has their own little booth, and a sliding door thing so it's very closed and private, entirely unlike the internet cafe's in Europe.

So I had to print out a few things, which I did, and then went hunting for the printer.  (The clerk spoke no English, and my Japanese isn't good enough to ask for the printer)  So I'm walking around this place, prying into all the nooks and crannies, and I found a food vending machine, a drinks machine, floor to ceiling racks of comics and books and an awful lot of nerds playing games I've never even heard of before.  All in all, it was quite an interesting, albeit minor glimpse into the world of geek culture here.

Also, they open 24 hours, and 8 hours is 1500円, so if I can't find a hostel for whatever reason I can stay at one of these places.  Some even have showers...




The baseball thing is a bit hit and miss though.  I'm not really sure whether it's today.  The symbol for day is sun, and the symbol for month is something else.  So I stood at the sign outside the stadium (it's right next door to my hostel) for about five minutes, trying to figure out the time and date of the match.  As far as I can figure out it's at 6PM tonight.  I think.  I'm really not sure.  A couple of friendly looking girls (of indeterminate age; if I've not said before I have no idea how old women (or men for that matter) are here.  (Use of double parentheses, slap on the wrist!)) so maybe I'll ask them.

Oh no, it turns out the girls next to me smoke!  Ewwwww.

However it also turns out they're incredibly helpful, despite not speaking any English.  So today is １０月５日。  The fifth day of the tenth month!  Amazing!  So yeah now all I need to decipher is whether it's a home match or away match, I'll just turn up and see what's what, I have the right date for something at least.  If anyone is interested, month is pronounced tsuki, day is pronounced hi.  I think.  Maybe that's just the way it's typed on the keyboard.  Who really knows with this language?  I think they just make it up as they go along just to confuse foreigners.  'Haha that'll confuse 'em,' kind of thing.

I'm amazed at the number of people that smoke here, and how socially accepted it is.  I wonder if they've had the health nazi/health terrorist propaganda we've had in the UK.  If they have, and they continue to smoke then I have to say, I'm impressed.  They're worse/better than the French for ignoring health based criticism.

Does make my eyes sting though... annoying.

Anyway, I've figured out how to ask where kamiooka is at the ticket  office, so I'm off there now.

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So the match was fantastic.  I really enjoyed it.

I went into it wanting to hate everything about it, but it's completely different seeing baseball live, opposed to watching it on television.  Another important factor, I think at least, is that the baseball I've seen on tele has been American; this sport was very much Japanese.

There weren't many people there because it was absolutely pouring down for most of the match, thank god I had an extremely waterproof jacket on!  But the people who did attend were in good voice and high spirits.  Interestingly they segregate fans into home and away quite vociferously, and upon asking several member of the 'help desk,' staff, in English, what's what?  They relented and found someone who spoke English.  So I bought a ticket, chose the home fans section and headed on in there.  Everything is so orderly, it's unreal.  Both sets of fans has a band playing songs, but they take it in turns to do this.  And when your side is batting you have to sing different songs, depending on who it is that's batting!  Nuts.  What's even more crazy is that everyone knows every song.  There were maybe a dozen of us who didn't know the songs.  All the kids, men and women were singing all the songs for all the different batters.  All the pitches were cheered as if they were the last in a grand final.  Fantastic stuff all round.

I was a little disappointed to find the beers here aren't served in 2 litres buckets like in America, but I was pleasantly surprised to see the manner in which the beers arrived; more on that later.

I was also surprised by the number of balls that ended up in the crowd.  I calculated, before I even sat down, how many rows up and down, and how many seats left and right I could reach, should a ball find its way to me.  Using my super foreigner powers I was able to sit down in an empty row and keep it for the entire match giving me the perfect opportunity to catch something coming my way.  Unfortunately again, the nearest ball was three rows down from me, too far.

If you were wondering, five seats left or right, one row below me and four rows above me is my estimated catching range.

A man even came round to make sure we were all ok when the ball in our general vicinity, and martials blow all kinds of whistles to warn you!  Cool.

So onto the pictures!

So I took this because of the history China and Japan have.  I'm surprised they're allowed to do business here, it's quite surprising to see these banks around.

Having said that, the area I'm staying in has a massive Chinese population, and a big China town.  It's also really expensive, which is  surprising because the Chinatown in London isn't as expensive as here, and the ingredients have to be sourced from much further in Europe... Strange.

As one of my friends suggested, the Chinese who've moved over here must have gained a taste for louis vuitton bags.  Every woman has one here.  As far as I can tell prices start at one hundred pounds.  This is where Japanese money goes, it seems.

A random picture of a pond, with the ubiquitous carp in its reasonably clear waters.

So where is this I hear you ask?

It's inside the stadium grounds of course...

There's actually a park inside the stadium, it has all kinds of benches, green areas and this pond.  Amazing.  Imagine a koi pond inside the wembley grounds or twickenham.  Weird no?

Ok so they're doing some work on the top floor of this tall building.

I only noticed this when they started leaving, but a group of them were sitting on the edge where that one guy is now and they were eating lunch or something.  That net looks suspiciously like something for catching tools rather than people.  Health and safety seems to be self imposed here.

So dragons are everywhere here, in their shrines and temples, and like this little guy, pieces of art depicting them are commonplace too.

I love all the different styles they have, from the really mean looking ones to something nice and tame like this guy.  His spikes and spines are all rounded off, presumably because there's a kids park within 20 metres of here, so impalement is probably quite likely.

So they do have the health police here too!  It turns out people just ignore it.

I can't read the sign, but I'm pretty sure the picture is reasonably clear.

Close-up below.  (kind of closer anyway)

Poor kid.

Ok so no sooner had I left the, 'smoking kills children,' sign, than I came across this sign here.

It's even in English, that's how serious they are about enforcing this law.  It's talking about a large shopping street that I was standing on, no smoking on this street.

And then I found this:

A guy, sitting opposite the sign, looking at it.  Smoking.

This made me laugh, and was also deserving of two pictures.

A wide-shot of the scene as I looked on laughing.  I'm surprised the view isn't shaken from me chortling to myself.


It turns out there are lots of signs telling people not to smoke, don't do this, don't do that.

But people only seem to follow the ones that make sense.

Awesome.  Of course being a foreigner I break most of the rules all the time, and people just look miffed without ever doing anything.  This holds its own separate set of problems.

NOB Hair Design.

This picture needs no further explanation.

So a few days ago I took a picture of the biggest building in Japan.  I also thought, (I might have written it as well) that it was a little disappointing height wise.

However, when I was walking around Yokohama I noticed that you can see it from almost anywhere.  It really is gargantuan.  It's the width and depth of the building as much as the height, it's an imposing structure.

The shape is also peculiar, and seems to be completely different from any other skyscraper I've seen.  The four corner are far more pronounced than the sides between them, and it looks as if they're four separate towers holding the whole thing together.

So we now move onto the baseball pictures.

This was just before the match started.  I was in the white half of the stadium, the reds were our opponents for the day.

I later found out the reds were the hiroshima carps, but I still don't know who we were.  I couldn't read the name on the board, it was too difficult!

So the stadium is pretty empty in this picture.  It filled up a lot more, but was still nowhere near being capacity.

Everyone also had the full body poncho things, which I should have bought in hindsight because my legs got very wet.

What most people didn't think to bring though, was a little towel to dry the seat off!  I remembered this, and got some envious looks!  Strike one for the foreigner.

So the stadium pretty much looked like this, only with people milling around all the time.  People were constantly up and about the whole time, getting drinks and food.

They even sell noodles here!  Instant noodles in a polystyrene pot.

So one of the players on the opposing team managed to hit the ball out of the park, over the stand in this picture.

According to the statistics man it was a 150m hit.

It's really annoying to see that the runs the opposing teamm scored were all from foreigners though.  This is Japan, and Japanese baseball, essentially dominated by Americans.  My team didn't have any foreigners, and we lost.  I wonder if the two things are related.  Looking at the league tables it may well be.

Ok so this isn't the best shot for seeing the beer delivery girls, but it is the best shot for seeing the things they have to carry.

These poor girls take these big heavy things of beer all around the stadium for most of the match, and they look way too big for them to carry.  Plus they all got completely drenched.

Then they have nutters like me taking pictures of them!  What a crappy job...

Two innings in and the carp have got a run.

The stand you can see to the left of the scoreboard is where all the carp fans presided.

So this star shaped mascot was firing toys and fluffy things into the crowd during the intervals.  Normally teams swap round in under 2 minutes, but every third innings they take five minutes or so, enough time for these guys to come on and do stuff like this.

They had cheerleaders too, so this part is completely american.

So I managed to snap this beer delivery technician before she went on her way.  I didn't force her to do the bunny rabbit ears; it's a reflex action here.  Photograph, do the ears.  It's automatic, like tying your shoelaces.


But you can also see how much it's raining in this picture, so like I said before, it must suck to be these guys on a day like that.

I guess there's always the remote possibility of being slugged by a ball to liven your day up a little.

Ok so this particular girl freaked me out.  She was Japanese and she spoke Japanese fluently, but she had blue eyes.

They stood out so badly, she felt like a Japanese albino or something.  Really creepy.

So this is moments before the guy running back to first base gets out.  D'oh.

I was initially surprised by how accurate their throws were, but then I remembered they have mitts that essentially make it more difficult to drop a ball than catch one, which is why the scores are always so low I guess.

Ok this is another picture of the devils bride.

You can more clearly see her eyes in this one.

Freaky.

My camera is nearly out of batteries at this point, so nearly at the end of the pictures.

This is a little past the halfway point, and the carp have 3 runs, the whites have none.

Unfortunately that's how the game ended, despite us ending the final innings with a runner on second and third, with a batter everyone seemed to rate.  He struck out...  Loser.

It's also worth noting that all their runs were homeruns...  So our fielding was pretty good, it's just that our batting and bowling (pitching) were pretty shoddy.

So this is the scoresheet, and despite it being only the seventh innings, this is how it ended.

The last three innings are the best though, because everyone has had a few drinks and is quite well spirited by this point.  The small crowd made absolutely tons of noise.  I don't know whether it's the stadium design or that face the crowd are cooped up in offices for most of their lives, but the noise was fantastic, as was the general atmosphere.

So this was another breaktime performance.  I don't think there were any cannon this time, but the little star did about fifty backflips just to make his way onto the pitch, and by the time he made it all the others were leaving, so he just ran off.

He must have been dizzy!

Another view of the various mascots.

One of the benefits of being on the losing team on this occasion was that all the half-time action occurred on our side of the pitch, being the home team and all.







Ok so now we move onto the movies!




So this is a view of the enemy.  Those flags are actually pretty huge, and one of the guys carrying it got blown over, which was quite funny.  I didn't capture that part on tape though.  This is just a shot to get the sense of the minimum level of activity of those guys, at all stages in the match.  They were jumping around for hours.  Beats going to the gym I guess.




So I luckily managed to catch a catch.  One of the home team caught a carp out!  Wooo!  Well done him!

It didn't really help in the grand scheme of things, but I think it proves my 'good fielding, poor everything else,' theory from earlier.



The crowd favourite song of the night.  I've  no idea what everyone is singing, but this particular song was the crowd favourite for sure, and everyone loved singing it over and over again.

I've also just noticed the kids looking at me thinking, 'what the hell is this stupid foreigner doing,' which I didn't notice until I played it back just now.  Oops.



So this is one of the cheerleading intervals.  They weren't firing anything into the crowd this time, but they were all doing a surprisingly well rehearsed dance routine.  I'm amazed at how well practiced these guys seemed to be.  And even in the pouring rain they were enthusiastic about it.  Good Job!

So  that was my day.  I'm definitely going to watch another baseball match, it's a sport I thought I'd hate, and still continue to hate watching on the television, but turns out that I love watching it live.