Tokyo

On Breaking a Streak

At least it ended productively

Thursday, July 1, 2010
Tokyo, Japan


Outside of the Game:
My time in Osaka complete, I had to grab a bullet train back to Tokyo at the Shin-Osaka station just north of town. Even though I was scheduled for a night game, it was still a three-hour ride, so I had to leave relatively early in the morning. After getting some decent bunk time, I had to choose between getting breakfast at the hotel, or using the last of the super spa salts and soak for a while. A quick inventory of my blisters made the decision rather easy.

My first indication that perhaps something might not be going my way this day was getting off on the wrong subway stop in Osaka on the way back to the train station. It was a straight shot, and I just wasn't paying proper attention to what was going on. Hang on to that piece of information, dear reader. Travel fatigue was getting to me in a big way.

My subway mistake was minor, and I still got to the station in plenty of time to catch the bullet train back to Tokyo without further to-do. Upon arriving at Tokyo Station, things continued to get interesting, in the Chinese curse sense of the word. When I left Tokyo last time, I had exited through the Shinjuku Station, and not Tokyo Station proper. Tokyo Station is a much larger entity by half, and it is also undergoing massive construction. I got off the bullet train tracks, which turned out to be at one far corner of the station, and was completely unable to get my bearing, find a map or information desk, or anything else useful, as the renovations had changed around the regular layout of the station, making the helpful maps useless. Getting increasingly flummoxed, I found a station master office, and implored pathetically for assistance. The staff were extraordinary helpful, and actually took me inside, sat me down, and then provided me with detailed maps on how to get to the subway line I needed to and then how to get to the hotel once I got off the subway. That, my friends, is known as customer service.

And although I had detailed maps in hand, I didn't understand part of the directions, which was to get on another subway line than the one I eventually needed to transfer to. Undaunted, I kept following the signs for the second line, and followed them, and followed them, and followed them, as the Hanzomon line wasn't at the station I was at, but the next station up the line. And although you can walk there, it is not suggested to take that multi-block and -stair trip dragging along some very heavy and unwieldy luggage.

Eventually getting to the subway line I needed, it was a short ride to the hotel, where I was again able to check-in early, drop off all my stuff, and head out for the game.

Now here's the thing. I made all my travel plans in January of this year. I worked out all my routes and whatnot, and for the most part, I used Google Maps, which provides kanji names on the maps, which I can't read. To this point, it had worked out. That's strike one. Secondly, the ticket that I had for this game came from a general ticket brokerage without easy designation of the teams involved on the outside. That's strike two. Then, as I mentioned before, I was suffering from a good bit of travel fatigue at this point, so I wasn't really in the mood to double-check things. Swing and a miss, sit down.

So what I managed to do was this: I perfectly followed my completely adequate directions to get to the wrong stadium. My actual game that night was at the Chiba Marines. My directions were to the Yokohama Bay Stars, as earlier in the planning process, I had meant to go to a game there. Not being able to read the kanji directions and without the team name prominently on the tickets, the error did not immediately jump out to my travel-addled mind. So I got to the wrong place without incident, wondered where everyone was, and then the penny (yen?) dropped when I got to the stadium. And the group of teenagers hanging out by the stadium started staring at the crazy white guy laughing like a maniac at his own stupidity. Because after 38 or so games on these trips, I wasn't finally undone by weather, or a delayed plane or train, or an act of god, but merely my own stupidity. And I've got to tell you, it was pretty damn funny. I took some pictures of the wrong stadium, but then it occurred to me that I had a chance to make the right game because I always get to the park so early.

There's no crowds because there's no game today.

I dashed back to the train station and asked the confused counter person the quickest way to get to Chiba from here, as soon as possible. She helpfully told me what train and connections to make, and I dashed back upstairs firmly convinced I could still salvage this thing. I got back to the juncture station I needed in time to make the other train, but I managed to get to the platform just as the train doors were closing and pulling away. It was going to be that close. I had to wait fifteen minutes for the next train, but if I managed to run the whole way to the stadium, I could still get there by first pitch. I waited impatiently for the train, took the long ride out to the station, and then promptly got off to see no one in baseball attire again. It was just five minutes before the game was to start and I was completely lost again. I managed to snag a kimonoed tourist office attendant as she was closing up her booth for the night. Her reward for a hard day's work was dealing with one last delusional American. She immediately spotted my error. I needed to go to a station in Chiba on another line, not the actual Chiba Station. If I took a half-hour monorail ride, I could get within a fifteen minute or so walk to the park.

And there it was. Since it was already game time then, another half-hour to forty-five minutes under the best case, I decided to call it a night. The streak was over. Hit the showers and get them tomorrow, kid.

On the train ride back to the hotel, I contemplated what to do with my night now that I had no game to go to. When I got back, I washed up, went to the front desk, and asked them where the nearest bar or restaurant was that served Japanese whiskey. They gave me directions to a Japanese pub (izakaya) place a few blocks away, and I settled into a counter seat flanked by salarymen drinking away the memories of the day. I got some comfort food and started ordering up the single malts on the menu. Japanese whiskey, at least the ones I had, weren't bad by a long shot, if on the slightly sweet side for some reason. The smokestack salaryman sitting on my right was also downing some whiskey, so we had a common bond that transcended our language barrier. While my Japanese wasn't great under normal circumstances (and after a whiskey or two, it was largely non-functional), but we managed to have a minor conversation based on pantomime and gestures, and "kampai" is pretty universal.

So many choices...

Suitably lit-up, I wandered around to west end of the Imperial Park that was a few blocks from my hotel, and walked around in the dimming night for a while, being passed by a myriad of joggers and bicyclists out for their nightly exercise in the utter safety of after-dark Japanese parks. When I got back to the hotel, getting a severely over-priced massage seemed like a good idea. Nearly every hotel in Japan has a massage service, and I finally gave in at the highest prices I had seen up to this point. I washed up while I was waiting, and then got the ever-loving crap kicked out of my back by a woman who weighed 90 pounds soaking wet. And as my drunk self was finally able to feel my feet again, I realized that this wasn't the worst way to spend a day, despite the setbacks.

At least it was a nice night...

The Accommodations:

Hotel Monery Hanzoman

I stayed at the swanky Hotel Montery Hanzoman, a high-end business hotel line that was placed right in the middle of the embassy district by the Hanzoman gate to the Imperial grounds. The hotel was conveniently located right across the street from the subway station, so as long as I remembered to get out of the correct exit, comings and goings were quite easy. The room was a slightly larger version of the room at the Washington Plaza, which was a slightly larger version of the rooms before it. There was a closet, a full bathroom (with a tub so large that I could actually lie in it without my knees being underneath my chin all the time), a separate desk area, and a queen-sized bed, with the now-familiar command console right above the bed.

As this was a high-end business facility, I finally got to see some formal bowing action going on. For most of my trip, I had been staying at tourist places or places low enough on the social totem pole that the full business bowing was not in effect. Of course, I had seen bowing in my travels, from the "'sup bro" bows between younger friends, to the friendly bows of greeting, to the cursory bows during regular commerce transactions, but this was the first time I had witnessed the full spectrum of the official business bows. It was a fascinating dance that followed very strict waltz-like rules, and it was strangely beautiful to watch in action.

Because I was literally a block or two away from both the UK and Irish embassies, it was of little surprise that BBC International was available on the TV. I have to admit that I left it on most of the time when I watching TV, as I was going through some rather severe English withdrawal at this point. I found myself talking to myself in pigeon Japanese by this point, so it was nice to get some sort of connection back to the mother tongue, though I have to say the complete media blackout that I had for most of the week was nice to have. Russian spies? Did we time travel into the 80s while I was gone?

On the End of Days in the Big Egg

Tokyo Dome, 2010

Friday, July 2, 2010
Hanshin Tigers vs. Yomiuri Giants
Tokyo Dome
16:00
Central League, Nippon Professional Baseball
Tokyo, Japan


Outside of the Game:
After the previous day's failure, I was not about to have a repeat performance. Thoroughly relaxed by the events of the previous evening, I dragged my now-noodly ass out of bed and went downstairs for the breakfast buffet before a quick shower and subway ride up to Tokyo Dome City.

Tokyo Dome City is the marketing name for the sports-entertainment complex around the dome. In addition to the regular team shops and whatnot, there is a shopping/entertainment area and one or two amusements parks all around the "Big Egg." And within the Dome itself was the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which was my destination for the morning.

I suppose a certain amount of bias could be attributed to its location. I can imagine the uproar if the Cooperstown Hall was moved to Yankee Stadium, for example, but such niceties are less of an issue in Japan. Though the entrance to the Hall is on the ground floor, all of the exhibits are on an underground level one stairway down from the entrance.

Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame

Unlike Koshien Stadium's museum, they clearly received enough American visitors to require English versions of pamphlets, distributed to gaijin without even having to ask. This made the museum a little more comprehensible than its counterpart in Osaka. There was an area on "Japanese Baseball Today" very similar to the one found in Cooperstown, with each team represented by a locker with some artifacts and a history of the team. A section on the history of the game talks about its origins in America, and then its introduction in Japan, and I'm pretty sure there was a diorama of what might be the first game in Hoboken. There's also displays on the cross-overs between MLB and Japan, talking about all the series that were played between the two, as well as an exhibit of baseball cards of Japanese players that crossed over to the MLB.

Other areas talked about the importance of high school tournaments in Japan (especially Koshien), and in case you thought that corporate sponsorship was only extended to professional teams, Ronald McDonald standing over a little league team would like to disabuse you of that notion.

The Hall of Fame

The Hall proper was a slightly modernist affair from a design perspective, with recessed ceiling lighting and great pillars offsetting the wooden-framed plaques. At the far end of the Hall was a video display showing the previous year's inductees, and I learned that amongst the times in Japan when it is appropriate for a man to cry is his induction into the Hall. The plaques themselves lined both sides of the Hall, and were, unsurprisingly, in Japanese. However, each one had an English translation underneath, as well as a brief description in the English guidebook. I only knew a handful of the inductees by name, but it was pretty fascinating to read about all of them, from the early pioneers, to the more modern innovators and standouts.

There was an interactive exhibit towards the end that had computer terminals that gave overviews of the Japanese game, as well as let you play a few Japanese baseball video games. In the center of the exhibit was a batting simulator allowing you to stand in against a projected pitcher. I felt kind of foolish at not being able to make it work until some other Japanese visitors followed me into the area and were also suitably stumped. I felt better that it clearly wasn't the language barrier that was the problem here.

And in case you were wondering whether the Japanese took their World Baseball Classic victories seriously, there were no less than two exhibits on them, in addition to their other international play. They are clearly very proud of this accomplishments, and it seems to help erase a slight bit of the inferiority complex they still bear towards MLB.

After I had my fill of the Hall of Fame, I went outside and visited the team store and walked around the Tokyo Dome City amusements. Outside of an Adidas store was a statue of the Giants manager with his fists out. Apparently, the double fist bump had become the greeting of choice with the Giants, and the statue invited you to come up and give the manager double knuckles. A counter at the base of the statue counted up how many times people had done so.

Fist me! No, wait...

It was at this point that I was introduced to yet another Japanese line technology innovation. People were already lining up for tickets, and instead of standing out in the sun, they were saving their spaces by taping newspaper or other assorted paper to the spot in line with their name on it, and then going off to sit in nearby shade. It took a while to work out what was happening, but apparently this system works sufficiently well for everyone.

Some more wandering around found me in front of the Baseball Cafe, a touristy theme restaurant based on baseball. So of course I had lunch there. How can you saw no to a place that has a giant Tommy Lasorda sitting above the cash register? All the waiters and waitresses were dressed up in MLB jerseys, and all the tables had team patches inset in them. (I got put at the Expos table, and I'm not sure how I felt about that.) I decided to give it a whirl and try the burger of the day, which was some stroganoff thing. Well, the "burger" was served in a bowl, with a rice side dish, which is just as American as apple pie.

Just like Burger King

After lunch, I headed over to a place that was described as the geek homeland, and I am here to tell you, there is at least one corner of the globe where nerds are running the place, and it is Electric City. This area of several blocks are where the nerds of Tokyo retreat to when the jock samurai get too much, or something. What happens when the dorks take over? Let me tell you. The fact that there are wall-to-wall video game parlors, comic book and computer software stores, and video stores (some adult, some not) is pretty much a given. The fact that personal electronics and computer hardware stores are every five feet is similarly unsurprising, as are the countless hobby stores. But there are also tons of old-school tech stores, with storefronts dedicated just to light bulbs, or wiring, or outlets and plugs.

An outlet store. No, not that  kind.

And then there's the maid cafes. And this, my friends, is where the dark sides of nerds getting some power takes over. On nearly every corner is some woman dressed up in standard nerd fantasy wear (school girls, cat women, maids, etc.). A guide book I have describes it as such. You pay one of these women to be your hostess for a meal. She calls you "master" and serves you the food that you order. You can also play games with her. She'll ask you questions or give you brainteasers, and then rewards you with praise and points that you can use to get discounts or other items. So here it is: you get girls dressed in cosplay outfits to wait on you hand and foot and then reward you for being oh-so-smart. I think the only thing that saves this from being completely over-the-line creepy is that women can get men in dress-up to do exactly the same thing, so there is a swing for gender equality there. But still...

Somehow not prostitution

After visiting my ancestral homeland, I took a quick ride back to the hotel to get washed up, grab my game bag, and head back to the Dome in time for the opening of the gates. The subway home was also uneventful, and given my early start the next day to Sendai and my utter emotional and physical exhaustion after watching the game, I went right back to the hotel to pack up and go to sleep.


The Stadium & Fans:

Home plate to center field at the Tokyo Dome

The Tokyo Dome is one of the biggest parks in Japan, and it lives up to its dimensions. There is an entire patio deck area just across the pavilion from the stadium that has stores and food and fan gathering areas even before you get to the dome proper, which is ringed with stores and restaurants for visitors.

Once inside, the hallways are wide (if not tall), and with the exception of the luxury boxes and area behind home plate, you pretty much have the run of its spacious confines. There's the main scoreboard in center and the auxiliary scoreboard behind the plate, and there is on-field seating, heavily branded by the good folks at McDonalds. The cheering section is more firmly delineated with special "Giants Orange Seats" for full-season supporters, who seemed to guard their prestigious outfield seats very protectively. The upper deck goes three-quarters of the way around the stadium, tapering off to nothing in the outfield.

There are actually three interior levels to the park, with the main promenade level, the abbreviated upper deck, and then a lower level where they had the pre-game cheerleader and mascot show (due to rain outside), as well as more food choices and access to some of the luxury areas. The lower level also housed a Hall of Fame for Giants players, as well as a Walk of Fame for all the musical acts that performed at the Tokyo Dome over the years, leading to perhaps the only time history that Hammer and Paul Simon have ever appeared next to each other.

Pre-game mascot show

The Giants are the most popular franchise in Japan, and the most dominant in post-season achievements, inviting easy comparisons with the Yankees. Their fan base is the largest in the country, and seen as a little upscale, and the nearly capacity crowd at the game I attended seemed to bear that out. The opponent being the Tigers, there was a large and loud minority filling up the left field bleachers, and going at it in cheer battles with the home team even though heavily outnumbered. All the fans were into this intense rivalry, and the game surely provided them a platform for their various enthusiasms.


At the Game with Oogie:

Scoring in the Big Egg

I was perched about halfway up the lower deck right behind first base for this game. In my row, I was wedged between a younger couple who was there with the woman's parents and a group of businessmen out for a game. The girlfriend was perhaps the closest to a clueless fan as I saw in my entire trip, as she was cheering at the wrong times and sometimes joining in on the Tigers cheering (resulting in polite admonishment not to do that by the boyfriend). For all of that, she was still watching the entire game instead of talking on her cell phone to other people, and kept her girlfriend activities (like trying to take cell phone pictures of herself and the beau) to between innings.

Truly, a different world.


The Game:

First pitch, Tigers vs. Giants

Where to begin. This was already a much-hyped meeting between the biggest rivals in the entire Japanese league in a near sell-out at the biggest stadium in Japan. There is an inclination that the game can't possibly live up to the hype, but I'm here to tell you, it did. The Tigers claimed the first hit in the first (to the rapturous joy of their fans), but the runner never got further than first. The Giants answered back with a leadoff double (immediately, of course, sacrificed to third), but he didn't make it home, either. The Tigers got to scoring position in the second, but nothing came of it. And then the Giants struck. A leadoff homer got them on the board first, and the next batter singled and went to third on an error by the right fielder. The next batter was hit by a pitch, and with first and third and one out, of course the next batter laid down a bunt (and somewhere, Sparky Anderson is smiling). The second baseman charged hard and was able to make the throw in time to get the runner from third, but runners were left on first and second by the fielder's choice. The runner on second would come home on a hot grounder that ate up the Tiger's third baseman, before a groundout to third would end the inning.

The Tigers got to scoring position with nothing to show for it in the third, and beside a walk, the Giants did nothing in the bottom of the frame. A two-out double for the Tigers did nothing in the fifth, but a Giant's leadoff double was brought home by a two-out dinger in the bottom of the inning, setting the score at 4-0. Both teams had runners in scoring position in the fifth with nothing to show for it, and then went 1-2-3 in the sixth.

That's when the bottom fell out of the Giant's pitching staff. They would go eight batters before recording an out in the top of the sixth. A single and a walk chased the Giant's starter, and then the pen just exploded. A triple followed, scoring the first two runners on base. Another single brought him home, and then a walk and another single followed. Then the pinch hit brigade started. Yet another single was enough to chase that Giant's relief pitcher, and then a strikeout finally recorded a fraction of an inning, but was followed up with another walk, and the Tigers had batted around. The Giants got the leadoff hitter this time, but the next batter promptly beat out an infield single, but in your everyday 6-3-2 putout, the runner from third was nailed trying to advance on the hit after the throw to first was not in time to get the runner. We were now left with a 6-4 game, and the Tiger's fans cheering their lungs out.

Until the bottom of the seventh. The Giants got a leadoff walk and a single before the number 3 man struck out. A hot shot to first eluded the first baseman, leaving the bases loaded. Another strikeout seemed to give hope that the Tigers could get out of the inning. But then the Giants' pinch hit brigade began. The first got a single, bringing home two runs. The next batter (also a pinch hitter) doubled, leaving second and third with one more across. The next batter got plunked, but the Tigers managed to get the third out on a fly to left, and the Giants batted around and nothing more, but leading 7-6.

Rally after rally after rally

Not satisfied with the result, the Tigers came roaring back (I can't believe I just wrote that) in the top of the eighth with a single and a home run by their gajin first baseman that was absolutely crushed to deepest dead center, resulting in the Tigers fans erupting again in one of the loudest songs I'd ever heard. Incidentally, it was also a song I had never heard before, so there may very be a "we came back in the top of the eighth after giving up the lead" song. The Giants went quietly in the bottom of the inning, and the Tigers tacked on some much-needed insurance in the top of the ninth on a two-base error, followed by another longball from their leadoff hitter, giving them a somewhat comfortable 10-7 margin going into the last of the ninth.

The Giants fans made their presence known immediately, singing loudly enough to even drown out the Tigers. But after the first weak fly-out to right, the Tigers fans started counter-singing. When the next batter up took one out of the park to right, it was the end of the goddamn world. Both sides were singing at full volume in overlapping harmonies, with flags blazing and instruments blaring, that it just sent legitimate chills down my spine. The fact that it made less sense that both sides didn't whip out swords and charge at each other across the outfield can give you some indication of the energy at play here. As everything reached a fever pitch, the Tiger's closer was able to finally land the last two outs on a fly out to center and a grounder to second, leaving the Tigers the victor, 10-8.

No, really, just listen

It was, without a doubt, the most intense regular-season baseball game I've seen in my entire life. And the Tigers finally won a game while I was in attendance. It was also the only game that I saw in my entire trip that exceeded three hours by any meaningful amount of time (clocking in at 4:10), and I gladly would have had it go on another 4.


The Scorecard:

Tigers vs. Giants, 07/02/10. tigers win, 10-8.

Einstein had relativity; Michelangelo had the Sistine Chapel. The Scoremaster card that I filled out for this game, capturing every last move and pitch in this see-saw of nine innings of mayhem, will be known as my scoring masterpiece, if for nothing else than keeping the seventh inning in order from top to bottom and making sense of the small-ball and long-ball madness that drove it.


The Accommodations:
I was the Montery again. Nothing much of note in this regard. After getting back to the hotel from the game, I mostly did some preliminary work on my epic scorecard and then packed up and went to bed to prepare for my early train our to Sendai the next day.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2010 Japan I