Yokohama

On Sweating Out One's Soul

Yokohama Stadium, 2011

Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Chunichi Dragons vs. Yokohama BayStars
Yokohama Stadium
Central League, Nippon Professional Baseball
Yokohama, Japan
18:00


Outside of the Game:
I think sleeping in full-on air conditioning for the first time in a few days was detrimental to me, as I woke up at much less than 100%, but functional enough to keep going. I packed up, went down and had breakfast in the ryokan, and then went for a walk to clear my head. I definitely felt better once I got outside, so the constitutional did some good, even if I didn't feel all there.

As I was walking around, I crossed paths with a group of grade schoolers on a field trip. There was a long line of them, and I was walking past the lot of them, when a small voice from somewhere in the group croaked out a timid, tiny, “Gewd mahning.” I didn't see who it was, but I turned to the group and said, “Good morning” back, and that was all that was necessary to get the ball rolling, as I was soon greeted with an endless refrain of the same from the entire group. Have you ever had sixty Japanese schoolchildren melodically shouting “Good morning” to you at once? It's quite a thing.

I checked out of the ryokan and dragged my bags down to the station. I got a ticket for a slightly earlier train to Yokohama and then went out to the track to get my unsurprisingly on-time train.

Shin-Yokoahama Station

My train dumped me in Shin-Yokohama Station, and I made a quick stop at the tourist office there to work out the rest of my trip downtown, as well as how to get to the airport the next day for my first flight within Japan. I left a short time later, with all the schedules and maps I could possibly need and the absolute knowledge of where I was going. The certainty of some things in Japan was just gratifying.

A short train ride later dropped me at the station near my hotel, which was incidentally also right across the street from the stadium for that night’s game. It is important to note that the distance from the station to my hotel could not have been more than five blocks, which I walked completely in the shade. By the time that I had completed that walk in the shade, I was drenched head to foot in sweat. I would later determine this to be because it was about 100 degrees with 98 percent humidity that day, but still.

It was thus drenched in sweat that I arrived with my bags at the super-nice, luxury Hotel Yokohama Garden. The staff didn’t blink an eye at my obvious derelict condition, and nearly forced me to sit in their nice lounge chair while they processed my reservation and ventured that I might want a water.

After ruining their chair and dropping off my bags, I set off into the blazing Yokohama for some sightseeing. I wandered through Yokohama’s sizable Chinatown and got some dumplings for lunch in the shade and cool before heading to the harbor.

Town of Chinese

Now, if you name a place “Harbor View Park,” there are some unstated promises in your establishment, especially when it is 100 degrees out, and perhaps one’s temperament isn’t where it should be.

But I’m here to tell you that you have to do a large amount of walking and climbing through that park before you even get a hint that there’s a harbor. To be fair, you are eventually rewarded with a spectacular panoramic view of the entire harbor and environs, but boy, does it make you question the founding principles of the park name for a while there.

To be fair, you could see the harbor

I climbed down to the waterfront proper and slunk from shadow to shadow as I traversed Yamashita Park to avoid bursting directly into flames from a sun that just seemed to get hotter and hotter. Upon reaching the other end of the park, I headed back to my hotel, check-in time having arrived, and had the most necessary shower and soak of my entire life.

My hotel being literally across the street from the stadium, I was fairly certain of my ability to get to the game in time, and a nap in the air conditioning was very much in order.

The stadium is part of Yokohama Park, so about two and half hours before the game, I went across the street and started to take in the sights. A group of fans were camped out in front of the stadium garage, no doubt waiting for players, and I took a shaded walk through the adjoining park before going to the stadium itself.

During the walk-around, I had my biggest “gotcha” moment, as I poked my head over a wall in the back of the stadium to see a briefing happening for all the stadium workers. I popped off a quick picture before ducking back down, but in the shot, two of the workers were giving me the Japanese “V,” so ninja I am not.

Oh, so you saw me...

As I rambled, they were setting up for the various pre-game festivities, and I was wondering why everything wasn’t in fuller swing. As I was trying to work out one of the stadium maps, one of the workers came up and asked me if I needed help. And not just in English, but in “teenager dude” English. He helpfully explained that they don’t open the stadium until an hour before the game, and then told me what entrance I had to use for my ticket.

Pre-game mascots

Armed with that knowledge, I headed back across the street for an hour more in the air conditioning, as the weather hadn’t settled down all that much since mid-day.

I came back over just as the pre-game show was getting warmed up. The Dragons and BayStars cheerleaders were having some sort of competition. There looked to be some sort of quiz going on, and then there was a dancing contest, and then the mascots showed up, so it became more of a show. A little before gate opening, I got on line and got swept into the stadium with the crowd surging to claim unreserved seats.

The stadium from my hotel room after the game

After the game, it was simply a matter of crossing the street (after a long detour necessitated by barriers to keep people funneling to the train station by closing down the stairway that would let me just cross the street to the hotel). I stayed up for a bit, watching the activity outside the stadium and the fans clearing out and stadium workers closing up shop. About two hours after the end of the game, they turned off the lights at the stadium, and I made my way to my very comfortable bed.


The Stadium & Fans:

Home plate to center field, Yokohama Stadium

Yokohama Stadium is a single-level bowl stadium. The entrance and promenade area is raised up from the surrounding street, and connects up with the adjoining Yokohama Park in the rear.

The interior is ringed by a walkway that houses the concessions and merchandise stores. There is an upper level that allows people higher up in the seating bowl to get to their seats easier, and it also houses the “Victory Court” concession. The bleacher cheering section areas are closed off from the field-level seats and are accessed by a separate entrance.

Pre-game cheerleader fight

An unintentionally hilarious item was a sign they had put up, stating how serious they were about access control near a non-public area of the stadium. On this poster was then very clear pictures of exactly every type of identification that they would accept, because such things could not possibly be of use to someone trying to violate that access control.

The stadium was pretty full for a Tuesday night game, and the fans were well-represented both in the pre-game shows and in the stands. They were loud, and grateful, as the heroes of the game got rapturous cheers and applause whenever they stepped on the field.

There was also a “fan of the game” contest during mid-inning on the main scoreboard. One of the people picked was a sweaty chunky guy in a yukata out in the cheering section, who stripped off more and more of the robe as they kept cutting back to him, to the loud approval of the fans. (He won the contest.) It seems that some fan behavior is directly comparable no matter what side of the ocean you’re on.

Fan of the game

Since I was just across the street, I stayed for nearly all of the victory celebration after the game, which went on much longer than I expected. Even as they were dismantling the stage after the hero interviews, the mascots and the cheerleaders were off by the home cheering section, throwing freebies into the adoring fans.

Dear MLB: This is called fan service. Look into it.

Speaking of mascots, the BayStars had a starfish character, which is to be expected, but one of the other mascots can only be described as a huge grinning baseball with his tongue sticking out. I have not received an adequate rationale for that guy.

For such a low-achieving team, the fans were die-hards. From my hotel, I was able to see people claiming their seats for the next day’s pre-game show the night before. That, my friends, is dedication.


At the Game with Oogie:

"Lens limit" doesn't translate in Japanese

I was sitting on the third base side, just far enough down that I was in the no-man’s land between the home fans behind home plate and the visiting section that extended towards the left field bleachers. I was worried about being finally finished off by the sun after so much careful hiding, but the much-anticipated late-day shadows reached my seat just before game time. From where I was sitting, I could see my room at the hotel across the street.

One guy sitting lower in my section was using a camera that was about a fourth of his total height, with all the lenses and whatnot attached to it. It had a tripod and he and the camera were taking up two seats. It gave me a clear context for why American stadiums have camera limits for visitors.


The Game:

First pitch, Dragons vs. BayStars

The lowly BayStars had their day this night in Yokohama, though it started rather inauspiciously. The Dragon’s leadoff batter Araki walked, and then stole second. This prompted a stoppage of play as 200 something flashed on the scoreboard and flowers were brought out to him at second, and he was greeted by applause from the crowd. I couldn’t figure out what it could be. He couldn’t possibly have stolen 200 bases in the season already. No further explanation was given in English, so I guess I’ll never know. And he didn’t help the Dragons, who went down in order after his walk and steal.

The BayStars came out swinging, lining a single on the first pitch they saw, and the runer was promptly sacrificed to second. A fly out to center raised the specter of stranding him there, but two more singles came back-to-back, bringing him home and leaving first and second with two outs. The next batter walked, and the following singled, sending the lead runner home, but the trailing runner also tried his luck and got nailed by the right fielder, ending the inning 2-0 BayStars.

The Dragons got right back into it with three straight singles getting a run across, but a double-play killed the inning and the rally, and the BayStars went in order, leaving it 2-1 BayStars. The Dragons pulled even with two doubles in the top of the third, and that would be as close as they got for the night.

The bottom of the third was a massacre. A single was followed by a strikeout, and that would be it for the outs for a while. A single, walk, and single brought home the lead run and loaded up the bases for the BayStars light-hitting right fielder, with zero home runs for the year.

You see where this is going.

He took the second pitch way out over the left field wall for a grand slam, to the rapturous joy of the fans. (Incidentally, the stadium scoreboard gave him a “Nice Play!” for his achievement, which makes one wonder what you’d need to do to get a “Good Play!”) Two groundouts ended the inning, leaving it 7-2 BayStars. Both sides forwent scoring in the fourth, but the Dragons tried to make a game of it in the fifth. A one-out single and double got sent home by a two-out single to narrow the gap to 7-4. But the BayStars promptly strung together three singles to get one of them back, 8-4 at the start of the sixth.

The Dragons went in order, but the BayStars added two more runs in the bottom of the inning on two singles, a double, and a sacrifice fly. The Dragons went in order again, but the BayStars weren’t done yet. A hit batsman started the bottom of the inning, and a single and double brought him home and left two on. The BayStars second baseman then lined a triple into the right field corner to bring them home. At the end of seven, it was 14-4 BayStars.

The Dragons got one back on a solo shot in the eighth, but that was about the story of the game already. The BayStars walk away with a laugher, 14-5.


The Scorecard:

Dragons vs. BayStars, 06/28/11. BayStars win, 14-5.

This was in the ScoreMaster book again. There wasn’t anything particularly interesting from a scoring perspective, but this was a hard one to keep track. There were a lot of substitutions and switching positions, and the pitcher’s slot bounced all around the Dragon’s lineup. It was like scoring a Bobby Valentine game all over again.


The Accommodations:

Hotel Yokohama Garden

The Hotel Yokohama Garden was previously mentioned as my body repository for the night. It was the fanciest hotel I stay at this trip, and had the benefit of being right across the street from the stadium. This was a luxury Western-style hotel that was clearly used by business-types for the most part. There were copious meeting rooms and areas, and businessman-type amenities.

For whatever reason, I got a room on the top floor of the hotel, so I could just about see into the stadium from across the street. There was a tiny balcony in my room, but it was only for emergencies if all the escape equipment out there was any indication.

The room was a full-sized Western room and bathroom, with a full-sized closet. In addition to the huge bed and room, there was a full-sized working desk that came with its own computer and monitor, which I felt compelled to use as much as possible, because my room came with a computer.

It was very convenient to the game, and very worth the extra money I splurged on it.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2011 Japan II

Nishinomiya

On the Reality of Culture Shock

Koshien Stadium, 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Chunichi Dragons vs. Hanshin Tigers
Koshien Stadium
Central League, Nippon Professional Baseball
Nishinomiya, Japan
16:00


Outside of the Game:
After what was my first legitimately good night's sleep of the entire trip so far, I decided to celebrate with the Washington Plaza's breakfast buffet, followed by a victory soak in the tub. The hotel included some odd bath salts to enhance the experience, and they turned the water an unhealthy shade of green. That said, after testing to make sure I wouldn't end up looking like Kermit the Frog at the end of the experience, the hot soak in the green stuff with the ambient music machine turned up full blast was perhaps as relaxed as I've been in a very long time.

I had until a night game to kill, so I did more wanderings about the capitalist orgy of Osaka. I started out going to Sennicimae Doguya Street, which is another of the specialty markets in town. This one sells restaurant supplies. This isn't just limited to things such as utensils and cooking apparatus, but also signs and things similar. Most importantly, you know all those plastic display foods that the restaurants have in their front window or counter? They come from someplace, and that someplace is likely here. Space constraints in my suitcase was all that prevented me from buying a big plastic display bowl of niku udon, although I did go a little nuts on chopsticks and other tableware.

Need a fake food display? There's a store for that.

It is at this point that timing and tactical errors came into play. Osaka is well-known for its food, so I wanted to make sure I sampled some of the local cuisine for lunch. One of the highest-regarded udon places in the city was right by my hotel, but it turns out that it is closed Wednesdays. I decided instead to go to a traditional Japanese pancake (okonmiyaki) place down the street. I was seated in front of the chef's grill, ordered a pork pancake, and went on planning the rest of the afternoon. As I took my first bite of my lunch, I noticed the chef grilling up a prawn pancake on the same grill on which he made mine.

A cultural exchange quickly followed. I was eventually able to communicate that I did not spit out my food because I did not like it, but because the chef had just committed attempted murder. Even with the limited contact to shellfish, I had a mild allergic reaction, but nothing too serious. Once again, the mortification of the staff was immense, but in this case, I was more inclined to accept it. I have to imagine I would be dead if I stayed in Japan for a month due to cross-contamination.

The brush with death behind me, I forged on to Osaka Castle. The thing about castles is that they were made to be hard to get to, so it was a bit of an adventure finding out how to breach each successive series of moats and walls, even with helpful maps to show the way. Eventually, my marching and counter-marching was successful enough to get my to the castle itself. As with most things in Japan, it is a reconstruction built on the original foundations. I tried to get change for my 10,000 yen note before buying a ticket from the ticket machines, but the attendant told me it would be okay (mildly amused by my concerns), and lo and behold, the machine in fact gave out change in coins and bills in multiple denominations. It's the future right now, people.

Castle gardens

I had enough time, so I got an audio tour for the festivities, and then went up to the top floor to take the ever-present "suggested route" from the top down, which progressively gave the (often grisly) history of the castle from its inception, to its construction as an impenetrable fortress, to its subsequent multiple captures, razings, and rebuildings, to the modern day. There was a particularly noteworthy diorama made of one of the major battles at the castle that was illustrated in a famous paneled silk screen. In a bow to consumerism, you could even dress up as a samurai and have your photo taken. I demurred and finished up the tour, took a walk around the castle temple and gardens, and then headed back to the hotel to switch up gear for the game.

I had to take an auxiliary train line out to the game, but it was a straight shot and went without incident on the way out. On the way back, I got my first real taste of what I'd come to expect of using public transportation when leaving a major sporting event. The entrance to the train station was a sea of people for the length of a good football field. Once you managed to get through the turnstile gates, the corridors to the trains themselves were a cattle ramp of humanity. But the people were, for the most part, patient and behaved, and as trains kept arriving as a regular clip, it was nothing like the sea of agony that comes with trying to get an orange line train after a Yankees game, or trying to get to the 7 at Shea before they made the station renovations last year.

Deep breath, keep moving

I got back to the hotel, picked up my laundry, and pretty much settled in for the night. The crush back to the trains had left me famished for some reason, so I absolutely inhaled a box of base cookies from the Koshien Museum (after arranging them first in proper diamonds), worked on the scorecard a little, and then made sure everything was packed up for my train back to Tokyo the next morning.


The Stadium & Fans:

Center field to home plate at Koshien Stadium

The train station for the park dumps you off across the street and a large plaza from the stadium proper. The plaza is flanked on one side by a big fan pavilion filled with food and merchandise stalls, with the big official team store on one side and the majestic tiger statue perched at the crossing to get to the stadium.

Hanshin Tigers fans are well-known as the most fervent in Japan, and their home stadium at Koshien is one of the historical jewels of the league, home not just to the long-lived Tigers, but also the most famous high-school baseball tournament in the country. Imagine, if you will, that Fenway Park also hosted the NCAA Final Four championship every year, and you can sort of get the scope of what this park means.

Baseball as religion

And I'd also like to definitively answer the question of whether Japanese or American fans are more devoted to baseball. And I will answer it with this: around the back of Koshien Stadium is a Shinto shrine -- an actual religious place of worship. In that shrine is a statue to baseball, and that may be enough to seal the deal, but next to the shrine proper is a Hanshin Tigers merchandise store and a Tiger's logo above the place to leave prayers and devotions. Let's just think about that for a moment, shall we? Can you imagine a giant baseball in St. Patrick's Cathedral? With a Yankee's logo above the devotional candles or a Mets merch store by the altar? If that doesn't just blow your mind, you aren't paying proper attention.

Baseball devotional statue

There is a walkway all around the stadium, housing the usual suspects such as ticket booths, team stores, merchandise stalls, places to get your photo taken with the mascots and the rest. There is also a small park laid out in a baseball diamond with a small monument to Babe Ruth in "right field." The Tigers have also embraced some of the finer points of MLB marketing, as they have a fan brick walk in front of one of their entrances.

Babe is universal

This is the Tiger's 75th anniversary, and as part of the festivities, they have opened a museum about Koshien Stadium. The museum is half about the stadium and half about Tigers themselves, and since there was no English version of the pamphlet, I understood perhaps a third of everything. There was areas on the history of the team and the history and construction of the stadium, the championships the franchise has won over the years, as well as retired number area for the great players and a hall of fame with plaques. I'm unsure what the difference was between the later two areas. Another section of the museum talked about the history of the high school baseball tournament that plays yearly in the stadium. There were other areas on the construction and history of the stadium and the effect of manga on baseball in Japan, and the Tigers in particular. There was also an interesting exhibit on the scoreboard at Hanshin Stadium. To the best of my understanding, it used to be a manual scoreboard until very recently, and most of the player names that were put up there were hand-painted by the scoreboard keeper. The exhibit itself was lined with examples of those tiles. What I imagine is the highlight of the visit is a chance to go out onto the deck below the center field scoreboard and peek through the batter's eye during batting practice. (The special tarmac that they put up for this is taken down during the game.) Even though I didn't understand anything not in English, the museum was actually very well done.

Hall of Fame in the Museum

The stadium is one deep bowl that circles the entire playing field, with a second luxury and broadcast area above home plate. The Tigers have also latched onto another new piece of MLB fashion by having a mini LCD screen going around the barrier between the lower and upper decks behind home plate, in addition to the main scoreboard in center and the smaller board behind home plate. The left and right sections of the lower deck are accessible to ticket-holders in either area, but the area behind home plate and the outfield cheering areas are only accessible with tickets to those areas. I didn't even bother to try and get into the luxury area.

The infield is all dirt with no grass, and from what I can tell, this used to be the style in most Japanese parks, though more recently most have switched to the American style of grass (or, more likely, turf) surrounding the pitching mound area. The old way is preserved there.

Much talk has been made of the Tigers and their fans, and it is borne out by two things. Firstly is that a ticket to a Tigers game is one of the hardest to get in all of Japan, as the team gets near capacity for most of its games. The second is that the opposing cheering section, while present, was only in a tiny section of part of the left field bleachers. Tigers fans dominated the entire stadium except for that postage-stamp spot of blue out in the boonies of the seating area populated by visiting fans that had found a way to get seats.

And the crowd was the largest and loudest I had experienced up until this point. It wasn't just the hardcore fans leading the cheers in the right field bleachers and the rest of the crowd adding some muted support. The entire crowd was loud from start to finish, to the last pitch in the last at-bat. To their credit, the small contingent of Dragons fans did make themselves heard, but the Tigers fans had them on sheer volume, to say nothing of enthusiasm.

Now, that's a balloon launch

The balloon launch in the 7th inning was particularly impressive with a full house of amped fans. It actually took the grounds crew a little while to clear all the balloons off the field.


At the Game with Oogie:

Packed in tight

As this was a Tiger's home game, it was packed to the gills, and likely a sell-out. I was half-way up the bowl right behind third base, which gave a slightly better view of the field because it was just above the foul ball fencing that circled the park. There were all Tigers fan around me, most notably a team of little leaguers just in front and to the right of me. In a somewhat perplexing turn of events, they had their names sewn on their uniform, but Velcro attachments for their numbers. One would think that their names would be the thing that you'd want to be able to change easily, but perhaps their number for the game reflects what position they are playing. That's at least the best guess that I was able to come up with.


The Game:

First pitch, Dragons vs. Tigers

This was a tightly fought match-up from start to finish. The first three innings went fairly briskly for both teams. In the top of the fourth, the Dragons clean-up hitter Wada sent one out of the park in right field to break up what otherwise was another 1-2-3 inning. The Tigers came right back in the bottom of the fourth. A leadoff single was erased on a caught stealing, but three more singles in the inning brought across the tying run. The Dragons threatened again in the top of the fifth with a leadoff double that moved to third with one out on a fielder's choice, but the Dragons couldn't get him home. Both teams traded missed opportunities for next few innings (the Dragons got bases loaded with no one across in the 7th, and the Tigers stranded a couple on base in the same period) before the Dragons broke through in the 8th. A leadoff single was sacrificed over to the second and then brought home on a single. The Tigers stopped the bleeding there, throwing out that runner at home when he tried to score on a double to right, but they could do nothing the next two innings, and the Dragons held on for the win, 2-1. I had seen the Tigers twice so far, and they had lost both times.

One additional item of note was the fact that they used little electric golf carts to bring in the relievers from the bullpen. It was was just one other thing to hearken back to late 70s baseball (as long as you replace the electric cart with a gas-guzzling Lincoln, but you get the picture.)


The Scorecard:

Dragons vs. Tigers, 06/30/10. Dragons win, 2-1.

I used the Scoremaster again. The only scorings of note were a 1-6 fielder's choice put-out against the Tigers and two outfield assist put-outs against the Dragons in the eighth inning.


The Accommodation:
Once again, I was at the Washington. The humidity being what it was, I left a couple pairs of my pants to be laundered the night before, and due to some translation errors, I wasn't able to pick them up until after the game instead of before.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2010 Japan I

Nagoya

On Unnecessary Stress

Nagoya Dome, 2010

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Hiroshima Toyo Carp vs. Chunichi Dragons
Nagoya Dome
Central League, Nippon Professional Baseball
Nagoya, Japan
14:00


Outside the Game:
I grabbed the breakfast buffet at my hotel in Tokyo, and then I was off to my first other city of the trip. I checked out and dragged my bags onto the subway and got myself to the station to use the first of my inter-city bullet train tickets. It was here that my JapanRail pass was going to start paying for itself.

As with the airport train a couple of days earlier, Tokyo was the first stop for the bullet train, so the pink-jumpsuited cleaning elves attacked the train when it arrived at the station before we were allowed to board. And it was as though they were magical cleaning elves, because they popped out of a tiny door in the side of the track to appear and clean the train. Once allowed to board, the bullet trains seemed like every other train in Japan, which is to say it was clean, quiet, and efficient. And I suppose that was even more of an achievement given how fast we were apparently going. Because the speed was completely undetectable while riding in the train, with the exception of when we passed another bullet train going in the opposite direction, and the noise and blur of it passing gave you an idea of relative speeds that were involved in this endeavor. I spent the majority of the train ride catching up on my scorecard of the night previous and getting some work done on this monster. About two hours after I started, I got off at Nagoya.

No, really. Pink jumpsuits.

And then I immediately started hitting a rough stretch. As I was running out of money, I decided to stop at an ATM before transferring to the Nagoya subway that would get me to my hotel. There was a bank of them in the station, and even though most of them were for Japanese banks, one or two had the American card agencies displayed. And each and every one of them gave me the error message that my card was not valid and I needed to contact my bank. This engendered a certain amount of concern on my part. Scenarios of my card getting compromised somewhere along the way flashed through my head, and what I was going to be able to do even if I could contact my bank took a stroll through the cerebellum as well. I had some emergency traveler's cheques with me, but I didn't know if they would be enough to get me through a country that still largely cash-based. I had enough money to get me to my hotel, so I decided to get there and then sort out my options.

The subway ride was uneventful, if fretful, and the Nagoya system, although different from the Tokyo system, was equally easy to figure out and navigate. Once I got where I was going, however, it was a different matter. One of the big things in Japan is getting out at the right exit of a station, because some of these things are huge concerns, and exiting in the wrong place can put you at a five-minute walk from the exit you really wanted to get to, and navigating in strange cities is already complicated enough as it is. (To be fair, every last exit to every last station in Japan is marked, and if you can find the map to figure out which one to take, as I had learned to do later in the trip, it is less of a chore to figure out.)

At this early stage of the trip, I managed to choose poorly, and I was hopelessly wandering around trying to find a street location to center myself, and given my bank card situation, I was working with a shorter fuse than average. After twenty minutes of floundering, I gave up and sought direction assistance at one of the ubiquitous 7-11s. (Yes, 7-11. The company has made huge headways into Japan, and now they are almost as common as the other major convenience store in the country, Lawsons.) I got directions, and since I was there, I decided to try their ATM. And my card worked perfectly, and I got my spending money for the next day or so. I later found out that even though an ATM in Japan says they are connected to the US network, only three reliably are: the post office, CitiBank, and 7-11. Go figure. Even with that being the case, one could imagine that they might be able to come up with a slightly more user-friendly error message for those occasions than "Your card is invalid. Contact your bank." I could write one for them, if they'd like. My treat, really, guys.

All my immediate problems resolved, I went to my hotel to drop off my bags before the afternoon ballgame and headed back to the subway station to get me to the Nagoya Dome.

After the game, I got back to the hotel for a clean-up and then headed out for some dinner and walking around. One of my goals for this trip was to get the local specialty in each city when I could. Nagoya was apparently known for spicy pork dishes. One of the guidebooks I had suggested a particular place in the city, and having no other agenda, I made my way there. This place was apparently used to catering to tourists, as they had a full English menu and also had an array of mild versions of the spicy pork for the tenderfeet. I took something on the middling end of the scale and tucked in. With my stomach finally stabilized and feeling better, I was hungry enough to down two bowls of the pork noodle soup pretty quickly before I was on my way. Right by the restaurant was also the only Christian church that I managed to see in my entire time in Japan.

It seemed really out of place.

After dinner, I did some minor wandering around, but with another train to catch the next day and feeling pretty beat after the game, I headed back to the hotel to pack up and get some shut-eye.


The Stadium and Fans:

Home plate to center field, Nagoya Dome

The Nagoya Dome had its own subway stop named after it, which made getting their an easy enough thing. It wasn't as far away from the station as Jingu Stadium was, but there was a long walk through the subway station, out into a long elevator ride, and then a smaller walk along a pavilion to get to the stadium proper. The main team store was actually located across the street from the dome, connected to a shopping mall adjacent to everything. The entire dome was surrounded by a paved walkway that had things such as smaller team stores, ticket booths, fan club buildings, and childrens merchandise stores arrayed on the periphery.

Once inside, it was less claustrophobic than the dimensions of Jingu Stadium, and, more importantly, it was the first stadium I went to where I had full access to all areas through a walkway that circled the entirety of the playing field. I was finally able to wander into the rooting areas as the crews were setting up their wares, as I watched Carp fans laying out their flags, tuning their trumpets, and setting up the drums. The organization was once again fairly impressive.

This was also the first stadium I visited in Japan that not only had a legitimate upper deck, but also a club level and luxury area. It was easy enough to get access to the upper deck, but the premium areas were closely guarded by staffers to prevent any hoi polloi from gaining access.

The stadium itself was fairly standard for Japan, although it lacked the on-field seating that the other two parks had, probably due to space constraints placed on the field size due to the dome. There was the huge video screen in center and the smaller screen behind home plate, and the slightly small dimensions of the park itself conformed with what I'd seen from Japan fields so far.

The Sunday afternoon game had the dome about three quarters full, and most of them were home rooters. A small but vocal contingent of Hiroshima fans were located in their traditional place in the left field bleachers, and as always, both sides were vocal and cheering. There was a special ceremony with posters that the team had given away upon entry to the stadium that celebrated one of the Dragon's relievers hitting a saves total. During the seventh inning festivities (accentuated with junior cheerleaders who helped out the senior squad during several points in the game that day), the assembled crowd all held up their posters.


At The Game With Oogie:

All the same

I was actually sitting a little further up the baseline on this game, just into the outfield on the first base side, but still relatively close to the field. I had asked the ticket guys to mix up the views for the games. I was sitting next to an older married couple and their teenage kid. He wandered off early in the game and came back at the end, and I suspect that he was off into the cheering section for most of the game.

Another event helped remind me that I wasn't at home. In one of the middle innings, a woman made her presence known, and I eventually found out that her child had spilled her drink a couple of rows up behind me, and it had made its way down the steep rows of seats. She was excusing herself so that she could clean up spill in my row. Presumably she did this for all the rows behind me, and she continued to do it for all the rows until she got to the landing below me. Of all cross-cultural things that I saw this entire trip, that one in particular perhaps blew my mind the most.


The Game:

First pitch, Carp vs. Dragons

This game was a first in a couple of ways. It was the first game that the home team lost so far on the trip, and it was also the first game where I saw any errors. The number of errors, at least in the games that I saw, were very low, as evidenced by the fact that I went into the third game without seeing any. In general, they seemed to be well below the MLB average for such things.

After trading zeros in the opening frame, the Dragons scored first in the bottom of the second on a single, a double, and some ground outs. That lasted an entire half-inning, as the Carp tied it up on a single that was brought around on advancing on a putout and legging out a follow-up single. (That was another inherent "late-70s NL" aspect of the Japanese game. Runners would advance on most fly-outs, and even some ground outs, as a matter of course, and first-to-third on a single and scoring from second on any single not hit directly at an outfielder were pretty much givens.)

The Carp would tack on a run in the 4th (on one of those rare errors), and then two in the fifth on a two-run homer by one their stable Westerners. Things largely cooled down for both teams until the eighth, where the Carp put across two more on a small-ball bonanza of base hits and sacrifices. The Dragons tried to put together a rally in the bottom of the ninth, peaking with a three-run homer with only one out, but the next two batters meekly struck out and popped to first, and the Dragons lost, 6-4.

The long stream of disappointed fans flooded the concourses back to the subway station, and this was the first game where there was no post-game victory broadcast from the field.


The Scorecard:

Carp vs. Dragons, 06/27/10. Carp win, 6-4.

Once again, I was manning the Scoremaster sheets. It being indoors, and with a couple of games under my belt, it lacked the extreme difficulty of the game previous.


The Accommodations:

Hamilton Hotel Black, Nagoya

I stayed for one night at the Hamilton Hotel Black in Nagoya. After my adventures in getting there, one of the first things that I asked for at the desk was a map of the area. Once I got back after the game, I thought I wandered into a different place. I thought that I might have accidentally booked into a "love hotel," as the entire downstairs area was filled with young Japanese couples. It turns out that I had just wandered into the hotel's free Happy Hour. While most hotels settle to give you a free continental breakfast, the Hamilton went them extra mile and gave free booze as well. Sadly, there was no whiskey to be had.

Keeping with its clientele (except me, obviously), my room was fun-sized, but a little on the hip and stylish side of things. It still had the prerequisite tiny bathroom and bed and desk and TV, but all the fixtures were in black, and the "Command console" was replaced with an actual clock radio, and the stow-away chair looked a lot like a bongo.

Click here to see all the photos from this trip.

2010 Japan I