Dan was still in town and hadn’t been to a couple of the stores I had already been to but they were ones I didn’t mind going back to so we made plans to meet up in Ikebukuro. Since I had the afternoon time constraint I got moving a little faster than he did that morning and ended up at Mint Ikebukuro by myself not long after they opened. After spending a little while there I walked the five or six blocks up to Coletre. Dan by this time had made it to Mint Ikebukuro so after shopping at Coletre I walked back down to meet up with him.
Shortly after we got together it was time for me to head to the Swallows game. After making some tentative plans to meet up after the game, I left him to his card shopping at Mint and caught a train to the stadium.
The last thing I expected to happen to me in Japan was to randomly run into someone I knew but as I was making my way to the exit at Gaiemman Station I caught sight of a tall American heading the opposite direction of the crowd. It was Jim Allen, John E. Gibson’s partner with the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast (and like John a journalist - which is probably the better way to refer to both of them rather than podcasters!). I called out “Hey Jim!” across the crowd and then - realizing that I had only met Jim briefly in 2013 and he might not recognize the person bellowing at him in a crowded subway station - I identified myself. He said he knew who I was - he recognized me from the Facebook posts John and I had both put up the day before. That was about the extent of our conversation - he was finished with his work at the stadium - so I think we finished with some “nice to see you”’s and kept moving in our respective directions. I found out later he had interviewed Stefan Romero of the Buffaloes at the ballpark for the podcast that day - as I’ll get to in a minute Romero ended up having a very good game that day.
I exited from the station and walked the few blocks up to the stadium - basically following the same path I had taken on my first night in Tokyo 15 days earlier when I was staying at the Nippon Seinenkan Hotel across the street from Jingu. When I was close to the stadium I encountered a small historic marker:
This apparently marks the location of the first bowling alley in Japan. The building is long gone I guess and the monument sits almost inside a hedge at the entrance to the parking lot for the TEPIA Advanced Technology Gallery next door to the stadium. I'm not a big bowler but I thought it was kind of a neat marker.
As I settled into my seat in the stadium my concerns about the weather turned out to be unnecessary. Not only did it not rain but the sun came out and the skies cleared for a while, making me worry that I might end up sunburned.
The Swallows took a 3-2 lead in the bottom of the second but Orix went back ahead for good in the top of the third on a three run home run from Romero. The Swallows scored another run in the bottom of the inning and then there was pretty much no offense after that. I did get to see Yamada steal a base to go with his home run - he was on his way to his fourth 30 home run/30 steal season in the last five years. The final score of the game was Buffaloes 5, Swallows 4. This would be the last ichi-gun game I would see on the trip.
The "Lucky 7" celebration was a little different at Jingu. Instead of launching jet balloons, everyone does the Umbrella Dance like they do when the team scores. I later learned that there's a prohibition on shooting off jet balloons in Tokyo-city so fans don't do it at either Jingu or Tokyo Dome.
You could see the new Olympic Stadium rising in the distance beyond the left field stands at Jingu:
After the game ended I headed over to Shibuya station. I wanted to take a look at two card shops over there - Mint Shibuya and Card Fanatic. Dan had gone to Coletre and Mint Shinjuku while I was at the game and was originally going to join me in Shibuya but there was a book he wanted to pick up in Jimbocho and as he was leaving the next day this was his only chance to get over there.
The crowds in Shibuya on a Saturday night were pretty overwhelming and I briefly entertained the notion of heading to Takadanobaba to again try to find Quad Sports' new location (especially since I didn't really expect either card shop to be all that interesting for me). I decided that since I was there I might as well make the best of it and I made my way to each of the stores. As expected, neither shop really had anything I was interested in and I called it a day, heading back to my hotel to rest up for my final full day in Japan.
5 comments:
That is kind of an eerie of the giant Olympic Stadium growing up next to Jingu Stadium which is about to pass into history.
This is kind of a random point, but about that bowling monument, I took a trip to Nagasaki 11 years ago and found one in that city claiming it was the site of Japan's first bowling game. Got a picture of the little monument with an 11 year younger me here:
https://ablogofsean.blogspot.com/2008/11/nagasaki-continued.html
Not sure which one is telling the truth there....:)
My wife pointed out that they both could be telling the truth - the monument in Tokyo is for the first bowling ALLEY while the one in Nagasaki is for the first bowling GAME. And since we're in Maryland I have to ask if it was duckpin bowling...
That is definitely a plausible explanation for the discrepancy.
Not sure if it was duckpin bowling...
The real question is if you got a beer from any of the beer girls?? So random to memorialize the first bowling game and bowling alley, did it have a year on the marker? Thanks for sharing!
Date on it was 1952 - actually there were a series of dates on it with descriptions but I don't know what the descriptions said (and I don't have a photo although there's one in the Reviews for the monument on Google Maps).
Didn't get a beer from a beer girl at Jingu although I did at Chiba Marine Stadium a couple of days earlier. I always forget to include stuff in these posts - I meant to mention that this game was the only time on the trip that I ran into food that I had an issue with. I ordered takoyaki here and I only got about halfway through it before I thought I was going to throw up. Didn't have any problem with it in Osaka but it didn't go down well here.
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