Trip Overview Part 13 - Day 16-17 - Tokyo, Kamagaya and Departure

The weather forecast for the Kanto area for Sunday, June 9th, was cloudy with a good chance of rain in the late afternoon.  My plan for my last full day in Japan was to catch a Fighters' farm team game in Kamagaya and it looked like the rain was going to hold off just long enough for them to get the game in.

I started the day though by just going for a walk.  The hotel I was staying at for the last week I was in Japan was near Asakusabashi Station which was near where the Kanda River meets the Sumida River.  I knew there were walkways on either side of the Sumida so I decided to walk over and check it out.  Here's a photo looking north from the south bank of the Kanda where it enters the Sumida - the bridge is the one used by the JR Chuo/Sobu line:.

I crossed the Sumida on the Ryogoku Bridge and got on the riverside pathway on the east bank.  What was really cool on that pathway is that there were large posters showing old artwork and photos depicting the area at different times in history.  I took a ton of pictures - here's just a few of them:

I came up from the riverbank over by Ryogoku Kokugikan - the famous sumo hall which is also home to the sumo museum.  I'm not that interested in sumo myself (other than what interesting cards SumoMenkoMan finds) but I was still looking for the program from a recent sumo tournament and I was hoping I'd be able to find it here.  Unfortunately the gift shop wasn't open that day so I had to settle for picking up a sumo magazine and a couple packs of sumo cards for him from a Newdays newstand at the JR station nearby.

I was somewhat disappointed that there didn't seem to be any way to get a good photo of the sumo hall.  Here's a couple attempts:

That last photo was taken from the platform of Ryogoku Station as I waited for the train to take me out to the Fighter's park.   Kamagaya is located east of Tokyo in Chiba prefecture so I needed to take the train to Funabashi and switch to another train going north to get to Kamagaya Station.  The Fighters run a bus from there to the stadium every half hour on game days and I planned it so that I would get there just in time to catch the 1130 bus.

As it turns out I did get there in time to catch the 1130 bus but I didn't realize where the bus was and I missed it.  Part of the reason I missed it was that for some reason I had it in my head that the bus would be dressed up with Fighters paraphernalia and it turns out that it was a standard municipal bus - I saw it pull away as I stood there confused.  I had some back and forth with Deanna Rubin about it via Facebook messenger and she was helpful as always (although distracted as she was doing her own thing on a Saturday night).  I briefly considered trying to take a taxi or walking - it was only about a mile and half to the park - but I eventually realized where I needed to be - it was obvious once I saw this sign:

I caught the 1200 bus and headed to the ballpark.  I think the bus fare was 100 yen but I can't remember if I paid cash or used my Suica card.  As we rode along I watched the countryside outside the bus.  It was funny - I had read some of Deanna's posts about Kamagaya to research going there, including this post describing the first time she went - she walked there on Christmas Day in 2007.  I actually recognized some of the scenery I could see from the bus from her post.  It was only maybe a 10 minute trip before we reached the park.

The ballpark is officially known as "Fighters Kamagaya Stadium" and opened for business in 1997.  Previously the Fighters' farm team played on the other side of Tokyo Bay in Kanagawa prefecture - first at a field on the Tama River in Kawasaki and then from 1992 to 1996 in Sagamihara.  They'd made enough of an investment in the facilities that they've continued to keep their farm team here even after moving to Hokkaido after the 2003 season.  (I should also mention that since five of the other six teams in the Eastern League are also in Kanto it would greatly increase the travel costs of the league to move the team to Hokkaido.)

I paid 1800 yen for a ticket in the section behind home plate and went on it.  This park was light years beyond the only other ni-gun park I'd been in - Seibu #2 four days earlier.  Beyond having seats it also had bathrooms and concession stands.  I bought lunch (along with some Nippon-Ham products that had Home Run Sausage cards) and went to my seat.

The game itself was fairly uneventful.  The Fighters were taking on the Baystars' farm team who took a 1-0 lead in the top of the second.  They extended their lead to 4-0 in the third on a solo home run from Shumei Miyamoto and a two run shot from Seiya Hosokawa.  The Fighters got on the board in the sixth on a solo home run of their own from Kazuyoshi Ebihara, the team's first ever ikusei player:



That was the end of the scoring in the game though.  Edison Barrios (who may have been the only other Westerner at the ballpark that afternoon) came on in the ninth and notched a save in the Baystars' 4-1 victory.

At one point during the game I was looking at the dark clouds in the sky off to the West and starting thinking that they were going to need to turn the lights on soon.  Then I realized that the ballpark didn't have any lights!.

There was some sort of kid's fair going on outside the ballpark.  There was a miniature Shinkansen train that was taking kids on a ride around the ballpark so every so often we'd see it going around outside the outfield fence:

The game ended around 3:30 and I headed out immediately.  I got extremely lucky - I came down the stairs from the park and was able to jump right on the bus which left a minute or too later.  We got back to Kamagaya Station and I was able to catch a train back to Funabashi without having to wait very long.  I had a little longer of a wait for the JR Chuo line train to head back to Tokyo but it wasn't long before I was on my way.  I was heading back to Takadanobaba as I want to try again to find the new location for Quad Sports.

I noticed something when the train pulled into Suidobashi Station, right by the Tokyo Dome where the Giants game against the Marines had just ended.  I could hear the music being played over the loudspeakers on the platform from inside the train - it was the Giants' fight song.  I had noticed on Friday that the song was being played on the speakers outside the Dome but I hadn't noticed it in the station.

It was raining by the time I got to Takadanobaba a mere 90 minutes after I left the ballpark.  I quickly found Quad Sports' new location and spent an hour or so there going through baseball cards.  I then hopped on a Yamanote Line train to Okachimachi where I went to my final card shop in Japan - G-Freak.  After spending a little while there I headed back to my hotel, grabbing dinner at the Sugiya down the street again before calling it a day.

It was raining heavily in Tokyo on Monday, June 10th.  My flight was scheduled to leave from Haneda at 1740 that afternoon so I had time in the morning and early afternoon to do a little sightseeing.  My main goal for the day was to spend whatever cash I had left on me and to try to use up the balance on my Suica card.

I had pretty much packed everything up the night before so I was able to get moving fairly quickly that morning.  I checked out of my hotel but was able to have them store my suitcase there so I didn't have to find (and pay for) a storage locker at a train station.  I headed out with only a vague plan for where I was going.

I decided that despite the rain I wanted to head down to the area around the Imperial Palace.  I had kind of a silly destination in mind:

This is Budokan, the arena made famous in the 1970's by the album "Cheap Trick at Budokan".  Bob Dylan and Eric Clapton also released live albums recorded here (along with many others but these are the artists that I listen to the most). 

I spent the next hour or so walking around the Imperial Gardens.  And by that I don't mean through the Gardens, I mean around - the Gardens are closed on Mondays.  Still it was kind of interesting to see the moat and palace walls:

It was still raining pretty hard and I decided to head over to Tokyo Station to grab something to eat and do some shopping.  I got a T-shirt from the Ultraman store for my oldest daughter and polo shirts for my youngest daughter and my wife at the Studio Ghibli store.

While wandering through the depths of Tokyo Station, I came across this capsule machine that seemed a bit out of place:

I'm really not sure why there's a capsule machine full of Carp items there.

It was past noon and I decided I needed to start getting ready for the airport.  I headed back to my hotel to pick up my bags.  I was quite happy to discover that I could take a train from the Asakusabashi subway station near my hotel non-stop to Haneda Airport.  I'd like to say that I had picked the hotel for that reason but it was just dumb luck.  I was successful in my goal off burning off the balance on my Suica card - I think I had less than 100 yen left on it when I got off the train at the airport.

I ran into an unexpected issue at checkin - my bag was overweight!  It seems that the 1800 baseball cards I had acquired during the trip were heavier than I had anticipated.  To avoid paying the $100 fee I moved one of the 500 card boxes from my suitcase to my backpack.

I spent the last of my cash on snacks at the airport while waiting for my flight so both goals for the day were met.  The flight from Tokyo to Toronto was uneventful - I watched the last few episodes of the second season of "Star Trek Discovery"* and took a nap.

*I've been a Star Trek fan since I was 7 but I've resisted watching "Star Trek Discovery" because I've not been willing to pay for the CBS All Access streaming service which is the only way to watch it in the US.  Outside of the US however it is available on Netflix which I do have a subscription for.  I watched all of Season One when I spent two weeks in the UK in September of 2018 and watched all of Season Two in Japan on this trip.

We went through customs in Toronto despite the fact it wasn't in the US and I was a little concerned about the process.  American citizens get an $800 personal allowance on bringing merchandise into the country from overseas.  My rough guess on the stuff I was bringing in was about $1100!  That wasn't all baseball cards but obviously the bulk of it was.  From what I had seen online I figured the duty I was going to have to pay was only around $30 so it wasn't a big deal but I was just concerned about the hassle.  It turns out I didn't really need to worry about anything - I got sent to a separate line which took a little longer but I didn't need to pay anything extra.

My fears about having a hassle in Toronto did come true however - my flight to Baltimore got delayed for about 45 minutes.  This wouldn't have been such a big deal except that Air Canada wasn't telling us anything either in the airport or online.  In fact their website was saying that my flight had left on time from the gate despite the fact that there had never been a plane at the gate!  The airport's WiFi wasn't very stable either and I was having difficulty getting in contact with my daughter who was going to pick me up in Baltimore - I wanted to let her know that I was still in Toronto despite what Air Canada's web site said.  Eventually the plane showed up and we all got on it for another uneventful flight.  My daughter found me at the airport around the time my suitcase showed up at baggage claim and I was home about an hour later, just after midnight East Coast time and the end of my 37 hour Monday.  It had taken me roughly 23 hours from picking up my luggage at my hotel to walking in the door of my home.

I've always felt that the jet lag coming back from the Far East is worse than the jet lag going over and this trip was no exception although the nap I had been able to take between Tokyo and Toronto helped.  I had planned on going back to work on Wednesday but after spending much of Tuesday afternoon asleep on my couch I decided to take Wednesday off as well.  Our dog was happy to have someone sack out on the couch with him:

It's funny - if you'd asked me in the first few weeks after I got home when I was going to go back to Japan, I'd have said that I probably wouldn't be going back.  After all I had done most of what I wanted to do there.  But in the months since then I've started thinking about things I hadn't gotten to do that I wanted to.  For example, I'd still like to see a Dragons' ni-gun game at Nagoya Stadium and I didn't make it up to Sapporo.  I watched an Orix Buffaloes game from the ballpark in Kobe on PL TV a while back and I'd like to see one there in person.  So I suspect I'll be making another trip over in a few years.  Hopefully I'll be in better shape and be able to do it without using a cane.

This obviously is the last of the "Monsters Of NPB" Tour posts.  I can't believe it's taken me almost four months to get them all done.  The only posts now I have left to do that are trip related are the card shop posts.  I still have 16(!) of those to do - if I'm lucky I'll get them done before Christmas...

Trip Overview Part 12 - Day 15 - Tokyo

After a couple of very busy days involving traveling outside of Tokyo, I was looking forward to a couple low-key days for my final weekend in Japan.  My only firm plans for Saturday, June 8th was an afternoon game between the Swallows and Buffaloes at Meiji Jingu Stadium.   I was a little concerned about the weather since the forecast for the entire weekend in Kanto was calling for rain but in the morning at least it was just overcast.

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.

Most of the activity in the game happened in the first three innings.  Orix got on the board in top of the first on a two run homer from Romero.  In the bottom of the inning the Swallows got a two run home run of their own from Tetsuto Yamada and for the first time I got to see the Umbrella Dance that Swallow fans do when the team scores:

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.

Trip Overview Part 11 - Day 14 - Tokyo & Yokohama

My biggest fear about my Japan trip was the one factor that I had no control over - the weather.  I had been quite fortunate for the first two weeks of the trip but my luck appeared to be running out when I woke up on Friday, June 7th.  The forecast for the Kanto region called for rain for that day.  What's worse is that the weekend's forecast wasn't looking a whole better.  I had tickets for Yokohama this evening and Yakult for Saturday afternoon.  I also had plans to see a Fighters farm team game in Kamagaya on Sunday but at least I didn't already have a ticket yet.

There wasn't anything I could do but keep on keeping on so I went ahead with the plans I had for that Friday.  My first item on the agenda that morning was the Japanese Baseball Hall Of Fame over at the Tokyo Dome.  I got over there about a half hour before it opened so I had a little time to walk around near by.

Korakuen Stadium used to stand on the site adjacent to the Tokyo Dome but as far as I can tell there's no marker or memorial for it.  The only thing even close to a remnant of the old park is the Cenotaph that was erected outside it in 1981 that listed the baseball players killed during the war.  This now stands near the Dome - it's at street level between the Dome and the amusement park just north of it:

I had a couple minutes to walk into The Ballpark Store next door to the Hall Of Fame.  This store stocks hats and other apparel for all 12 NPB teams.  I bought a Dragons hat here during my 2013 trip but I didn't get anything this time around.  I was looking to see what they stocked in the way of baseball cards but I didn't see any.

At 10 I headed into the Hall Of Fame.  Admission was just 600 yen.

This was my second ever visit to the Hall - I had been there on my previous trip back in 2013.  I was severely jet-lagged on my last visit so I didn't think I got as much out of it as I could have.  I was much more rested this time but I still managed to spend less than an hour in the museum.

Once you pay your admission you have to go downstairs to get to the museum itself.  At the foot of the stairs is a display commemorating the 2019 Hall Of Fame inductees:

The first room you enter after you come down the stairs and turn left contains "lockers' for each of the 12 NPB teams.  Each "locker" contains a player's uniform and other team paraphernalia:

The second room is dedicated to professional baseball.  It looked like the major exhibits were unchanged from my previous visit so I didn't pay a lot of attention to them.  Instead I looked at some of the smaller items that I had not noticed before - like this poster showing the history of the NPB teams name changes and mergers:

There was also this poster for the 1981 Nippon Series between the Giants and the Fighters.  At the time the two teams shared Korakuen Stadium so the entire Series was played in one ballpark.

The next room was for the "History Of Baseball".  This featured a display of baseball cards:

I think this is the 1949 "Dreaming Of Baseball" Karuta set (JK 1).  This is the same set I saw here in 2013 but now they are also displaying the reading cards as well as the picture cards.

There were also displays here for Japanese players in MLB as well as MLB tours of Japan.  Here's a display they had up for Ichiro:

Another item I noticed here was an autographed base that Rickey Henderson had given Yutaka Fukumoto when he broke Fukumoto's record for most steals (1065):

The next section was for amateur baseball.  There was a display of the jerseys that I think are from the most recent summer Koshien Tournament (at least the Osaka Toin jersey anyway):

I still get a kick out of the Cal Ripken World Series display.  I was at the championship game in 2016 that's celebrated in the frame in the center of the photo.  That was the last year the Series was played in Aberdeen, Maryland, not far from my home.

Just after the amateur baseball materials is displays for Women's Baseball.  There's a case dedicated to the Japan Women's Baseball League (JWBL):

There were also a couple displays for the Women's Samurai Japan team that has dominated the last couple Women's Baseball World Cups:

There were also displays here for the men's National Teams both amateur and professional including displays for the 2006 and 2009 World Baseball Classic champions:

The next room is the Hall Of Fame itself.  The main thing in this room are the plaques on the walls for all the Hall Of Famers:

This room also featured a couple of other items.  There was a display commemorating when Shohei Ohtani hit the roof of the Tokyo Dome a few years back:

There was a display of materials from Shigeo Nagashima's People's Honor Award ceremony in 2013:

My visit was about a month into the Reiwa Era so the Hall had a couple displays dedicated to the end of the Heisei Era and the beginning of the new one.  For their final game of the Heisei Era on April 29th the Orix Buffaloes wore throwback BlueWave jerseys.  Every jersey had Akira Ohgi's number on it as April 29th would have been Ohgi's 84th birthday.  (Ohgi had managed the BlueWave from 1994 to 2001 and was the "merged" Orix Buffaloes' first manager in 2005.  He passed away in late 2005.)  The Hall had a display showing one of the uniforms:

Additionally there was display of baseball's from the final games of the Heisei Era:

And also from the first games of the Reiwa Era:

There was a special exhibit going on dealing with uniforms.  I took a bunch of photos but I'm not entirely sure what was going on.  It's pretty obvious who some of the jersey's in the photos that follow belonged to.

The Hall Of Fame doesn't really have a gift shop but there are a handful of items for sale near the front door.  Mostly what they have are little knick-knacks but they also have a bunch of postcards of the Hall Of Fame plaques.  I think they've added this since my first visit here.  Each postcards is 100 yen.  I'm not sure how many different Hall Of Famers have postcards as it's certainly not all of them.  I kind of got carried away here and ended up buying 20 postcards in all, picking up ones for Koji Akiyama, Yutaka Fukumoto, Atsuya Furuta, Isao Harimoto, Senichi Hoshino, Kazuhisa Inao, Tsutomu Itoh, Tomoaki Kanemoto, Sachio Kinugasa, Kimiyasu Kudoh, Shigeo Nagashima, Futoshi Nakanishi, Katsuya Nomura, Hiromitsu Ochiai, Sadaharu Oh, Akira Ohgi, Shigeru Sugishita, Tsutomu Wakamatsu and Hisashi Yamada.  If you've counted you'll see that's only 19 - I bought two of the Sugishita postcard and sent one to Zippy Zappy when I got home.  Here's the Hoshino, Nomura and Ochiai postcards:

It had started to rain while I was in the Hall Of Fame but I was able to stay under cover after I exited the museum and walked along the concourse outside the Toyko Dome.  Two of the gates for the Dome are named for Nagashima and Oh (despite the fact that neither of them ever played there).  The gates are each marked by a large mural of the namesake player:

I'd seen these murals on my first trip to Japan but I must not have noticed just how ugly the Nagashima one looks.  I know that the image of him losing his helmet is famous but his face looks ridiculously contorted.

The Giants have a team shop right by the Nagashima gate that I took a quick look in.  Again I didn't find any baseball cards.

I checked out the sports book store Oaks in the "Yellow Building" just south of the Dome.  This store occupies the same location as Yamashita, a sports book store that was here from the late 40's until early 2013.  Deanna Rubin had told me a while back that everyone still refers to the store as Yamashita.  The store did stock the latest packs of baseball cards as well as the Calbee team books.  I was looking for the program from the most recent Sumo tournament for a friend of mine but they didn't have it.

It was closing in on noon now and I had plans to meet up with Dan at Wrappers in Jimbocho.  I got down there first but ran into issues finding the store.  Dan showed up a few minutes later and guided me to the store (I'll go into the issue more when I do my post about the store).  After an hour or so at the shop I headed back up the Tokyo Dome (only one stop away on the Mita line) to grab a bite to eat with John E. Gibson of the Japan Baseball Weekly podcast.  John was at the Dome to try to get an interview with someone for that week's podcast - he was able to catch up with Brandon Laird of the Marines who were playing the Giants that evening.  It was great to get a chance to catch up with him.  He dubbed my trip the "Monsters Of NPB Tour" which I'm going to tag all my overview posts with.

It was still raining when I left the Dome and was not showing any signs of heading up.  I checked online and discovered that the Swallows game that evening had been postponed but the Baystars game I had tickets for was still on.  I caught up with Dan at the Akihabara Station and we headed south to Yokohama.  Dan was going to go with me to Mint Yokohama even though he wasn't going to the game.

It's about an hour long trip from Tokyo to Yokohama and Dan and I got off at Yokohama Station in the middle of the evening rush hour.  It was a bit of a mad house getting through the crowd and making our way to the card shop.  I had pretty much finished up at the store when I checked my phone again, fully expecting to see that the Baystars game was postponed.  To my surprise, it wasn't and I realized that it was 1700 and the game was scheduled for 1800 - I needed to get moving.  I said my goodbyes to Dan and headed back to Yokohama Station.  Luckily Yokohama Stadium is only a short train ride from the Station so it wasn't long before I was at the ballpark.

I had really been looking forward to going to the game in Yokohama.  I had really enjoyed the park when I was there in 2013 and I was interested in seeing how the renovations the team was doing to the park were going - some of these renovations were preparations to the park hosting the Olympic baseball games next year.  I had also learned some interesting things about the site itself.  The park that the ballpark sits in was the site of a baseball game in 1896 in which "a team from Tokyo's Ichikō high school convincingly defeated a team of resident foreigners from the Yokohama Country & Athletic Club".  I believe this was the first time a Japanese team had defeated a team of foreigners and it greatly contributed to the popularity of baseball in Japan.  There was a ballpark built in the park on the site of the current park that hosted a game of the MLB tour on November 18th, 1934 (which the All Americans won 21-4).  This park also was the site of the first night game in NPB in August 17th, 1948 between the Giants and the Dragons.  The old park was in bad shape by the 1970's and was torn down in 1977 to make way for the new park.

There are plaques for Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig at the foul poles of the ballpark (Ruth's is at the left field pole while Gehrig is at the right field pole) to commemorate the old park being used in 1934.  I was hoping to be able to see these as well.

So I had been looking forward to going to the ballpark.  But by the time I actually got there I was in a bad mood.  First of all I was tired.  I had had late nights the two previous nights and was anticipating another one this evening.  Secondly I was wet and cold by the time I got to the park.  My bad mood made things that wouldn't have normally bothered me - like the fact that I had to walk all the way around the ballpark to get to where I could enter the park - seem to be major irritations.   It had been raining since 1000 that morning  and I was in disbelief that the Baystars had not called the game, especially once I got to my seat and saw that the tarp was still on the field.

Still I had pretty good seats and the Baystars were playing the Lions so I was trying to make the best of it.  Plus my favorite Baystars pitcher - Shota Imanaga - was starting that night.  The start of the game was delayed a little bit so I walked around a little under the stands.  I was hoping to get something to eat but there were long lines at all the food vendors and my bad mood was making me impatient and not inclined to give the Baystars any money.  I was also unable to figure out how to get over to the foul poles - there was a divider in the stands that prevented me from just walking over from my seats.

I will give the team credit - by the time the game started the rain had stopped and I don't think it rained anymore during the rest of the game.  The Lions scored a couple runs in the top of the fourth and the Baystars responded with two of their own in the bottom of the inning.  But Shuta Tonosaki hit a solo home run in the fifth to put the Lions up for good in the fifth and they scored three more runs in the seventh and eighth innings to win the game 6-2.  Imanaga struck out 12 in seven innings of work but also walked five.  He gave up five runs on seven hits.  Lions starter Kona Takahashi held the Baystars to just two runs on three hits (and two walks) in seven innings.  But I was long gone by the time the game ended.

I hated leaving the game early but again - I was tired, cold and wet.  And for the first time I actually had to deal with rude Japanese fans.  They weren't being rude to me specifically (at least I don't think so) but the fans on the other side of the aisle were my seat was were constantly standing up and screwing around.  And not in a fans cheering way either.  I wouldn't have cared but every time they stood up they blocked my view of the batter.  If I hadn't been in a such a bad mood I probably wouldn't have cared so much but I wasn't having it that evening.  So I left after five innings.

I still hadn't eaten dinner so by the time I had taken the train back up to Tokyo I was starving.  I finally stopped for dinner at a Sukiya restaurant a couple blocks from my hotel.  Sukiya is a chain of gyudon restaurants - I had eaten at one in Odawara with Ryan a week earlier.  By the time the game was over I was sitting in the warm, dry restaurant, eating my three cheese gyudon and nursing a large beer.

Again I hated leaving the game early but I loved getting back to my hotel room probably two hours earlier than I would have otherwise.  This left me well rested for the last two days of my trip.