The Legend of the Fearsome Doala

This past Saturday I took a trip to the Nagoya Dome to catch the next to last home game of the season for Nagoya's baseball team the Chunichi Dragons.

I had received a request from my brother to get a ball from a Japanese game, so I arrived early at the dome to watch practice (and with some luck get a ball).

I stood out in left field for a while, and eventually a batting practice home run fell into my hands. Mission accomplished . . . but not quite. Apparently the protocol for the Dragons is that all balls (foul, home run etc) that leave the field during practice MUST BE THROWN BACK. Even after a skillfully butchered "ni-hongo wakarimasen" (I don't understand japanese) and maintaining said farce by explaining in broken englishified japanese that the ball was for my little brother back in the US . . . the whistle toting foul ball nazis made me throw the ball back. So close and yet so far. I also hung around until they killed the lights in the dome to maybe catch someone post game to grab a ball, but no luck. Maybe next season.

Anyway, after that business I walked over to the backstop immediately behind home plate to finish watching practice. As the game started, I stayed in that seat (2nd row immediately behind home), and figured I'd hang around until someone made me leave. That never happened, so my $15 nose bleed ticket plus an early arrival got me the best seat in the house.

Action Shot

The crowd for the game was awesome. It was more like a college ball game than a major league game. Each team had a fan club (each equipped with giant flags and a band), and the entire stadium joined in when they would start a cheer (subsequently they had a cheer for every single player). This meant that whenever the Dragons were at bat, the entire stadium was chanting non-stop.

Visitor's Fan Club

Dragons' Fan Club

On top of all that, it was actually a really good game. Both teams scored 4 runs in the first couple innings, and it ended up coming down to a bottom of the ninth, two outs, bases loaded full count. The guy fouled off about a half a dozen pitches before he got walked (not quite a winning home run, but a close game and a lot of fun).

A piece of the last at bat

As for the Doala . . . the team is the Dragons, and as such they have two big puffy dragons (pink - faolong and blue - shaolong) as sub-mascots. However the main mascot of the team is a blue koala with a blue baseball tail. Apparently he is half dragon half koala (hence Doala). He did some entertaining tumbling (flash kicks and a reverse full), made especially impressive by the fact that his giant mascot head went almost as high as his extended arms . . .

A shot of Doala (shamelessly pulled from the internets)

I think I forgot to mention the cheer squad

On an unrelated note, I finally got a rice cooker
(now I don't have to eat noodles every day)

Tokyo and Then Some

So last weekend was a bit too busy for me write, so this week I'll catch up.
(Lots of pictures, so I'm gonna center this one)

I was finaly able on the 10th to go get my alien registration card and with it a mobile, a bank account and the certainty of internet in my future. In a combined effort to play to Nathan's request for more food pics and to display the rediculousness of japanese technology, here are a couple pictures and a short video I took of my new mobile (the cheapest I could find at $90) functioning as a TV (a free service). All I was looking for was a phone, but somehow the cheapest phone ended up also being a TV, a camera with internal and external lenses, an mp3 player and has touch screen and facial recognition capabilities . . . like I said, rediculous

This past Monday was a day to celebrate old people (a national holiday), so last weekend was a long weekend. I decided to take this opportunity to pay a visit to Tokyo. I left at 07:30 on Saturday morning for my 5 hour bus ride to the metropolis. A relatively uneventful trip, but I did grab a couple snaps when we stopped.

A bit of scenery at the first stop

A tasty pork bun (half finished because I remembered I was hungry before I remembered to take a picture)

And some various juices that reminded me of Frost and his mild obsession

Arrival in Shinjuku

I found a famous statue

From there I headed to my hostel . . . I was a bit put off by the fact that I couldn't get in contact with any AIESECers in Tokyo (the MC and about 8 LCs are in or near the city) for a place to stay and some people to hang out with, but the hostel ended up being a good chice in the end . . . I arrived at the relatively new "Tokyo Ninja",

checked in and headed up to my "room".

After setting down my pack and updating the drivers on my dad's laptop, something that hasn't been done in years, so that I could actually transfer pictures from my camera to the laptop, I headed out to get the lay of the land and see if I could find some AIESECers. Internet wanderings combined with my new best friend google maps got me maps and directions to all the places I wanted to find. Wandering point the first: AIESEC Japan office. I headed here first in the hopes of catching some people before the end of the day (this was around 15:00). As seems to be becoming a trend, no one was around (no window for a ghostly pic this time). On my way back towards the hostel (in Asakusa) I made a quick pass through the electronics Mecca that is Akihabara.

While I can quite easily amuse myself wandering through this place for quiite some time (as I did the last time I was in Tokyo), I was a bit sickened by it this time around. While I have no issues with the geekiest of geeks (I go to school with them), I can not stand the fact that the mainstay of USAliens that come to Japan are unhealthy socially inept otaku who want to sit alone reading comics and cartoon porn playing video games, find a Japanese bride or some combination of the two. I grow weary of the poor perceptions brought about by these people traveling, and there is an overwhelming glut of them in Akihabara . . . but I digress . . . I spent about 30 minutes there before giving up and heading to my next stop, Ochanomizu. A place famous for guitars and all things thereof, quite entertaining. I spent the next few hours here mentally recouping from my previous stop. As I meandered through this piece of the city I sat by and watched numerous bands performing at corners and subway/railstations. I also looked through some guitar shops and bought some strings for my guitar. From Ochanomizu I went back to the hostel to check some directions and plan my evening.


I wanted an entertaining evening and to grab a piece of video, so I made for Shibuya. Making a hopefully soon to be followed first step, I made a short video of me walking through the well known intersection in front of Shibuya station for the OGX video.

Interesting fact: that's the busiest Starbucks in the world.

I paced through the alleys around Shibuya, saw a small parade,

listined to a bossa nova/conga band concert,

found the all important vagabond staple, a doner kebab stand,

and got asked by some marines on shore leave where they could find a drinkin good time. Definitely met the qualifier of entertaining, and it only cost me the subway ticket over and back (about 8 miles from my hostel, so I felt it was worth the two 190yen tickets). En route back to the Ninja I grabbed a few 8% ciders, in hopes of finding some kids in the hostel commons to drink and chat with.

Upon return I headed up to my "room" and took a much needed shower. I was in a 16 person room, and several had returned from their day's activities. I sat down and talked with a couple kids from Taiwan, they had done the Tokyo Disney thing and had exorbitant amounts of Disney crap. Some fun kids on a five day holiday from school . . . Now I've got a place to stay and a couple tour guides in Taiwan. There was also a guy from the UK, Matt, that I talked to for a while who was at the front end of a 16 month long "my life in accounting doesn't seem like enough anymore, so I shall wander the earth" kind of trip. Quite an interesting guy, nice to have an intelligent conversation. After the roommates gave up for the night, I to my cider and made for the commons in the basement. As luck would have it there was a group six or seven Britts hanging around some beers and some tables, so I grabbed a seat and joined in. One of the guys was on something of an extended stay, staying at the hostel at no charge in exchange for acting as cleaning staff, likely on his way to China at the end of the month. Three of the kids, Damien, Emily and Zoe, were the larger part of the ramblings and would become my travel mates in the comming days. After the others all knocked off for the night, Zoe and I stayed up for a while chatting about Japanese studies and the efficacy (or lack there of) of the current higher educational system in a world based not on what but who you know.

Sunday morning I once again checked the MC office as well as the Japan Alpinist Society . . . both were vacant (quite bothersome always traveling on weekends). I heard from UK Matt the previous night that on Sunday's in Yoyogi Park every week there were a miriad of local bands that would come out to play on the street, so I decided it would be a fair way to waste some time. First I stopped at a ramen shop that had a line of people waitng outside, and I got some tsukemen

Pretty good, but not even close to the tonkotsu ramen in Fukuoka

It was a nice park, quite big, and a nice contrast to the city around it.
I walked through the park not seeing any bands, but I eventually heard music off in the distance and followed it. There were indeed a multitude of bands allong the street on the outside edge of the park.

Kind of funny, the first misician I saw was a girl playing keyboard and singing that I had seen a week or two before outside the train station near my boxing gym in Nagoya. Most of the bands were lacking at best, but a couple were quite good, and I sat down to listen to their sets. After a while I remebered one of the kids saying that there was to be a Wii bowling bash at the hostel that night. Always ready to demonstrate my mastery of the Wii bowling, I decided to head back.

Unfortunately I arrived just too late and missed out on name tags and team selection. I gussled a bit of nihonshu and matcha and downed some snacks while watching the competition throw their Wii balls.

Half way into the follow up Wii tennis tourney I sat down to converse with Damien, Emily and Zoe. After I tried to convince Damien that I had defeated Super Ghouls and Ghosts, he started downloading it so that he could convey the game's insurmountable frustrations to the girls. Chatting and drinking continued amongst the crowd and a tasty Chinese style potato dish was prepared by the resident Britt, Luke. At some point or another plans were created and the decision was made that I would head to watch Sumo with Damien, Emily and Zoe in the morning.

Sumo was quite fun, and I recommend it if you get the chance

Damien left early on to wander for a bit, and upon his return Zoe decided to head home. Damien, Emily and I opted to hang around for a bit, and ended up staying until the end. I'm glad I did, as it afforded me the opportunity to see the two Yokozuna in action. The three of us stopped at a convinience store on the way back and grabbed some beer and, for me, some food. When we got back to the hostel, we sat for a while, chatted for a while and drank our beers. Fun was had, Super Ghouls and Ghosts was played, frustrations were understood and I headed off to catch my night bus home.

From here, my bus left Shinjuku at 23:00. My bus arrived at Nagoya station at 07:00. My train left from Nagoya station and arrived at my station, Shibata station, at 07:30. I dropped my pack off as I passed my appartment, and I started work at 08:00 . . .

Something I find both anoying and amusing about this trip: I left my small towel/rag in the hostel in Asakusa (annoying part), and it was a towel/rag that I had gotten from a hostel in Asakusa durring my previous stay in Tokyo 3 years ago (amusing part). Born from Asakusa hostel and so it shall return.

At work this week I started on the preliminary experiments for my actual project, so that's somewhat exciting (in an "I'm an engineer and I get exited about polymers" kind of way). . .

Yeah that's my uniform (I know you're jealous)

And look, it's like a layered shot (only if you drink this one your insides will polymerize)

I sent out an email to AIESEC at Nagoya City University for possible future endeavours, but no reply yet. I also chatted up sir Chuck, and I'm looking to go hang out with him in Honk Kong for a few days in October.

My mission for this weekend was to find a used book store, and I succeeded. This means a few things. Thing one is that I can now get cildren's books to read and help build my Japanese literacy muscles. Things two and three are a bit more in the range of general nerdery. I can now get cheap comic books, and I can look through stockpiles of old video games (consequently I found a copy of the Japanese version of my favorite game for $10 and couldn't help myself).
For those who can't read Japanese (or small print on globes), the name of this game is "Super Chinese World" . . . I know nothing of this game (other than its hillarious title)

I also bought a male-male audio cable while I was in Akihabara, so now I can play my iPod through my laptop's speakers (which is preferable to always wearing headphones). That means I now have: music (very important), boxing gym to workout in (very important #2), 1 liter of milk a day, 1 liter of orange juice a day (found some at the 100yen store) and books to read . . . save for some people to hang out with on nights and weekends, I'm pretty well settled in.

Monday (22nd) is a day off, and my fellow UFOers (my department) and I are going to play some tennis and do some barbiqueing . . . sweet
My fellow UFOers found me a dark beer
In case you are wondering . . . all delicious
Some ohhh so tasty purple sweet potatoes
Mmmmm Japanese Bitch Beer
And the obligatory peace sign photo

And after burning all the left over food, every single beer can, paper plate and cigarette butt was picked up and carried away (cleanest post party I've ever seen)

Indeed it was sweet

One More Sport Down in the Land of the Rising Sun

Things to note . . . found a bike, tokyo next weekend, AIESEC in Nagoya, boxing and yet another broken piece of me

I managed to make it to train two times this week. Not really anything too exciting thus far in the land of boxing: I have to learn a completely new way of throwing a hook and upper, but my straight is good. But it feels good to be training again. Something I find entertaining: pre-workout weight 76 kg, post-workout weight 72 kg . . . that's 10 lbs worth of sweat. As for the new broken piece of me . . . I managed (likely though going to hard while shadow boxing) to pull my right pectoral muscle on Friday, and it is right up at the top of the list of most painfull and most annoying muscles to injure. Just take a minute to think about how difficult it is to not use your chest muscles (ie not using, not stretching and not putting any pressure on) . . . makes sleeping a bit difficult. I guess I'll have to take a few days off. I also noticed that I have been exceptionally sore, and it's soreness that doesn't seem to pass. Then I thought about it, and I get pretty much zero potassium in my diet here (my usual liter of OJ per day at home is no longer cost effecient), so I figured I'd grab some bananas. The issue there is that I usually get my weeks grocery shopping done at the value drug store, and they don't sell bananas. I have to go to the super market (an even farther walk) in order to get bananas, and I refuse to do my regular shopping there (everything costs 50-100 yen more there). Pain in the ass as it may be, I guess I'll just have to make a banana trip once or twice a week . . . Also after my workout on Friday I stayed for a bit outside the train station to watch some of the bands who were playing (there are always musicians outside this particular station). One of them was good enough for me to drop a few duckets on their cd. Mostly for some entertaining music but also because the band's name was Capsule Wagon Squeegee.

So having the foresight to know a bike would be extremely useful (and knowing how absurdly expensive they are . . . even at the recycle shop a crappy one was about $100), since I arrived I have been watching a few abandoned bikes to see how abandoned they really were. Good possibility number one sits right outside my front steps. It has two flat tires, a rusted chain and has not moved an inch since I arrived (two and a half weeks). Knowing that some people around here ride on flats, and that some people are simply so anal that they will park in the exact same spot every day, I conducted a small experiement. I moved said bike from its usual spot one week ago, and concequently it continued to be immobile. Possibility number two similarly had two flats and a rusted chain, but also had two more prevailent signs of immobility. The bike had been sitting in this one spot long enough that ivy type vines had grown, wrapped themselves around the wheels and spokes and been arouond long enough to die (while still connected to the ground). This pretty clearly tells me that the bike hasn't been moved in what is logically at least a year. There was also a massive and intricate spider web between the bike and its surroundings (detailing no motion at all for at least a few days, or weeks). Well, option number two had a derailuer and option one didn't, so I went for number two. This is where I decided to take a trip.

Durring the week I had located AIESEC at the Nagoya City University, and it is conveniently located in the vicinity of my boxing gym. So I headed that way. En route I stopped at one of the cycle shops I had found the last time I walked to the gym. I thought enough ahead to check the size of the tires on what was to be my new bike. Knowing the nature of the beast I wanted to buy a couple tubes for the future (also not forgoing the possibility that both tubes were already busted). After a bit of searching the shop owner came to the conclusion that he didn't have tubes of the right size (the bike has moutain tires on it rather than road tires which are the norm). He did however say that if he could find some they would run me 2000 yen each (twice the price of a "normal" tube). I gave up on that idea for the moment, and asked if he had a pump. He did, and I bought it for 1000 yen (need my own pump because no one else in my appartment building, save for the ghost bike, rides a bike . . . they all drive or walk). Onward I walked, and about fifteen minutes after helping another cyclist find the shop I had just come from, I came to another cycle shop. I asked the grandma shop owner if she had any mountain bike tubes, and with some luck she did. They were $15 a piece . . . not great but not the worst it could be. . . I also grabbed a bike lock (it too was $15, but she gave me the lot for $40). So, with supplies in tow, I continued on. After the 4-5 mile walk to my gym, I headed east towards the university. Along the way I stopped at another recycle shop, but this was not the wonderful thift store that the other one was. This was more of an old things are trendy shop where you can buy an old pair of addidas or origional air jordans for a few hundred dollars. I arrived at the uni and headed towards the student center (where the internet had told me AIESEC was located at this uni) . . . alas it was not to be found. I then asked about a dozen different people if they knew about AIESEC. Interestingly enough everyone I asked knew about AIESEC, but no one knew where their office was. One guy knew one of the AIESECers, but when he tried to call there was no answer. It was hot out so I grabbed some water from a water fountain nearby, and I doused my head and carried on. I walked through the touristy part of the city for about 3 minutes, and, after having my fill, hopped on a train home. Next I took a trip to the bath house to wash off the day's heat and filth, cooked up some dinner and passed out (oh yeah, I also grabbed my abandoned bike).

That was Saturday . . . Sunday I did some shopping (got some bananas), and in the afternoon/evening I played on the company baseball team. That was entertaining. The team's name is the Idlers, and we played a double-header. Strange thing about baseball in Japan is that there are two types of basball: koushiki (hardball) and nanshiki (softball). The hardball version is the standard baseball that we all know. The softball version has the same rules (minus most of the safety equipment), but the ball is more like a tennis ball than a baseball (solid rubber like a bouncy ball, but only a bit heavier than a tennis ball). The lack of weight (and the fact that I haven't played baseball in over a decade) lead to me throwing out my elbow. Our team had enough people on it to have two complete teams, so we had a total swich of players between the first and second games. The other team was not so large. I played in the second game, and lucky me for the second game they brough in the kid who pitches on his university team. To add to it he's a submarine style pitcher, and they also brought in a good catcher. We were up one to nothing in the first game, but they managed a 2 run "sayonara homerun" in the bottom of the last inning. The second game we didn't fair so well. Our starting pitcher was a first time pitcher (he walked 10 in one and a half innings). The rest of the game went about the same way. I walked my first time up and stole second (but got called out stealing third), struck out my second time up and got hit by a pitch and stranded my third. We would alternate having one person from the batting team being the home plate (and only) ump, and one inning in the first game the guy for our side that was umping got hit square in the jaw by a foul . . . but since we were playing with rubber balls he was fine. I thought it was interesting that here they only play soft baseball up until high school, and even then both soft and hard options are available.

This comming weekend is a long weekend for me, so I've decided to take a trip to Tokyo. I'm planning on swinging by the AIESEC Japan office and probably to LC at Tokyo University. I did most of the sightseeing bits last time I came to Tokyo, so this time I'm just gonna do some AIESECing and some wandering. I remember Masato mentioned Ochanomizu for music stuff, so I think I'll swing by there too. If anyone's got any other ideas, send em my way before Friday.

Congrats to my brother and sister on their 21st on Sunday