L.W.O.D. '08 pt. 2: Days 4-6

Day 4 (TUE):
Rain again... luckily today's game was never in doubt because it was in a dome. F'n domes. Oh well. We headed over to Suidobashi station and walked over to Tokyo Dome City and met up with meltin faces again. meltin faces was able to win a big ass stitch doll after he sunk a basketball in some game. Congrats! We got some beers and headed over to the Tokyo Dome to check out the team store and the Hall of Fame. this was my third time to visit the Hall and it's a pretty cool place, lots of interesting historical stuff and modern things as well. The one disappointing thing was that one of the coolest exhibitions, the all-star game exhibition, was swapped with a Japanese national team exhibition. I'd guess because of the Olympics. It was pretty lame. The game was pretty bad too, Baystars suffered a pretty healthy beat-down. The Tokyo Dome is terrible. The seats are tiny, and the aisles are narrow. It just sucks! With the T-dome visit, dude? has passed me for total number of baseball stadiums visited in Japan, but I'll tie him back up in 2 weeks when I visit Sendai! Boooya!


Day 5 (WED):
Day 5 was very leisurely. dude? and I spent the day going around on the Yamanote, but without a challenge. I think both of us were a bit beat down by the weather and days 1-4. We decided to just go over to 恵比寿(Ebisu) and check out good day books, THE place to get used English books here in Tokyo. I picked up 3 books, Hurricane, Under the Banner of Heaven, and Motorcycle Diaries and dude? got one book too. Can't remember the title, but it was all about speeches. Afterwards we headed over to 秋葉原(Akihabara) to see if there were any good games out there for us, but didn't find anything decent. While in the area we thought it would be a good chance to check out a beer bar over in 両国(Ryogoku) called popeye. The place was sweeeeeet! It had real beer! No cans! The beers that we tried, maybe 5 in all, were all excellent, especially the 1st one. dude? was thinking of posting about it over on his site, ninety9bottles, but hasn't yet, so look forward to that. He's got more info about it than I do. I'll probably get around to putting a post on scrumped sometime, but I might need to do some more research. Too bad it's so far away... After popeye we came back home and went out for some italian over at the next station, and that place will be up on scrumped real soon.
Day 6 (THUR):
Final day of the L.W.O.D. and even more relaxed than the previous day. Got up, rocked some NCAA, and rode bikes over to 自由が丘(Jiyugaoka) and had some Wendy's. We headed back to my place in a light rain and dude? packed up and we headed over to 品川(Shinagawa) so he could jump on the Shinkansen and head back to 大阪(Osaka). All the trains were late because of the bad weather, but he got a ticket and was off. Thanks for coming dude?! After our goodbyes I headed back to my place, met mornin and we biked over to the stadium to catch a Frontale game. It was, at times, an intense downpour but the majority of the game was dry. Best part is that we crushed Niigata 4-1! boooya!

L.W.O.D. '08 was definitely not what I had had in mind, but for sure a good time. I think if the weather had been better, and we had been feeling better, things would have turned out a bit different. It was good, very relaxing, very vacation like. Good to see dude? again. Glad that meltin faces and mornin could participate in this year's L.W.O.D.

Summer `08 vol. 1 (vol. 26!) beer!

feast on my hairy tomatoes! 1st episode of the summer `08 season is in the books! Just news!
by the way, I accidentaly called out Dale Ellis, I`m sorry for that Dale, you`re a good guy! I meant Nate McMillan, eat it Cap`n Mac!

6 months lost... post #1: "Play balls!"

Here's a post I wrote way back when (maybe may?) but never put up. I'm putting it up now because if I wait to put pictures with it, it might never show up. So, pictures will come later, enjoy!


Hey hey hey! So it's that time of year again, the smell of the grass, the crack of the bat, and the drinking of the beer. It's a great thing. Over here the baseball season starts slightly before the start of the season back home, and so this year I got out to my first game on April 1st. This season started in Yokohama, at Yokohama stadium with a game between the Yokohama Baystars, and the Yomiuri Giants. The day began with a trip to a penis festival in Kawasaki (that'll be saved for another post) and ended up with a blowout. The Giants put a beating on the Baystars 10-1, with Yokohama's 1 run coming late in the game, while several of our companions were on the way home with someone who had a bit too much to drink in the scorching hot sun. Seems that baseball + beer + heat seems to spell disaster fairly regularly.

Two days later I headed deeper into Tokyo to Jinju Stadium to root on my Hanshin Tigers against the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. It was a real exciting game with spats of rain, a grandslam by Kanemoto (on his B-day), Esteban Yan's Japanese debut, and a free hamburger (given to me by a fellow Tigers supporter) all rolled into a 4-3 Tiger's win. This sweet game was the home opener for the Swallows, however it was far from a sell-out and heavily populated by Tigers fans. Roughly 2/3rds of the crowd was Tigers fans. It was great.

April 7th came around and it was off to Urawa up in Saitama to take in my first J-league game. I must say I'm not the biggest soccer fan, however I have been to a World Cup match, for the experience mostly. I am a fan of the Urawa Red Diamonds (known more commonly as the Urawa Reds), mostly because my favorite Japanese player plays for them. The stadium, Saitama Stadium 2002, which is also the Japanese National Team's stadium of choice, is a bit far from me, but it was worth the trip. Reds fans are super! hunbun and I got there close to 2 hours before kickoff, and all of the seats in the super fans section were already taken, so we ended up sitting just to the left (our left) of them. I'd say that they were just about as exciting as the game itself which ended in a 2-1 comeback victory over Jubilo Iwate. Thrilling victory really.

To wrap up the month of April, Deuce and his lady and I headed back to Yokohama Stadium, this time for a game between the Baystars, and the Chunichi Dragons who were in 1st place at the time. The game was really good, the Baystars were able to come away with a 5-4 victory, the key was that the Dragons' big bopper, Tyrone Woods, struck out 4 times, most of them with men on base. Suck it Woods! The day ended with a trip to good ol' An An, scrumptious!