Japan trip report, with pics

[BretWeir]

So last month, my wife and I spent two weeks in Japan: a week in Tokyo, three days in Hakone (sort of the Japanese countryside, near Mt. Fuji), and four days in Kyoto. Neither of us speak Japanese (apart from the "Japanese for tourists" CD series Mrs. Weir listened to) and we had never been to Asia, but we decided to stay away from organized tours and just check things out for ourselves. It was a great time, and we ended up with over 2,000 pictures.

Rather than a city-by-city trip report, I thought I'd start with one of the highlights of our trip: the two Japanese major league baseball games we attended. If people are interested, I'm happy to take requests and post follow up reports on whatever you want -- food, entertainment, you name it. Just let me know what you want to see.

So here's our first baseball game, on our very first evening in Tokyo:

Yakult Swallows vs. Yokohama BayStars

The Swallows are one of two teams in Tokyo proper -- the other are the Yomiuri Giants, the New York Yankees of Japan. The Swallows are more like the Kansas City Royals of Japan: not a particularly storied franchise, plus they had Aaron Guiel starting in right field. The Giants are owned by Japan's biggest newspaper; the Swallows by a yogurt health-drink company. The Tokyo Dome was all sold out, so we headed to Meiji Jingu Stadium to watch the Swallows take on sort-of cross-town rivals, the Yokohama BayStars. (Yokohama's about 45 minutes outside Tokyo).

Jingu Stadium is one of the oldest in Japan -- over 80 years old. And it's located right in downtown Tokyo, giving the park kind of a Fenway feel. Old-fashined, quaint and a nice place to watch a ballgame. Here's the exterior:



The ballpark is actually owned by the Meiji Shrine, which is the biggest Shinto shrine in Japan. The park is located in the shrine's "Outer Garden"; the shrine itself is in the Inner Garden a few blocks away.

The park holds 48,000, but there were maybe 15,000 at the weekday evening game we attended. Like a bunch of Japanese stadiums, the field was all astroturf. There's also a chain-link fence separating the stands from the infield, supposedly to protect the fans from foul balls.



We got to the stadium about an hour early, so we checked out the food options before the game started. Here's the stand near our seats:



You can get hot dogs, popcorn, and some other traditional ballpark items, but there are also more... exotic options. Like sushi, yakitori, and the "ebikatsu-dog," which appeared to be a hot dog made out of fried shrimp and topped with mayonnaise.



I took the middle ground between familiar and freaky and got a bowl of delicious udon noodles, which they were cooking fresh under the stands. There were about 10 different types of hot sauces and condiments at the stand, and I decided to pour some of each on, much to the amusement of the noodle ladies. The end result:



One of the cooler things about Japan are the beer girls who work the ballgames; they wear bright neon outfits and carry backpacks that are basically mini-kegs. So you can get an ice-cold draft beer without leaving your seat. I ended up making friends with the Kirin girl:



[Random aside: Whenever I saw an under 25 year old girl posing for a picture in Japan, 90% of the time, they'd do the two finger salute-type gesture shown above. I have no idea.]

Anyway, the beer definitely ended up going down easier than Mrs. Weir's Fanta, which in Japan -- as we discovered -- is flourescent green and tastes like melon.



And when you're done eating, you can grab a smoke from one of the in-stadium cigarette vending machines! NYC-style anti-smoking laws have not yet reached Japan (at least not this part of it.)



So what about the game itself? Apart from some first inning shenanigans, it was pretty unremarkable. Neither Yakult nor Yokohama are Central League powerhouses (both finished the season in the second division), and the game was pretty lopsided from the start. The level of play, in general, looked to be somewhere between AA and AAA ball.

The stadium was only 1/3 full, and the oendan -- the organized cheering sections -- while present, weren't at full strength. If you've never been to a Japanese game, there's very little individual cheering. Instead, each player has one or two personalized cheers that a group of die-hard fans chant before each at bat. The cheerers sit together, meet before the game to practice, and some groups have quasi-military hierarchies and demerit systems. The Swallows oendan was ok, but frankly they got out-cheered by the visiting section. They did have some cool transparent umbrellas that they used to do a dance during the seventh inning stretch.

One of the strangest things about being at a Japanese ball game is that the fans cheer the players, not the plays. So, the oendan will get a loud organized chant going for a hitter every time he comes to the plate. But it ends before he swings, and if ends up driving in the go-ahead run, there's just polite applause. Takes some getting used to.

I was sitting pretty far from either of the organized sections, and the "regular people" at the game were almost dead silent. As an ugly American, I was doing pretty standard U.S.-style cheering and heckling (including of the umps) throughout the game and got a lot of bemused looks from my neighbors. [I was actually sitting in an oendan section at my next game, and will have much more interesting cheering stuff in part 2 of the TR.]

Anyway, here's a picture of the home cheering section in the right field grandstands. Note the ginornmous Yakult flag, which they waved every time a new Swallows hitter came to the plate. There was also someone with a tuba or sousaphone or something who was basically leading the organized cheers.



The game ended up being a Yokohama blow-out, desipte the fact that the BayStars made what I think may have been the most absolutely boneheaded play I've ever seen in the first inning. Top of the first, Yokohama's leadoff man gets on with a base hit. Their shortstop is hitting second and batting over .380 -- like, almost a hundred points higher than anyone else on the club. So what does he do with the first pitch? Bunts it foul. I'm rubbing my eyes, thinking "It's the first inning -- did I just see that?" Second pitch -- hitter shows bunt again , and misses a called strike. WTF? Pitcher winds up for the third pitch, and I think, "Well, at least he's not going to bunt again." The batter bunts again and pops it foul, for strike three. The batter sits down, the Japanese fans politely applaud, and I sit there with smoke rising from my head like a Star Trek evil computer presented with a logical paradox it cannot understand. I decide it's my moral imperative to root against Yokohama for the rest of the game.

I was too dumbfounded to take a picture of the play, but here's an MSPaint that'll give you the gist of it:



I did learn two important things from this play. First, while some Japanese players may shine in MLB, as long as their managers are calling plays at a sub-Little League level, Japanese baseball as an institution will never rival the U.S. (That and the fact that Aaron Guiel was challenging for their home run title.)

But more importantly, I got an insight into Japanese culture. I had read a lot about the country before visiting -- about the Japanese ideals of subordinating the individual to the greater whole, of teamwork and loyalty above all else. Commendable virtues, noble even. But I hadn't realized that the Japanese apply them even when it's totally [censored] stupid to do so -- like giving your leading hitter the bunt sign with two strikes in the first inning. Americans may be disorganized, obnoxious and generally boorish, but we'd never let something like this go down. No manager would try it, and no player would follow it. Now I know why we kicked their ass in WW2.

Anyway, despite retarded managing and playing on the other team's (literally) holy ground, the gods were with Yokohama that night, who closed out a 9 to 1 laugher (Yakult's only run being driven in by -- who else? -- Aaron Guiel). Mrs. Weir and I did make an appearance on the stadium Jumbotron, as two of a few non-Japanese fans featured on what we dubbed "Gaijin Cam." Didn't react fast enough for a picture, but here's the scoreboard and big screen, which was pretty cool looking:



All in all, a good time -- though less eventful than our second game, TR to follow. As an added bonus, we headed to Roppongi that night to see (on the advice of some OOT posters) The Silver Beats, a group of Japanese Beatles impersonators who were completely amazing. If you ever get to Tokyo, do not miss these guys:



CLIFF NOTES: Watched baseball game at Shinto holy site and ate yummy noodles; Japanese managing still stuck in dead-ball era.