I'm the happiest girl in the world. I've now managed to get photos with 3 out of the 5 college seniors on the front cover of this semester's Shube college baseball magazine. (The other two being Sugano and Itoh. I doubt I'll ever meet Nakaushiro, and Nomura hates me.)
No, seriously, so Takahiro Fujioka is a tall lefty senior at Toyo University this year. And I've been a pretty big fan of his for a few years. I still remember the first time I saw him pitch, he was a sophomore, I was hoping to see junior lefty Masahiro Inui, I got Fujioka instead, and was like "...this guy is ninety times BETTER than Inui..." He pitched Toyo to the All-Japan victory last summer, too.
And well, I went to Hosei's field again on Thursday for their preseason game against Toyo. I hoped Fujioka would start, and I was delighted when he did, though I felt slightly guilty since I was ostensibly rooting for Hosei, yet taking a bazillion pictures of the opponents' lefty starter yet again (like I did for Shimabukuro when Chuo was there).
Toyo beat Hosei 4-2. Hosei starter Kazuki Mishima, who I also like a lot, had a pretty rough start, though I'm not really sure what exactly was wrong; he didn't look that different than I remember him. There were a whole bunch of scouts there watching Fujioka though, so maybe Mishima was also nervous, who knows.
So, some photos:
Fujioka in action.
Hosei starter Kazuki Mishima.
Ryoto Yoshikoshi finished out the game for Hosei.
Takuya Uchiyama (4th year, Urawa Gakuin, #18)
Junki Fujita (3rd year, Hamada, #15)
Kosuke Suzuki (4th year, Toyodai Ushiku, #16)
Shinko Gakuen's Ryosuke Itoh.
Here's Itoh sliding into third base after walloping a ball into the left-field wall. I thought it was a home run but apparently not.
Hideharu Satoh. The last time I saw him, he was wearing #9 for Teikyo HS and was their team captain at Koshien in 2009.
Yusuke Hasegawa getting tagged out at the plate.
This is probably the best photo I got of Daichi Suzuki, the Toyo captain, the shortstop on the left.
Catcher Shotaro Oka. Formerly from Nichidai San!
Hosei captain Masashi Nanba.
Crowd of people with radar guns and whatnot.
Final score.
Final bow between both teams.
And a bonus thing that I thought was cool:
This is that nice scoreboard, from the back. Can you see a little gold plaque on it? Let me zoom in for a second...
Yes -- the money for that scoreboard was donated to the club from Kazuhito Futagami and Hisashi Takeuchi. How cool is that?
I really enjoyed my day out at the Hosei ground this time! And after the game I hung out with a friend outside the Toyo side bullpen until Fujioka came out; in the meantime we ended up chatting with a bunch of Hosei players and a few of the Toyo players as well. Good times!
Epic weekend at Jingu, but I haven't had any time to write about it. So here are some photos with a little bit of text context.
Saturday
I showed up at 11, and made the mistake of going into the stadium first rather than meeting Kozo outside. So he stayed in section D while I went to do the donation line thing by myself. He'd said there was a huge line at 11am, but by the time I got there, there was pretty much no line, and just some players standing at tables. They had it set up such that a few of the Swallows cheer girls were holding out the donation boxes, and after that were some players, so you put money in the box and then shook hands with some players.
Yasushi Iihara wasn't out there when I went, so I basically saw Oshimoto and picked his line. It was him, Hashimoto, and Carp player rep Ishihara. So I shook their hands and said "Ganbatte kudasai!" to all three of them. Oshi and Hashi are former Fighters so it was kind of funny to me.
(Shortly afterwards they condensed down to 2 lines with more players. Ishikawa and Kyuko moved from the other table to the one I'd been at. Doh! And on my way out, I saw the coaches all showing up -- a few people were like "Hey that's Shiroishi! I want to go shake hands with him!")
There are a bunch of new cheers this year, so the ouendan spent some time before the game teaching them. Iihara, Hamanaka, Kawabata, Hatakeyama, they have new ones, and of course there's one for new guy Balentien. There's also one for manager Ogawa (apparently similar to the one he had in his playing days).
(Teaching Hamanaka's cheer.)
Also, the ouendan held up these signs several times during the game. It says "Our hearts are one, good luck Tohoku, Japan", basically (I guess it's part of the "Ganbare Nihon" slogan stuff).
There were no trumpets or drums, but there was still plenty of singing. And of course it wouldn't be Jingu without the umbrella dancing. Here we are in the middle of the 7th inning, singing Tokyo Ondo, without any trumpets or loudspeaker music or dancing girls on the field.
The Swallows won the game 3-0 on the Kawabata sac fly, Hamanaka solo homer, and an error throwing to 3rd in the 8th inning that allowed Miwa to score. Tateyama pitched well.
Final score.
Our group at the top of section D.
After the game, rather than the "we won" cheering, there was a yell exchange between both sides, although we hadn't really been warned about it in advance. It mostly degenerated into the entire outfield yelling "NIPPON!" like the soccer cheer.
Kozo and Ben and Mac and I walked to Yoyogi Park to just see what the hanami (cherry-blossom viewing parties, basically people drinking under sakura trees) scene was like, and to get a nice walk. As you can see from this picture, there are plenty of cherry blossoms in bloom, and also plenty of people hanging out under them. Though it's true that maybe there aren't as many people as in past years -- usually you can't move at all during this season, but not this time, we were able to walk through the park just fine.
BTW, if you want a cool hat like mine, go talk to Christopher Pellegrini. :)
Actually, a (Japanese) guy heard us talking in English outside Jingu and was like "do you guys do the Tsubamegun blog? I want one of those caps." He spoke surprisingly good English, I'm used to people staring at our group of English-speakers in a combination of awe/disgust, but he just wanted to say hi.
We also got stopped by several random people in the park like "YEAH! GO SWALLOWS!" or whatnot. One girl even high-fived us all in the subway station afterwards.
Sunday
Sunday, I met up with Kozo by the train station and we walked to Jingu together. We went to do the earthquake relief donation thing first -- there was a huge line since it was just starting at 11am! But I saw that Yasushi Iihara was out there, and I was wearing my Iihara jersey, so I wanted to be in his line. We waited... we walked... we waited... we walked... and just as we were getting towards the donation area, we see these two white guys with cameras and they yell out to me "Hey, we're from NBC. Can we talk to you a bit?" and I'm like "Sure, can you catch me AFTER the donation line?"
We go through the line. I steer us towards the table that turns out to just be Yasushi and the mascot Tsubakuro. Fortunately it turns out Kozo really wanted to shake hands with Tsubakuro and I really wanted to shake hands with Yasushi so we both got what we wanted. :) I said "Ganbatte kudasai!" and smiled. We didn't plan well so I don't have a photo of me shaking hands with Yasushi, but I do have Kozo with Tsubakuro...
And THEN the NBC guys caught us. They mostly wanted to talk to me until I'm like "You really ought to talk to Kozo too, he also speaks English."
Mostly they asked things like, "Why are you here today? What do you think of all of the donation stuff? What do you think of the earthquake and the way things are now?" Me being me I just babbled all this stuff about how much I love Japanese baseball and go to a whole ton of games and how I think that the donation thing is EXACTLY what they should be doing -- bringing people together, lifting up spirits, collecting money to help the earthquake victims, etc. I babble a lot and sound like an idiot when I'm under pressure like that. Kozo, on the other hand, with his years of debate and speech practice, sounded really good and eloquent. (Take that, foreign press -- the gaijin is a moron but her Japanese friend that you never would have noticed is the well-spoken one!) He pointed out that I probably gave the reporters a lot of good information, even if I sounded like a big big dork.
Me being interviewed.
Kozo being interviewed.
We have no clue if either of us were actually on the news, though. The guy who interviewed us was Lee Cowan, and he said he was with NBC Nightly News. He also said that he'd been in Japan for 3 weeks covering the earthquake stuff and that I was the happiest person he'd talked to -- mostly because they'd been up north, I guess. I told him I was just happy to be back at a game, to see my friends again and to watch baseball and to help the earthquake and all. It turned out their crew had never actually been to a Japanese baseball game, so we were like "We'll be at the top of section D in the outfield with some other English-speaking friends if you want to come chat with us later!" But they were kinda iffy because it was unclear they'd be able to actually bring their equipment into the park.
And for the record, they must have raised a fortune this weekend -- it was PACKED! I think the whole "get to shake hands with baseball players" thing really motivates people to go give money, certainly.
See how packed it was?
These are two boards that were signed by all the Swallows players, that will be sent up to Tohoku as a "we are supporting you" gesture, I believe.
Then we went into the park, sat down, hung out for a while, because most of the people we know weren't there yet. I went to get lunch and ended up finding the new Pizza-La, but since I hate Pizza-La got some butadon from the place next to it, which was really good.
The new Pizza-La. I suppose this means Pellegrini no longer has to list his home address with them as "Jingu Stadium, Gate 19".
Oh yeah, and I bought an Aoki cellphone strap and shitajiki. I figure that well, he's likely to jump to the MLB next year so it was my last chance, even though I'm not paticularly a fan of his or anything.
After a while, we got a decent group of friends there. This time I actually went down to practice with the ouendan for the new songs but still couldn't get the hang of all of them.
Also I saw this while people were singing:
I guess this is the virtual trumpet in lieu of the real ones...
Yuya Fukui started for the Carp, which was exciting since I saw him play so much with Waseda. Kyohei Muranaka started for the Swallows. The game was kinda just average until basically the 4th inning when the Swallows blew it wide open with Wladimir Balentien hitting a 3-run homer. He also hit another homer later on. So, the Swallows won 6-1 eventually.
It was mostly just fun to be there with friends and cheering and watching baseball!
Umbrellas!
Final score.
And here's a bonus video...
This is on Sunday -- the cheer exchange between the Swallows and Carp fans, rather than our usual postgame "we won" kinds of cheering and singing. On Saturday we didn't know it was happening but on Sunday the ouendan leaders explained it to everyone, so I filmed it instead of participating because I'm a dork like that.
First we'd yell "GANBARE GANBARE TOHOKU!" and then the Carp side would yell Ganbare Nippon, then both sides would yell a Nippon cheer together, and then we'd yell Ganbare Carp and they'd yell Ganbare Swallows. It worked out pretty well -- a nice show of solidarity how even though we're two separate baseball cheering groups we're still united in a love for baseball and a desire to help the folks in the north.
It was quite a weekend. It's been quite a trip, really :)
I went to Jingu today for the Tohto League games -- saw Yosuke Shimabukuro's college debut. It was a lot like Yuki Saitoh's, though with several thousand less people. But a TON of people flocked to the bullpen to see him warm up:
But anyway -- I took a ton of photos today, I do want to put them up, but I'm going to dinner shortly, so instead I'm just going to put these up of the new Jingu picnic boxes, which I was able to walk around and look at during the first game (wasn't allowed to go in them though, there was a big "DO NOT ENTER" type of chain across each one):
(These are intended for 5 people, it seems)
(This is what they mean by 2-person and 3-person picnic boxes)
Tokaidai Sagami won Senbatsu. I'm pretty sad about that. I really thought Sanko would go all the way... and when Kyukoku beat them yesterday, I decided to put my faith in Kyukoku to win, since I liked their team (read: I liked their pitcher Miyoshi and catcher/captain Takajo) second-best overall. Oh well.
I went to the Carp-Swallows charity games at Jingu on Saturday and Sunday. The Swallows won both games. Shohei Tateyama got the win on Saturday and Kyohei Muranaka on Sunday. Wladimir Balentien hit two homeruns on Sunday. Yuya Fukui took the loss for Hiroshima. Before both games I donated 1000 yen; on Saturday I shook hands with Oshimoto, Hashimoto, and the Carp's Ishihara, and on Sunday with Yasushi Iihara (!!) and with Tsubakuro.
Also, Kozo and I were interviewed by NBC after said donation line. Kozo is a much more eloquent speaker than I am, and my guess is if either of us make it onto TV it'll be him. The guy who interviewed us was Lee Cowan, and he said that I was "the happiest person we've talked to in 3 weeks in Japan". I gushed about how much I love Japanese baseball and how I thought that these charity games were EXACTLY what the NPB should do -- lift people's spirits and bring baseball friends together as well as raise money to help the earthquake victims. I also invited him and his crew to come visit us during the game, but they apparently weren't likely to be allowed to film it anyway. Kozo spoke after me and since he's a debate and public speaking expert, he sounded really, really good. So everyone lucks out in that NBC picked me out because I'm a white girl, but then they managed to get Kozo to speak, which they never would have if he hadn't been with me. Look for us on TV!
BTW, since I haven't had time to write about all of the games I've been going to here -- quite frankly, I'm only in Japan until April 12 and want to spend as much time as possible LIVING life here instead of WRITING about it -- here's my game tally so far:
March 20: Baystars vs. Lions ni-gun, Yokosuka Stadium March 24: Odate Houmei vs. Tenri, Koshien Stadium, Senbatsu March 24: Yokohama vs. Hasami, Koshien Stadium, Senbatsu March 24: Kanazawa vs. Kakogawa Kita, Koshien Stadium, Senbatsu March 25: Nichidai San vs. Meitoku Gijuku, Koshien Stadium, Senbatsu March 25: Tigers vs. Buffaloes ni-gun, Naruohama Stadium March 26: Chiben Wakayama vs. Sado, Koshien Stadium, Senbatsu March 26: Sogo Gijutsu vs. Riseisha, Koshien Stadium, Senbatsu March 26: Kokugakuin Kugayama vs. Kyushu Gakuin, Koshien Stadium, Senbatsu March 29: Fighters vs. Marines ni-gun, Lotte Urawa Stadium March 30: Hosei University vs. Chuo University, Hosei Stadium March 31: Swallows vs. Lions ni-gun, Yakult Toda Stadium April 1: Meiji University vs. Tokai University, Shimaoka-Utsumi Ballpark April 2: Swallows vs. Carp, Jingu, charity game April 3: Swallows vs. Carp, Jingu, charity game
Pretty much since the first few days that were spent on my JHS's graduation, the rest of my trip has pretty much been spent on baseball, karaoke, walking, and eating. I also visited the Yakyu Inari shrine on the 19th, and Nagoya Kyujo (not the Dome) on the 27th.
I'll be hitting a few more games this week, of the ni-gun and college variety. Yay?
Speaking of the college variety, it seems that Shimabukuro is going to start on the 5th for Chuo, the first freshmen they've had as an opening day pitcher in 48 years, supposedly.
For the record, too, I've donated a whole ton of money to earthquake relief at these games -- basically my pledge has been that any game I go to where they have a donation box, I will put in 1,000 yen. The fun part has been when it also involved like, shaking hands with Swallows players, or being like "Hattori! I choose you!" at the Marines game, and so on.
In general, I've been ridiculously happy to be in Japan this trip, and it's making me wonder if my decision to move back to the US is the right one or not. I still think I need some perspective on all this, though.
This guy is going to get drafted this fall. There's just no way he won't. He's not only amazingly good, and can hit 97mph, but he's also Tatsunori Hara's nephew.
I went to the Meiji University baseball grounds today for a preseason game between Meiji and Tokai, and Sugano pitched the last 2 innings and retired every batter he faced, with 2 strikeouts. Unlike the Hosei-Chuo game the other day where I didn't get to meet Shimabukuro, this time I pretty much went down to the Tokai dugout and with another lady we beckoned Sugano to pretty-please come sign stuff for us, and he was gracious and polite, if a little bit like "...I've got to go really soon, sorry". But I was able to get a photo with him, so I was really happy about that!
Yusuke Nomura ignored me yet again, I think he just hates me. But I got to chat with a bunch of my other favorite Meiji boys, so that was good. Got signatures from Uemoto, Morita, Kumabe, and Ueda, and gave a bag of easter candy to captain Takeda. I told them that I was only going to be in Japan until the 12th, so I won't be able to see any of their league games. But they told me that there's a chance that the Big 6 League is going to try to hold 3 games per day on opening weekend -- so the games would start at like 8:30am, and it'd be Waseda-Todai, Keio-Rikkio, and Meiji-Hosei. That way, they can cancel a weekend later on and let the Yakult Swallows use Jingu for day games.
(Supposedly, if this happens, it'll be decided on April 4th. Which is why Meiji and Hosei are kind of trying to prepare to be ready to play on the 9th even though they're currently not scheduled for it yet.)
So, maybe I will get to see them play for real. Who knows.
And in super-pre-gossip, Kumabe told me that he's going to "work" at Honda Kumamoto next year! Lucky him for getting his job search out of the way early on, and for being level-headed enough to realize he's not going pro any time soon.
Also, for the record, Tokai won today's game 6-4. Meiji's Toshiki Abe hit two triples, though, which was exciting, and Tokai's Torai Fushimi, the cleanup batter and clearly the post-Koike starting catcher for Team Japan, hit two doubles, including a ground-rule one that bounced out of the field and that nobody could find. Fushimi is really good, and it was really a treat to see Tokai's team play.
All of the photos on this site are taken by me unless otherwise indicated. I would appreciate it if you at least email me before you steal them. Thanks.
