Kyoto w/ Adrian

After a tasty sushi breakfast (that we ordered way too much of), we hopped on the train and headed to Kyoto. First stop after checking in to the hotel was Fushimi Inari shrine, with all the torii gates leading up and down the mountain. We were about the only people high up on the mountain, so I had to use the timer and run down the steps to get this picture

We hiked all the way up and on the way back I saw this sign. Took a picture to avoid a repeat of last time.

The next morning we headed out for the standard Kyoto highlights, Kinkakuji's golden pavilion and Ryoanji's rock garden. Last time, I walked all around Kyoto, but this time we took the bus. I think walking was better. A little slower, but less confusing and more comfortable. After sightseeing, we went to Gion for a quick dinner and some geisha hunting. Caught one on our way out of the izakaya we ate at. I kind of felt bad taking a picture. The poor girl is just trying to get home from work and all us tourists are harassing her. She seemed used to it, though, and just kept walking.

We found an Irish-style bar on our first night there, and stayed long enough to know we didn't want to go back. While we were looking for another place, we stopped some cops on bikes and asked if they knew anyplace. The had us follow them back to the koban (police box) where they spent 10 minutes looking in the phone book for us. They didn't find anything, but said they thought there might be something down the road, so off we went.

Next person we asked was some guy trying to pull us into a karaoke place, and he knew exactly the place I was looking for. I had been there on my first trip to Kyoto, but couldn't remember where it was. When we got there it was dead, so we played some darts and made friends with the bartenders.

Last day in Kyoto, we went to Ginkakuji, the silver pavilion. Not really silver, and it's under construction, so you can't really make out any pavilion, but it was a really nice garden. There was a big rock garden that had what looked like sandcastles and a mossy garden up the side of the hill. There was a nice display to show the different kinds of moss. Now I know the difference between the moss they want:
And the moss that gets in the way:

Adrian in Town

I got my first non-work visitor and it's taken me this long to recover. Adrian came to Japan and we rushed all over Japan for a week. The day he got in, he came to Utsunomiya and we went to the bar. It was a Wednesday so the bar was dead. We had a couple of drinks and then headed out to the hostess bar. We did a hell of a duet on some NSync and called it a night. He was jet lagged and I had to work in the morning.

The next day was Thanksgiving, so we had a traditional KFC dinner. Didn't go out that night, but the next day we headed to Tokyo after I got home from work.

After we checked into the hotel, we finally went to dinner around 9:30. The first choice was already closing, so we made reservations to come back the next day and went on to the #2 choice. It was a Thai restaurant, food was OK, but their main claim to fame (to me) is that they have Mekhong on the menu. So I had a glass for dessert and we headed out to the usual Roppongi places.

Somehow (no one remembers how) Adrian broke his new camera Friday night. Luckily for us, our Saturday sightseeing plans called for us to go to Akihabara (electric town) anyway. We went to Yodabashi Camera and tried to get it fixed, but they said they would send it to the Canon repair place and it would take 3 weeks. So instead, Adrian bought the same camera in Japanese, and duty free.

We did some more sightseeing and then we went back to the original restaurant, Inakaya, for dinner. Frommer's online describes it as "tourist-oriented and over-priced, it's still great fun", and that's about right. Everyone sits around a U-shaped table with the cooks on the other side and a grill and the food choices in the middle. You point to what you want, the cook it, and they pass it too you on a rowboat oar. Kind of interesting.

They also made some fresh mochi. It's a kind of rice cake, really sticky, and they put some cinnamon on it to make it like a dessert. To make mochi, you throw some rice in a bowl and pound the shit out of it.

After dinner, it was apparently time for the shift change. The old cooks were leaving and had a nice little "Thank you, good night" thing before the new cooks took over.

Adrian wasn't feeling very good, so the night ended there. The next day, we went to Shibuya. We walked from there all the way over to Harajuku to see these guys in Yoyogi park. They found a way to turn a weird hobby into a tourist attraction.

In Akihabara on Saturday, we ran out of time to go to a maid cafe, so we had to make a return trip on Sunday. We found our way to the @home cafe.

This place is the top 4 floors of a building, and when we got in the elevator we had no idea where to get off. We thought there might be some kind of a reception desk, so we got off at the bottom floor of the cafe. There was a line wrapping down the stairs, so we got in line. After about 2o minutes, a guy came out to take names. Another 20 minutes later, we reached the landing and found out that the floor we were on was catering more to the traditional Japanese style, kimono and all. That's not what we wanted, so we went up another floor and started the waiting all over again.

This line was a little quicker. As we went in, they explained the rules to us. 700 yen/hour, you can only stay one hour, and you're expected to buy a drink or something. When we went it, they greeted us with something along the lines of "Welcome home, master". They took us right to front of the stage. I wasn't expecting there to be a stage, so that was the first surprise. Next, they brought a menu. I selected the "Yummy Yummy Choco Bear Cake" with coffee, Adrian got a hamburger.

I should explain, there are different kinds of maid cafes, from the high-collar-Victorian-maid style to the slutty-girl-on-Halloween-maid style. We ended up in the painfully cute style.

We sat and watched and listened to the "all maid girl band" music playing at way too high volume until they brought our drinks. Just bringing me coffee and putting in the cream and sugar wouldn't be enough. Our maid offered to make our drinks more delicious by sending here love into it. She told us to make a heart with our hands, move it back and forth while saying "mo-eh, mo-eh" and then she sent here cuteness laser into my coffee. Awesome.

Then, they brought the food. Again, they made it more delicious with cuteness lasers. Then, the maid asked Adrian what kind of animal he like. He picked a dog, so our maid drew a dog on his burger in ketchup.

All this time, we saw maids playing games all around us and taking pictures on the stage in front of us. On the menu it said that pictures and games were 500 yen apiece, and we couldn't leave without them. But by then we were running out of time, so we opted for pictures. So I paid my 500 yen and they took a Polaroid (in 2008!!) and decorated it for me.

Coco Farms Wine Festival

Long time no see. Nothing much has been going on that was worth writing home about, so I didn't bother. First off, I saw this place in a hotel lobby.
So on to the real reason to put pictures on the interweb. This weekend in Ashikaga, a couple stops away, there was a harvest festival at Coco Farms Winery. I put on my strategically colored wine festival shirt and took the train down bright and early and had a bottle in hand by about 11:00.
For 2000 yen you got a bottle of wine, a glass, and a corkscrew. Pretty good deal. It was a lot like the hanami (flower tailgating), but with grapes instead of cherry blossoms. The whole vineyard was packed with picnickers drinking heavily. Myself included.
You spread out your blanket right underneath where the vines would be at another time of the year. It was a nice party, with bands and food everywhere. The only concern was that the entire vineyard is on the side of a hill. Kind of dangerous with a thousand drunks climbing around.

After a while, things were starting to wind down a little and I saw a bunch of flamenco dancers off in the distance. I chased them down to get a picture, mostly because Japanese flamenco dancers seemed like a funny idea to me at the time.On the way home, I got sent ahead from the taxi line to check on the line for the shuttle bus. I didn't see one, but I saw the sign, so I suggested we take the bus. Unfortunately, I didn't see the bus line because it was half a mile away, and when we got there, it was longer than the taxi line, so we went back. The taxi line had grown, so we talked to a stranger that was walking back to the station. He said it was close and it would be faster. Always a good idea to listen to strangers, so we started walking. Just after common sense overtook us, we stumbled across an available taxi and rode back in style.

Nikko IceBucks & Seibu Lions

The best bar in town is owned by the coach of the local hockey team, and now that the season's started I can switch sports. The team isn't in Utsunomiya, it's in Nikko, so I jumped on the train with some buddies and some beers and headed out. The IceBucks are part of the Asian Ice Hockey League, and they were playing China's only representative in the league, the Sharks.

Took a lot of pictures, most of them look like a hockey game. Here's one of me with Pat and Dustin.They have the same cheering section like they do at the baseball games. I went up to join them.
It was a great game. IceBucks were loosing 1-0 with three minutes left. Bucks pulled the goalie and scored right away, 1-1. Less than a minute later, they scored again, 2-1. Then China pulled their goalie, and the IceBucks put in an empty netter to win 3-1.

We took a cab from the train station to the arena, but when we left there were no cabs in sight. There was a bus, and we asked where it was going. When they said the station, we jumped on. Standing room only, and 3 gaijin stick out pretty good. I made friends with an Expos fan. I wouldn't have remember him if it wasn't for the hat, but then he showed up at IceMan's bar later on.

These guys sat in front of us at the game, and they ended up at IceMan's, too. While I was at the bar, every other person there had come from the hockey game. I called it a night kind of early, had the last baseball game to go to in Tokorozawa bright and early the next day. I headed to the station and bought my shinkansen ticket, only to find out it was delayed, for what might be the first time ever. There was some sort of computer glitch, one signal light got stuck red, and the trains were stopped for 4 hours.

I took the slow train down to Tokyo and out to Tokorzawa and got there just in time. Not in time to find a seat in the cheering section, though. The hangover, long train ride, and noisy cheering section made it a rough day. So I left early. The display on the train coming in said the shinkansen was fixed, so I bought a shinkansen ticket for the ride home. When I go to Ueno station to transfer over, though, the train was still delayed at least 2 hours. I sort of ran through the gate and jumped on a train that was headed for Utsunomiya without using my ticket on the gate. But the train was crowded, so I had to stand. Then I figured out that it was an all reserved train that I didn't have a ticket for. Then, the announcement said the train doesn't stop in Utsunomiya, so I had to bail in Omiya.

In Omiya, the trains were still stopped. I waited there for another hour before I finally got on a train home. Rough sports weekend.

Tokyo Dome and Hall of Fame

This week I made a trip to the home of Japanese baseball, the Tokyo Dome, home of the Yomiuri Giants. They're the most popular team in Japan, so much so that I read 50% of Japanese people identify themselves as Giants fans. The other 50% hate them. Pretty clearly the Japanese Yankees, so that's one strike against them already, but I'm giving them a fair shot.

The Tokyo Dome is part of a huge entertainment complex, complete with a mall, a spa, an amusement park, and a bunch of other stuff. In the basement, it's also the home of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame. Once I decided I couldn't figure out the off-track horse race betting, I plunked down 500 yen and headed in.

I've been there once before, but I was completely illiterate in Japanese at the time and there's very little English. Now I can read like a 2 year old, so I got a little more out of it. They had a nice room full of baseball history, all the way back to the stuff I play. Now that I can read a little, I know that this is the rules of the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in 1845, in Japanese.
I also figured out that this is the Cincinnati Red Stockings. They had a bunch of these pictures(Knickerbockers, Wesleyan, etc.) and I got a kick out of deciphering each one. Looks like I found the place to contact about starting up a vintage base ball team.
There were big sections on baseball in the Olympics, history of NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball), and the World Baseball Classic, and I strolled through them all before heading into the Hall of Fame. There was a giant ball right in the middle, where a couple of years ago they got all the players to write something, like a yearbook. My favorite was from Julio Zuleta.The hall of fame was pretty cool, except I've never heard of most of the players. It was interesting all the same to read their whole career distilled down to little 2 sentence blurbs. I took a bunch of pictures to remember some guys I wanted to look up when I got home, but haven't got to it yet.

I left, at a burger, met a guy from Vancouver, and went shopping before heading in. At the games I've been to so far, a hat and a decent quality jersey seems to run somewhere around $50-$70. The only reasonably cheap jerseys they had were literally T-shirts printed like jerseys. I decided I've come this far collecting them, so I sucked it up and dropped 10,000 yen on an un-numbered jersey.

Like I said, the Giants are really popular, so the only seat I could find was way up in left field. I was actually looking down on the foul pole.
It was the Giants vs. their cross-town rivals, the Yakult Swallows. Sort of like a Yankees-Mets game. It turned out to be a really good game. The Giants lead off hitter hit a home run, and it was non-stop fireworks from then. The Giants fan clubs were going crazy, and the pulled out a huge banner in the 5th to show it.

Not to be outdone, the one section of Yakult fans did their famous "Umbrella Dance" after every Swallows run. And there were a lot of them. By my count (I didn't check the box score) there were 8 home runs, which might be more than I've seen in the previous 10 games put together. Came down the the bottom of the 8th, and the Giants manage to take the lead, 9-8. They brought out their closer, Marc Kroon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Kroon). He walked the first 3 hitter he faced, but they left him in and he somehow battled back to get a save the hard way, 1 inning, 6 batters, no hits.

The Tokyo Dome is an air-supported dome, like the Metrodome, so the entire building in at a slightly higher air pressure the the world outside. It's only about 0.3% higher, but it holds up the roof pretty well. To keep that air pressure in, you enter through revolving doors. This works great on the way in, when people are showing up at different time. On the way out, though, there's a huge logjam at the 1-at-a-time revolving doors, so they open up the fire escape normal doors. They put some ushers there to guide people out. These poor people have to stand at the door while the air rushes out.

Well, that's 11 down, 1 to go. I'm heading to Saitama to watch the Seibu Lions in a few weeks, then I'll finally be able to pick a team to cheer for next year. Not that I'll be here to follow them, but it will be nice to root for someone.

Chiba Lotte Marines

I spent the week telling people I was going to Saitama on Sunday to see the Seibu Lions, but when I went to buy tickets I couldn't find the right date. Turns out I had the schedules mixed up, so I switched up my plans and went to Chiba to see the Lotte Marines play the Orix Buffaloes.

On the ways to Chiba I stopped by the Imperial Palace, just to say hi, but it's pretty closed up and all you can really do is walk around the park out front. So after I did that, I strolled over to the capital building and it was closed up too, so I just headed to Chiba. The only ticket I could get was the bleachers, or so I thought. Anyway, I didn't have a reserved seat, and the last time I did that I showed up half an hour early and had to stand, so I wanted to get there really early anyway.

The Lotte Marines are owned by a gum company. Not that that means much, but it's a little different than all the newspaper and railroad teams. First stop when I got to Marine Stadium was the Lotte Marines Museum. It was mostly a bunch of displays showing how high the fence is, how the turf feels, stuff like that. They also had a bunch of pictures of former player, like Julio Franco.
I tracked down the mascot for a picture. Apparently, Sunday is Hawaiian shirt day at the office.When I went into the stadium, 2 hours early to get a seat, I went straight to the concession stand for a coke, some fries, and an "American Dog". Turns out that's a corn dog. A tiny corn dog is somehow American.

I took my snack to the bleachers but found out that wasn't where my ticket was. I followed the guys pointing to the upper deck, where I found someone else to point me in the back the other way to the tiny, crappy section that my ticket was good for. Unlike the Yokohama game, nobody showed up early. I had the section to myself for an hour before game time.

While I waited, I saw the coolest players I ever saw. They must have had an extra bushel of balls that they told them to give away or something. First there was just one guy sitting on a chair with basket in front of him, signing balls and tossing them into the stands. Then one guy after another took a turn tossing balls to the crowd until the basket was empty. They must have tossed at least 150 balls out. My camera doesn't zoom much.
The Marines have 2 people I've heard of from the Majors. There's Benny Agbayani, who they just call "Beh-ni" on the scoreboard and in the cheers. And then there's the face of the Marines, Bobby Valentine. I was lucky enough to come on Bobby Valentine global warming day. They moved some potted trees onto the field so he could pose with some people who were apparently greener than the rest of us.

They love Bobby Valentine in Chiba. He's on every poster, his face is 9 feet tall on the walls of the stadium, and he's selling just about everything. He really seems to like these sandals. I may have to get some if they make you this happy.The weather was pretty crappy, on and off rain, so I only stayed for 5 innings, but that was enough. I got to see the genius of Bobby Valentine. First, I think since the best players were off losing to the US at the Olympics, they called some people up. They started a 19 year old pitcher. He got the first 2 out, then hit a guy, walked Tuffy Rhodes, and hit another guy before getting out of it. Bobby Valentine had faith in the kid.

He got into trouble in the 3rd and loaded the bases, then got pulled for a more experienced pitcher. Bobby Valentine yanked out the 19 year old and put in 42 year old pitcher, who promptly got the next batter to hit him a slow hopper, which he then muffed and they scored 2 runs before he got out of it. Lotte came back (Benny had a 2 run double) and after they scored 4, Bobby called a suicide squeeze. The Marines led 5-4 when I decided that it was a long ride home and it was raining, so I took off. Turns out they won 9-4.

Sapporo Day 3 - Hungover at the Beer Museum

When I finally dragged myself out of bed Monday I headed to the last place on my itinerary, the Sapporo Beer Museum. I didn't really want to go. The highlight of the place is the beer tasting, and that was about the last thing I wanted to do. But since it was on the itinerary, I had to do it.

Got to the museum around 11 or so. Too early to start drinking (on a Monday) so I decided to tour the museum first.
The building looks impressive (it should, it's a former brewery), but the museum only takes up a tiny bit of it. Other than the gift shop and the "Museum Bar", there's only one room of museum. I took about 20 minutes looking around and I learned that beer is made by elves during the off season.They were on the cutting edge of museum technology. Besides the island of misfit brewers, they used the magic of Viewmasters to teach you about beer.I finally felt up to it so I headed for the Museum Bar. They have the cheapest beer in Sapporo. 100 yen for a small, or 400 yen for the 3-pack sampler with a snack. No surprises, I'd had them all before, but it was on the itinerary. I forced my way through about half of each before I had to give up.After a nice long trip to the gift shop, I headed outside to look for the beer garden to eat lunch. Before I found it, though, I noticed that the Sapporo factory is dedicated to the dark lord Satan.
I found an okonomiyaki place in the mall next door and ate lunch before reversing the whole subway-train-monorail-shinkansen path back to Utsunomiya.

In case you haven't heard, I'm going to be in Cleveland for the next 2 weeks (8/2 - 8/15), so look for me. You probably know my email, or my parents phone number (where I'm staying like a grown-up), or you can get a hold of me through this.