Golden Week II - Giant Buddha

Not just giant, but, according to Guinness, the world's tallest. That's not the beer, it's the book, so you know it's official.

I finally took off my snow tires this morning, and to celebrate, I drove the 2 hours and 100 or so kilometers down to Ushiku to see the famous Ushiku Daibutsu. It's a 120 meter tall statue of the Buddha Amida. I couldn't really picture 120 meter tall statue going in, but when I saw it over the trees coming in, I was surprised how big it is. FYI, the statue of liberty, with pedestal, is 93 meters. I parked and walked in and managed to not trip over anything while staring up at the Buddha.

After buying a ticket for the full show, including a ride up to chest level, I walked into the park around the Buddha. First thing I noticed was this smaller statue out front.

I think it was a Buddha poo, but who knows? Once I recovered from that shock, I moved around back, where there's a small animal park. They have squirrels and chipmunks that kids can feed, but I think the star attraction was the monkey show. Awwww, aren't they cute?

The ride up the Buddha was really trippy. They herd everyone (in this case, 6 of us) into a huge elevator for the first stage of the ride. When the doors close, the lights go out, and you're standing in this pitch black box listening to something that might have been a description of the statue. A minute later, you step out on the 1st floor, or as the pamphlet says "The World of Infinite Light and Life". It was like some 70's nightclub, with little clear plastic Buddhas with colored lights shining through them. Then it's stairs to the next floor, where they have a bunch of pictures of the construction and stuff, before taking the elevator to chest-high. The windows were too small, and the day too cloudy, to really see much, but it was high up. Of course, there was a gift shop up there.

There's not enough pictures of me on here, and I'm pretty vain, so here's a picture I took of myself in front of the Buddha. The one I got someone else to take didn't come out good enough.

On the way home, I stopped at Toys R Us. Here's a special, election-year version of the Game of Life that probably won't be sold in the U.S. Funny, but I didn't think it was $35 funny, so all I got was a picture.

Golden Week I

It's officially Golden Week, or as I like to think of it, spring break. I've got a whole week off to bounce around Japan. I've got plans to go south at the end of the week to catch a couple of baseball games, so I thought I'd start the break with baseball, too. I caught the end of a high school game a couple of weeks ago, and headed back to the park yesterday to see the whole thing. First off, the park is huge. It's nicer than some minor league parks I've seen, and more crowded. And, at 600 yen to get in, more expensive than some AA parks.
Now, since I didn't have a schedule (even if I did, I couldn't read it), I caught the end of one game and the beginning of another. Then it got a little cold, so I left. For the sake of a coherent narrative, I'm going to combine it together into one whole game.

After the most organized and intense pre-game I've ever seen, the teams headed to the dugout. Then they lined up and rushed at each other. I thought they were going to settle by ramming into each other, but instead they just lined up and bowed.

The cheering section got going early. It was louder than I remember high school football games, and they don't have band. Just some noisemakers, 1 big drum, and a lot of yelling. And pink jackets.

The pink coats weren't the only ones in the cheering section. There was also bunch of what I assume were underclassmen, in full uniform, leading cheers and holding up signs. What I liked the best about that was they were evenly distributed around the section. I think they probably had practices just for cheer leading, probably after the baseball practice.

I got some decent shots of the game(s). This is my favorite. Apparently, they teach that Japanese baseball swing early.

On a side note, I saw a few kids kit hit by pitches and not take a base. I think they take making an effort to get out of the way much more seriously than US baseball does.

The games were really well played and really evenly matched. It was 0 - 0 after 5, when the grounds crew came out.

This was, I think, more underclassmen. They raked the entire infield by hand, then laid down new lines. Looked really nice, but took about 20 minutes. Really slows the game down.

The game (the one I saw the end of) went to the bottom of the 10th tied 1 - 1. Kid hit a nice solid single to left-center and the guy on 2nd made it home to end the game. But that wasn't the end of the "show".

Both teams lined back up at home plate, and it the Japan version of the traditional "good game, good game, ..." bowed to each other and the umpires. By the way, there were 4 umps for a high school game. I don't ever remember having more than 2.

After the bowing, the losers went to the dugout and the winners lined up again facing the outfield scoreboard. They took off their hats while the played what I think must have been the school's song and raised what I assume was the school flag.

Finally, after the song, each team ran over and thanked their cheering section.

It was really interesting to compare the Japanese high school game and the American game. There were so many little things that I couldn't possibly remember them all. Every few minutes, something would happen and my jaw would drop. I'm glad I kicked off a week of Japanese baseball by checking out how it gets started.