JAPAN, 2023.
MONDAY.
My wake-up call in Sydney came at 3:55 a.m. I have no idea whatsoever what time that was back in California. Whenever I need to think about that I check my world clock setting on my iPhone.
Today I’m moving over from Australia to Japan. I’m really looking forward to this part of the trip. I’m a baseball fan. I enjoy seeing games played at different stadiums just as I like to see different race tracks in my trackchasing hobby.
I’ve seen the Major League World Series played in three different stadiums in the United States. I’ve seen the Major League Baseball All-Star game when it was played in Anaheim, California. That’s where I first taught my son to scalp tickets!
I’ve been to the college World Series played in Omaha in two different stadiums. I’ve also trekked up to Williamsport, Pennsylvania to see the Little League World Series. I’ve seen quite a few minor-league baseball games. I’ve seen major league baseball played in all 30 active major-league baseball stadiums, as well as an additional nine or so stadiums that are no longer in existence. Most of that baseball watching was just for that unique first-time experience so I could say I did it!
Japan has an active major league baseball scene called Nippon Professional Baseball. There are 12 teams in the league. Of course, they all play in their own stadiums. The teams are spread all over Japan as my bullet train riding is teaching me!
This coming week starting tomorrow my plan is to see seven games in six days at seven different stadiums. That’s going to involve a lot of travel, mainly using subways and trains, and in one case airplanes.
But before any of that could happen, I needed to get from Sydney, Australia, over to Tokyo, Japan. Today that would be accomplished by flying first from Sydney to the Gold Coast area of Queensland. The Gold Coast airport is 90 km south of Brisbane. From there I would make the nine-hour flight to Tokyo’s Narita Airport.
I was flying on Jetstar Airlines. I purchased my airline ticket several weeks ago. Jetstar has a business model like Spirit Airlines. Jetstar offers low basic prices and then charges for all the extras.
Jetstar allows passengers to bring carry-on baggage at no charge. But… the maximum weight allowed is 7 kg or 15.4 pounds. I made it my mission on this trip not to pay for any carry-on or checked baggage. It’s just the principle of the thing to me.
This is a 15-day trip. Can you imagine taking a 15-day trip with 15.4 pounds of luggage when six of those 15.4 pounds is the weight of the travel bag itself?
Today I used my small rolling bag which is perfect for situations like this. It meets the 18’ x 14’ x 8’ requirement for these draconian baggage limitations.
Of course, I brought along a little bit “more” than what would fit in my bag and meet the weight requirements. That being the case, I put my iPad in the front of my pants. I used a small satchel, not a man purse, and filled it with all the smaller heavier items that I was carrying on this trip.
I must admit I have worried a little bit about making this all happen successfully. I could have and should have relieved the worry by simply paying their fee of $109 and getting an extra 15 pounds of baggage weight allowed. However, I just wanted to see if I could meet the challenge. Today I did.
It was a one-hour flight from Sydney to the Gold Coast and then another nine hours from the Gold Coast to Narita. I didn’t use the airplane’s entertainment system a single time during nearly 23,000 miles of flying on this trip. I just relaxed and listened to several episodes of the Netflix legal drama, Suits. I am in season 6. I’m certainly not looking forward to when the entire series ends for me at what I think is season 10.
Once I landed in Tokyo clearing border control was relatively easy. Carol and I had been in Japan just a few weeks ago. At that time, we stayed in a hotel named Narita Tabu. This hotel is a short 10-minute walk from the airport terminal. I made that same walk again tonight and arrived at 9 p.m.
I really wanted to get checked in after a long day of travel. Nevertheless, there was something more important to take care of once I made it to the hotel lobby. I have been working with a company called JapanBall. My contact has been Michael Westbay.
Michael runs a company that serves as a ticket broker for baseball fans visiting Japan. For a very small fee, he will do all the legwork to get the tickets for the games that his customers want to see.
For the most part, Japanese major-league baseball does not play games on Mondays. That day is reserved for rainouts if they have any. I signed up to see games for six consecutive days starting on Tuesday and running through Sunday. On Sunday I’ll see a game at 1 p.m. Later I hope to see another game at another stadium at 6 p.m.
When I checked into my hotel the baseball tickets were waiting for me as planned. I was a little concerned that delivering the tickets to the hotel might not work out. In my years of corporate business, on more than one occasion, make that several occasions, the hotel couldn’t find what had been sent.
However, Michael told me on his website, https://japanball.com, that they have NEVER had a problem delivering tickets on time to their customers. That seemed like a very bold statement. I will tell you that these people are 100% organized. When I checked into the hotel my tickets were ready for my acceptance. After I arrived in my hotel room I spread my tickets out on the bed. Everything was there. Perfect. Thank you, Michael and JapanBall!
I don’t know that I could possibly explain to a point where you would understand and appreciate this comment. I have had some very aggressive international travel adventures. I’m talking about WAY beyond the “land at the airport, meet your travel rep, get on the tour bus, and be ready to go at 9 a.m. the next morning for the first museum of the trip”. Very few people would sign up for many of my trips including this one!
I think what I’m trying to do in the next six days will be a real physical and logistical challenge. While dealing with the Japanese language and the Japanese signs, which are impossible to read in English, this might be the most taxing and challenging mental exercise I’ve ever had to do.
I have a good plan. However, Mike Tyson would tell you that everyone has a plan until they get hit in the face.
I know this. Despite having a good plan and expecting to be where I need to be when I need to be I know I’m going to run into “issues”. When that happens, I will be reminded that this is about the journey….the trip is not about the destination. Wish me luck.
TUESDAY.
Wow! I am just beginning my Japanese baseball audit odyssey. I can tell you this with certainty. It’s a lot easier to say you’re going to see seven Japanese baseball games in six days than it is to do it.
I woke up early in my Narita airport hotel. I had a busy travel day ahead of me. I hopped on the hotel shuttle bus. The bus took me about a mile over to the Narita Airport. I could have walked but the bus was convenient.
Today I would be traveling about four hours in total on first a subway train and then a super-fast “Shinkansen” train (above). You know these trains as Japan’s famous bullet trains. Following the bullet train would be two more subway rides. I think the total cost of those four rides was about $110 with the bullet train making up almost all that total.
The sightseeing was interesting as we flew past the Japanese countryside. I saw all kinds of lush green rice paddies. I also saw a couple of golf driving ranges. These are easily identifiable because they have netting that goes up four or five stories to keep the golf ball inside the facility. I’ve been told that it is so difficult for the Japanese to actually play on a golf course, because of cost and crowds, that even people who consider themselves “golfers” have never hit a ball any place other than at a driving range.
I am most impressed with the Japanese people. They are a respectful and humble society. They are quiet, studious, and addicted like most people in the world to their phones. Throughout my entire trip, I never encountered any situation where I felt unsafe. The people will go out of their way to help you in all situations. They just don’t speak much English!
I had planned to use Google Maps for directions. However, most of the time I used the recommendations and directions provided by a website called Rome2Rio. I’m not sure if you’ve ever looked at this site. It is outstanding. You simply enter your departure point and your arrival point. Rome2Rio provides all the options from driving to flying to taking public transportation. I cut and pasted the results I got from Rome2Rio into my iPhone’s calendar. I used Google Maps very little, primarily for walking directions once I was close to my destination.
I met a nice young man by the name Gakuto K. as I was getting ready to board today’s bullet train. Gakuto was surprised I had come to Japan with the express intent of seeing baseball games. We chatted for a few minutes and exchanged business cards as we boarded our 2 1/2-hour train which would take me to Osaka. Gakuto is a college professor and has been to the States during his travels. For the remainder of my trip, he and I messaged back and forth. He was most helpful whenever I needed a question answered.
I bought my Shinkansen train ticket from a real person at Narita airport. Then when it was time to board the train, I simply hopped on, and no one ever asked me for a ticket after that.
I had researched hotels for every night of my stay beginning in Australia, and continuing to Japan. I tried to pick hotels, especially in Japan, that were near the baseball stadiums I would be visiting. Here was my thinking.
I’m traveling with a small travel bag. My Japanese baseball contact told me that I should be able to bring that bag into the stadiums if it fit underneath my seat, which I think it would. However, that concept was sort of “out there” relative to what the experience would be in the United States. I don’t think U.S. ballparks would allow small rolling bags to be brought into the stadium.
This being the case I tried to select hotel locations where I could stop, check into my hotel, deposit my luggage, and get organized before I moved on to the stadium. When the ball games were finished, in most cases, it would be about 9 o’clock in the evening. Having a hotel located a short train ride or walk away at that time of night was a good idea.
There is one element of the trip that I may have underestimated. What’s that? It’s the weather. August is the hottest month for most major cities in Japan. Where I will be traveling, the temperature will reach 90°F and higher. That’s bad but what makes it much worse is that we’re dealing here with heavy humidity. I’ll also mention that a 90-95° day is a lot hotter when you have blue skies and a blazing sun than if you have overcast conditions. The weather the entire time I was in Japan was torturous.
Today’s hotel was just four stops on the subway from tonight’s baseball stadium. I got over to my hotel at a little past noon. I was hoping I could check in and get some air conditioning.
When you book these smaller independent hotels, you never know exactly what you’re going to get. In each and every case I chose highly rated properties. Tonight’s hotel, the HOTEL U’s Kouroen was in a commuter/residential area.
The hotel was only a minute’s walk from the train station. That was a good idea. However, there were virtually no retail establishments in the immediate area. There was nowhere to get lunch. When I tried to check in the woman told me in Japanese that the earliest opportunity for a check-in would be 3 p.m. Normally I can schmooze my way past situations like this. Not today. This woman wasn’t hearing it.
I’m going to guess the hotel had about 30 or maybe 40 rooms. I didn’t see any activity in the hotel whatsoever. I couldn’t imagine that all 30 or 40 rooms were unavailable just three hours before the official check-in time.
I like Japan and I like the Japanese people, but communicating with them in English is just about impossible. They will try to help you and may know a couple of words in English. I have found that sign language goes further than trying to speak the local language. I haven’t tried to learn any in Japanese. Doing that didn’t seem worth the effort to me.
Convenience stores are big in Japan. They offer all kinds of foods which can be heated up in the store’s microwave. Offerings include spaghetti and sausage and lots of rice dishes as well.
I was waiting to check into the hotel under a blazing sun with the most uncomfortable humidity. I found a 7-Eleven convenience store. A lot of these convenience stores allow you to eat inside their store at special tables after you buy their products and use their microwaves. That would have been nice today because the 7-Eleven was fully air-conditioned.
They had a microwave oven. They heated up my spaghetti with ham and garlic entrée. However, there was no place to eat my food inside the store. I sat on some nearby steps in the shade with my pasta dish and a can of Budweiser. As pedestrians passed by, I’m sure they thought I was homeless! I guess at that point because I couldn’t check into my hotel, I WAS homeless.
Finally, as the clock approached 3 p.m., I was sitting in the very small hotel lobby. The clerk took pity on me and allowed me into my room. When I entered, the temperature was probably 110°. I turned on the air conditioner to max. It took a while but sooner or later the room did get cool.
My hotel room was nice. It had something that I can’t ever recall any of my hotel rooms having. Any guesses? A sauna! At certain times a sauna would have been a nice benefit. That would not be the case on a hot and humid day like we were having today. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in a sauna. I felt I’d already done that all day long!
Tonight’s baseball game was starting at 6 p.m. It was nice that my hotel was so close to the Hanshin Koshien Stadium. I did a little Googling and found out that the stadium was built all the way back in 1924 nearly 100 years ago. It has been remodeled but on the outside, it gives the vibe that you might experience from Wrigley Field or Fenway Park.
The Japanese love their baseball. Tonight, was a regular season game on a Tuesday. The place seats about 45,000 people. The game was sold out! The Japanese don’t leave the game early either.
I had told Michael of JapanBall that my preference was to sit behind home plate and high up. That way I get a panoramic view of the field.
Tonight’s game was the last game that he and I had confirmed. For a while, he wasn’t certain he could get a ticket. That being the case, the seat choices were much smaller than for the other games.
Tonight’s seat location was out in centerfield. I don’t really care to sit there. For the first hour, the blazing sun beat down on us as well.
At most American baseball stadiums if I were seated in the outfield with a paid ticket, I would move around until I had a much better seat. I wanted to be closer to the action and in the shade. However, at the Koshien Stadium certain sections of seating, like the outfield seats, are blocked off from the other viewing locations. We experienced this situation when we went to Boston to see a game at Fenway Park. We were sort of locked into our section. That’s one of the reasons that visiting Fenway made it one of my least favorite places to see a game.
Japanese baseball is much different than American baseball. When I tell people that they think that there must be different rules for baseball in Japan. No, that’s not the case.
The big difference is the fans. The fans clap and cheer and chant and bang their plastic bats together when their team is batting on a nonstop basis. If you think that’s no big deal, then I’m going to guess you’ve never seen a baseball game in Japan. Carol said the fan’s chanting gave her a headache!
Both the home and away team have their own special fan sections. The fans bring huge flags and musical instruments and work hard to motivate their fans to stay in the game. Tonight, the Hanshin Tigers were hosting the Yokohama DeNA BayStars.
The dominant color for the tigers is yellow. The main color for the BayStars is dark blue. More than 95% of the fans were wearing yellow to support their home team.
Japanese games have a wide variety of concession offerings. Many of the items they sell are unique to the Japanese culture and cuisine. I wasn’t overly impressed with what I saw. I ended up eating some chicken and later having a Coca-Cola ice cream float. On a hot night that hit the spot.
There is one other aspect of Japanese baseball that is uniquely different from anything I’ve ever seen in the United States. Each of the four Japanese baseball stadiums that I have now visited has a core of young women who sell primarily beer, but also alcoholic drinks and sodas.
These women aren’t much taller than 5 feet. Most are several Coke floats short of weighing 100 pounds. That doesn’t stop them from carrying a backpack-type container full of beer. Think of what they carry as half of a full keg.
In a kind way, these young women remind me of locusts. They are everywhere. They are moving around constantly. They are smiling as if they are on stage in order to sell more of their product. At any one time from my seat, I can see 10-20 of these girls working their butts off.
Can you imagine on a 90° night with matching humidity running up and down the stadium steps constantly for three hours with a backpack of beer that might weigh 20 or 30 pounds or more? I can’t imagine how they feel when the game is over.
There is a term for these Japanese beer-selling young women. “Uriko”. Read what the Japan Times has to say about this cultural phenomenon. Baseball beer girls!
During the middle of the game, I went underneath the seating area to get some refreshments. I happened to be near where the beer girls were getting re-supplied. I couldn’t believe it when I saw them RUNNING from the stands to the resupply point. When they had a full backpack of beer, they ran back up the steps to the general seating area.
I don’t know how much these women are paid. I don’t know what kind of incentive system motivates them to do what they do. I do know this. If I were starting a company and needed a group of employees who would work harder than just about anyone I’ve ever seen, I would hire these women. I would think they sleep very soundly after working at the ballpark.
The game did not have a lot of action. The BayStars ended up beating the Tigers by a score of 3-2. The BayStars scored three runs in the top of the 9th to come back for the win.
Koshien Stadium – Nishinomiya, Hyogo, Japan. Opened 1924. Capacity 47,400.
It was nice that Koshien Stadium was less than a five-minute walk to the train station. My hotel was only four train stops down the tracks and located within two minutes of its own train station. The Japanese train system is fantastic.
When I got back to my room, I benefited from keeping my room’s air conditioning on its lowest level, after entering this afternoon to a steaming hot hotel room. Carol and I always debate whether we should leave the hotel room’s AC going strong when we leave the room or come back to a hot room and wait for it to cool down. You might guess which side of our discussion I take.
Today was a challenging travel day. I rode for more than four hours on trains. I walked another 4 miles or so. This was all done in heavy duty uncomfortable hot and humid weather. That’s like a slow but steady energy drain all day long.
I’ve got five more days of doing this. The weather isn’t going to change. It’s going to be hot and humid during my entire stay. Having seen the advance forecast I am not surprised but I am reminded that I hate hot and sticky weather. Give me San Clemente!
I won’t have to travel four hours every day luckily. On one day, I will fly up to the ball park’s location…after three hours of train riding! I have a feeling I’m going to be as tired as the beer girls when this week is finished.
WEDNESDAY.
The weather in Japan is brutal. Temps top out at 95°F each day. In the evening the humidity is as high as 80%. July and August are terrible times to visit Japan weatherwise. Then why did I come here now? I only came during this time of the year to tie my Japan visit in with my trackchasing trip to Australia. Visiting in the springtime is much better!
Of course, I see several sights in Japan that I don’t see anywhere else. One of the most notable is the number of vending machines, primarily offering cold and hot drinks. These machines are everywhere, including in the middle of residential areas. This trip is to see ballparks. Past trips to Japan and hopefully future trips are about more general sightseeing.
All the airports, train stations, and subway stations that I have been using have storage lockers. I plan to fly for a day in the middle of this trip. I’ll be putting my small travel bag in one of those storage lockers so I don’t have to deal with the 7 kg “free” carry-on baggage weight limit from Jetstar Airways.
I use Rome2rio for recommendations on the transportation methods that will get me from one place to the next. This is an outstanding resource. Rome2Rio will give me options ranging from airplanes to trains to buses to taxis to driving my own car and even walking. I just need to decide how quickly I want to get there and at what expense.
I don’t think I realized that when Rome2Rio said “train” they were often referring to Japan’s famous bullet trains. In Japan, these super-fast trains are called “Shinkansen”. I rode a bullet train yesterday. I rode one today and I will ride one tomorrow.
I order my bullet train tickets and of course my subway tickets on the day I plan to use them. There is no need to buy in advance. However, today I did have to stand in line for 20 minutes, waiting to get a real person agent to help me with my bullet train transaction.
I also used Rome2rio to help me find hotels that were near the train stations. Most of the time the train stations were located fairly near the ballpark. The strategy was to get a hotel that was both near the train station AND the ballpark. This worked out very well.
I try to limit my choice of hotels to those with ratings of 8.0 or better on a 10-point scale. Hotels outside of Tokyo are very inexpensive. On this evening I paid just $46 U.S. for a modern high-rise, dripping in gold leaf décor hotel. In Tokyo that hotel price would have started at $400 and up. I have averaged spending less than $100 a night for my entire trip to Japan. I don’t understand how these hotels can operate charging such low rates.
My baseball ticket purchase plan with JapanBall has gone perfectly. They’ve been in business since 1999. I can’t recommend them highly enough. I had requested from Michael t JapanBall that my seats all be behind home plate and up higher. With this seat location, I can get a panoramic view of the game. That’s the kind of seat I had tonight.
This evening’s game at the Zozo Marine stadium was so much more enjoyable than last night’s game at Koshien Stadium. The main reason was that there was a nice breeze coming in off the water. This made the “feels like” temperature probably 72°. Last night’s “feels like” temperature was probably 95°. The difference was like night and day. I hate hot and humid weather.
The stadium opened in 1990. Any guesses on their very first event? It was Madonna! She opened her Blonde Ambition Tour here.
For the second consecutive night, I was seeing a baseball game in an open-air stadium. These were the fourth and fifth Japanese ballparks I have visited. The first three were all air-conditioned dome stadiums.
Japanese baseball fans are beyond passionate. Every stadium that I have visited has several large team stores. They sell all the traditional souvenir merchandise like hats, shirts, and much more. I must be careful what I buy. I have no place to put many souvenirs with my luggage situation. The Japanese are helping with that. At most locations the largest size they have is XL and I am 2XL…in case you’re considering giving me a Christmas gift.
Japanese baseball is certainly a different experience than what you might have in the United States. The actual game is the same. It’s just that everything else seems to be different and dare I say it, maybe better.
When a relief pitcher enters the game, he is chauffeured from the outfield in a convertible automobile. The car drives slowly and deposits the pitcher near one of the baselines. He hops out and runs to the mound. That’s different.
Lots of folks go to the ball game for the food and drink. There’s nothing better than having a hotdog, peanuts, and a cold beer, right? The Japanese food and drink offerings are a bit different. Tonight, I dined on squid, lo mein, and an ice cream float that was using mochi ice cream. My family thought I had hard-boiled eggs in my drink. All good.
The predominance of “uriko” beer sellers was much less pronounced at the Zozo Marine Stadium. I don’t know why that was. At last night’s game at any one time, I could see 15-20 of these beer girls within my line of vision. Tonight, they only came up and down my aisle about once per inning.
I’m not much of a beer drinker, but I had to have the experience of buying a beer from an uriko girl. By the way, I am using the term “girl” because that’s what they call these ladies in Japan. My server was very pleasant. She tried to speak English with me. Remember, she’s really a SALES person. My beer cost ¥800 or about five dollars U.S.
This reminds me that the Japanese people just don’t speak much English. That’s more than understandable. Where I’ve been going there are almost no and I mean literally zero American tourists or European tourists. Carol and I always marvel at this fact. Wherever we are traveling in the world, we just don’t see people who “look like us or talk like us”. That’s a good reason to be traveling, isn’t it?
Tonight, was the first of the five Japanese stadiums that I have visited that wasn’t sold out. It was 85-90% full but every other park has been jampacked to the max.
Both games on this trip have had identical scores of 3-2. I have yet to see a home run. As a matter of fact, there are almost no balls hit beyond medium depth to the outfield.
I’ve got four more days of seeing baseball. I believe only one of those will be inside a dome. I’m not looking forward to watching more baseball games in heat and humidity with no breeze. We’ll see how that goes.
Zozo Marine Stadium – Mihama, Mihama-ku, Chiba City, Chiba, Japan. Opened 1990. Capacity 30,118.
I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you I am hooked on Japanese cream (same as whipped cream) pastries. I eat them at least twice a day primarily at Japanese convenience stores. They are tasty! Of course, I pay for them with Apple Pay using my Apple watch.
Japanese toilets are something else! They always come with heated seats. The toilet in my hotel room came with its own remote. A Japanese toilet has a bidet of sorts that squirts where the toilet thinks you might need it most. I wasn’t thinking and picked up the remote. I thought I would check out what was happening at ESPN. I pressed a couple of buttons. Surprise! ESPN wasn’t on this remote!
I am continuing to wash my clothes in the sink using my soap flakes every couple of days. Right now, I have an inventory of four days’ worth of clothing with five days to go on the trip. That means I’ll probably wash one or two more times. It does take some time for my clothes to dry when I wash them at 10 p.m. This must be considered with my clothes washing, drying, and wearing strategy.
One last thing before I close out the day. I have a special favor to ask. Let’s just keep the fact that I can wash my own clothes a secret from Carol, eh? She don’t need to know that. I have a reputation to uphold and that is I DON’T do chores. We good?
THURSDAY.
My days on this trip are somewhat repetitive. Each day I begin traveling on the trains at about 10 a.m. I arrive at my general destination at about 3 p.m. I need to get organized and be ready to show up for the baseball games at 6 p.m. The games finish at about 9 p.m. Then I’ve got to get back to my hotel and get everything organized, sometimes wash some clothes, charge all my electronic equipment and go to bed.
If I get that done by midnight, I feel good! The next day it’s “wash and repeat”. I start riding another train the next morning. This doesn’t leave very much free time. The travel plan doesn’t leave any time whatsoever for seeing sites other than those related to coming and going to the baseball games. That’s not the end of the world. This is my seventh or eighth trip to Japan so I’ve had a chance to see a little bit of the country.
I find it much easier when I need to buy my bullet train tickets to do so with a real person. The JR Train system has some very helpful agents.
Today I tried to buy my bullet train ticket using the kiosk on my own. I was unsuccessful. I ended up getting a JR train employee to come out to the machines and help me. It turns out the only way I could buy the tickets is using my Japanese cash from the kiosks. I’d like to save that cash for emergencies.
I was in the Tokyo station, which is the busiest train station in Japan. Tokyo handles 4,000 trains a day and 500,000 passengers every day. It’s busy! They have all kinds of restaurants and retail outlets so that passengers have some conveniences when they go from one train to the next.
I didn’t have much time but thought I had enough time to stop at a gourmet hamburger café. I sat down and ordered a burger and a beer. The food and drink were great, but I had to rush in order to catch my next train.
I’m using bullet trains for the longer portions of my trips. Today’s bullet train ride was about two hours long. It took me up to Sendai, Japan from Tokyo. In a way riding a bullet train is a lot like flying. I had a reserved seat. A train attendant roamed the single-aisle selling refreshments. However, seat belts are not required or offered. I preferred the window seats so I could enjoy the Japanese countryside.
I am at the mercy of the Nippon Professional Baseball League schedules as to which locations I visit on which days. It just seems like every stadium is about a 3–4-hour train ride from the last place.
When I arrived at my train station in Sendai, I confirmed my hotel was only a 10-minute walk from the station. That was fantastic. However, the weather was less than fantastic. It was blazing hot with strong humidity.
Tonight, I was booked in Hotel Grand Bach. What a nice place. Everything about this hotel was upscale and modern. I was only paying $72 dollars for my room. The room wasn’t huge, but every aspect of the experience was well above average bordering on luxurious.
The hotel’s location was outstanding. It was a 10-minute walk from the train station and another 10 minutes of walking to tonight’s ballpark. I was able to get these more than favorable logistics by using rome2rio.com.
This will be my third new baseball park visit on this trip and my sixth overall in Japan. I am now halfway to my goal of seeing a game at all 12 Japanese baseball professional stadiums.
Tonight’s stadium, Rakuten Mobile Park Miyagi was built all the way back in 1950. It’s the third oldest in the league and the oldest in the Pacific division. At one time the stadium sold its naming rights to Kleenex. It was known as “Kleenex Stadium Miyagi”.
The stadium has a little bit of a rocky history. When it opened the demand to see the games was so strong that people rushed the gates to get inside. During that misadventure, three people were killed. Then in 2011, there was a strong earthquake and a corresponding tsunami that hit Sendai and closed the stadium for some time.
Tonight’s game would be played in an open-air stadium with a relatively small seating capacity of 30,000. Like last night the game was not sold out. I had a perfect seat right behind home plate about 25 rows up.
Tonight, the visiting Saitama Seibu Lions beat the hometown Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles 5-4. I saw my first two home runs of the trip. Surprisingly, both teams used a combined total of ten pitchers in the games. That convertible moving people from the bullpen got a workout.
Once again, I couldn’t find any souvenirs with the shirt sizes being limited to XL. I guess I’m a regular now with the uriko girls who sell their beer by roaming up and down the aisles of the stadium. Their service provides a convenient way to get a cool drink without leaving your seat.
It seems the number of uriko girls varies from one stadium to the next. At the Koshien Stadium, they were as plentiful as locusts. Tonight, there were fewer uriko girls.
There was another most unusual thing I noticed. There were several young people who simply stood in one place and held up a sign. Of course, the sign was in Japanese. What did that sign say? I took a picture and then had my translate app tell me the English translation. These people were warning fans of the danger of foul balls! Try standing in one place holding a sign for three hours in this weather.
I think major leagues in America could learn just a little bit from how the Japanese game goes about entertaining fans. In Japan, they have cheerleaders, the uriko girls, and special fan cheering sections with huge drums and flags. Although the game itself is the same, these “adds” make the experience a little bit more lighthearted for the fans. Everyone seems to enjoy it. The Japanese are passionate about their baseball.
Rakuten Mobile Park Miyagi – Sendai, Myagi, Japan. Opened 1950. Capacity 30,508.
After the game during my 10-minute walk back to the hotel, I was reminded that the Japanese people have a lot of strong personal qualities. When the traffic signals indicate pedestrians should stand at the curb despite no traffic being anywhere in sight they do. Folks wait until their walk light turns green before they move. I’m not sure you would see that done as well in the U.S.
The Japanese people seem to be respectful and disciplined. They are quiet. On the trains, no one talks on their phone. The Japanese are a good-looking group. You won’t see any overweight people here unless you go to a sumo wrestling tournament! They just seem to have a lot of qualities that can benefit a general society overall. I am impressed with the Japanese.
Another baseball stadium touring day is finished. The logistics of each day share a lot of similarities with the days that precede them and I suspect will have a lot of similarities with the days I am yet to experience.
If I were trying to see a baseball game at every stadium in America on the major league level, it would be easier and maybe more entertaining to go to Chicago one month, then Boston the next, and maybe Seattle the next until games at all 30 stadiums were seen.
When traveling to a far-away place like Japan, it just makes more sense to see seven games in six days rather than make seven separate trips to Japan. That’s how I’m looking at it.
I hope you enjoyed getting to tour Japan in a way somewhat different than your normal tour guide would take you around Japan. This is Part 1 of what I am calling “Japan baseball…the challenge to see them all”. Stay tuned for my second and final addition from this trip.
Randy Lewis
To foul ball please be careful