Our first excursion to a Japanese baseball game this season took us to Chiba, home of Bobby Valentine and the last place Marines. Even with it being a Saturday, I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult to get a seat given the opponent (Rakuten Eagles from Sendai) and with the Marines being out of the race. Not so.

We barely got tickets to this game that sold out soon after we arrived more than an hour early. As we walked into the stadium of 30,000 people (about 29,000 already in their seats even though the game wouldn’t begin for almost an hour) our foreign faces were on the giant video scoreboard in center field for all to see. Did someone notify the camera man that some strange looking people were about to enter? I don’t know, but it was funny. I’ve been to hundreds of games in my life and that was my first time, that I remember, being up on the big screen. My daughter turned red immediately upon seeing her face up there.

Finding a seat was no easy task. We ended up with about the worst seats in the place and were lucky to have found those. We couldn’t see the big screen or left field from where we sat.

The Japanese national anthem, “Kimi ga yo,” was sung by someone flanked by the Marines many mascots.

What would you like to eat? There are no hot dogs or nachos on the menu here. But you can have some Tempura, Curry Rice, or Tanuki Udon.

More pictures of the crazy fans and the beer girls in a later entry…

Posted on September 14th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: baseball, food, Tokyo. Comments: 1

竹下通り in 原宿 on a Sunday is interesting to see once. I can’t imagine wanting to ever walk down it again though–at least not in the heat and humidity that we encountered on this day.

You can pretty much point your camera in any direction while in Harajuku and be able to photograph something interesting.

I pointed mine at the sky and a blimp flew by.

We picked up Maya’s birthday present in Harajuku at a place called Kiddy Land. I asked Maya if she went to Harajuku (or Shinjuku or Takadanobaba) much. She said she hopes to go there someday which surprised me. We go through Harajuku nearly daily as foreigners living in Tokyo, yet a Tokyo native who lives 20 minutes to the east has never been there. Sure she is only 11, but it reminded me that we frequently miss the things in our own backyard.

As a kid who grew up just across the bay from San Francisco I remember thinking how rarely we ever went to San Francisco.

Posted on September 10th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: buildings, harajuku, people, Tokyo. Comments: 2

The other morning we rode the train from Takadanobaba to the Tamachi Station where my kids go to school. While crossing the street to get to Tokyo International School we have the above view of the Tokyo Tower.

The Tokyo Tower is actually higher than the Eiffel Tower it is modeled (copied) from, but it doesn’t seem as tall given the high rise buildings nearby. The Eiffel Tower, by comparison, has virtually no buildings right next to it, and those in the vicinity are usually no more than 3 stories high so it stands out much more.

After dropping the kids off we headed over to a pastry shop adjacent to the Tamachi Station. I had the asparagus, ham, and cheese pastry while my wife had a blueberry roll. The Koala bear pastries were the special of the day at only 80 yen so we grabbed one too. It wasn’t as good as it looked. The others were though.

Posted on September 6th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: food, Tokyo, tokyo tower. Comments: 3

When I was a kid I played some form of baseball (frequently wiffleball due to space and number-of-participants constraints) at least 200 days a year. I don’t see that anymore in the states in this age of soccer and video games. But in Japan I see kids playing baseball nearly every day.

The location for these shots is the open area on the north-west corner of 甘泉園公園. I’ll be posting more pictures from and information about this park near Waseda University soon.

Posted on September 1st, 2009 under Japan. Tags: baseball, japan pictures, nishi-waseda, Tokyo, 甘泉園公園. Comments: 2

Just in case you didn’t get enough of Meiji Jingu last time, here are some more photos.

Posted on August 30th, 2009 under Japan. Tags: clouds, japan pictures, meiji jingu, shinto, skywatch, Tokyo, torii. Comments: 2