Go Go Go Go Lions Gooo Gooo

It's late at night and I probably should be in bed so I apologize in advance for any random tangents this may go on.. I am going to try to keep it somewhat in order if only for you the reader.. :)

First of all may I just say that the Shinjuku train station is fucking huge! I went in to get the Shinjuku-Seibu line and after walking around for a while I had to ask someone, apparently the Shinjuku train station is in two parts. The Keio Lines (main subway lines) and the JR Lines (trains to locations outside Tokyo) are all in the main building, there is another building that houses the secondary Subways (the commuter rails). The Shinjuku-Seibu line is apparently in the secondary building because it's a commuter line not a main train and not a subway.. Anyway, it's a good thing Japanese people speak English to me.

That's a gift I seem to have, so many people tell me that Japanese people don't speak English, but every time I talk to them they speak to me.. Trick to talking to Japanese people, be humble and be very patient with them trying to speak. If they think you're in a hurry or will cut them off/correct them they will not talk to you. It's easier to say you don't speak English than to sound stupid doing it. Remember that Japanese people take pride in everything they do, if they don't feel 100% sure of their English they will not speak to you if they think you might look down on them in any way!

Something I didn't realize about Japanese people - everyone know that when you take or hand a business card to Japanese person you use both hands and present it to them as a gift and I'm sure you know that when you take a business card from a Japanese person you always take it with both hands and read it before putting it away. When I say put it away I don't mean stuff it in your pocket I mean put it in something so they know you consider it as important as they do! Anyway, where was I.. Right.. So apparently this custom also hold true for credit cards, receipts and train/baseball tickets. Even on a lesser note on merchandise. I bought a stuffed animal of Sam and the lady at the counter handed the stuffed animal to me to look at and then handed me the bag for me to put it in.

Ok, so now where was I.. Back at Shinjuku, right.. So, I asked someone and they sent me to the secondary building. Bought my ticket to the Seibu Dome station and headed onto the first train. To get to the Seibu Dome you have to take the Seibu-Shinjuku line into Seibu then you have to take the Nishi-Tokorozawa line one stop before finally taking the Seibu-Sayama Line down to the Seibu Dome. Don't worry if you can't read Japanese the signs change every few seconds so you can read it in English letters and Japanese letters and all the maps have both letters too.

Got to the stadium just after 5pm and got my ticket! Section 53 Row 20 Seat 5 if you care. The way the stadium is designed is it's all one level, they have a walkway halfway between the field and the concession stands, I was in row 20 of the upper half of the stadium. I don't think that stadium would have a bad seat. The stadium holds about 36,000 people and it was sold out, ironically a bunch of people on the 3rd base side must have purchased tickets and not showed up, there was a few whole sections empty..

They had a visitor seating area at the stadium which was the left field bleachers, the fans over there were trying real hard to make enough noise to drown out the Lions fans. It almost worked in the top of the 1st when the Lions pitcher walked the first two batters he faced. It was not looking good.. The manager came out and talked to the pitcher and he didn't allow another man to reach base until the 5th inning! The Fighters pitcher however got beat up! I don't know why in Earth they let this guy pitch for as long as they did, he allowed 7 runs on 10 hits in 3 innings (4 in the 1st, 1 in the 2nd and 2 in the 3rd)!

By the way, the Fighters suck in general.. I don't know how they managed to get in the playoffs let alone to the 2nd round! They didn't have one batter hitting .300, most of their lineup was batting between .215 and .250, I think they had one guy hitting .280! Ok, average isn't everything they must hit some massive home runs right? Wrong! Their cleanup hitter had 8 home runs for the entire season! To put that in perspective the Lions cleanup hitter had 46! Matter of fact, the Lions only had one guy in their lineup who hit less than 8 home runs! I guess they did it on pitching, but not on the guy who pitched tonight, he stunk..

By the way, I want you to think real hard about the term "Domed Stadium". When I think of a stadium with a dome I think of Houston, Montreal, Milwaukee and Seattle which all have domes that cover the roof, you know what else they have? Walls! Silly me thought I didn't need a jacket because I was going to a stadium with a dome, what I didn't realize was that the dome was supported above the stadium with beams. The effect of a cover over the stadium was wind, and lots of it. I was ok till about the 6th inning when I started to have to blow on my hands..

I bitch about the dome/cover but it really was not that bad, had I been aware I would have brought my coat and I would have been fine, it's still better than building a state of the art ballpark in NYC without even a cover to protect against rain.

So.. Food.. The concession stands were all at the top of the stadium and they served a WIDE range of food, they had hot dogs, burgers, sushi, noodle soup, KFC, Baskin Robbins, Dippin' Dots, chocolate covered marsh mellows, Japanese boxed meals, corn dogs, popcorn, green tea (hot and cold), various types of beer and various mystery items. Some of the mystery items were desserts and some were dinners. I got a boxed meal which had slices of cooked eel, bacon and beef over rice with mushrooms and sliced up dicon. I also had chocolate covered marsh mellows, yumm! Oh and a Suntory beer because after all "It's Suntory time"..

So as I said the Lions scored 7 runs in the first three innings and the Fighters had not scored any before the 5th. I got to see plenty of people waving flags, every time the Lions scored a run everyone would wave these blue flags, it was pretty neat. The crowd in general never stopped, they were chanting and singing and banging sticks the whole game, I would image it being very intimidating for the visiting team.. I don't know if they are that active at every game or if it was because it was the Climax Series, I would guess the latter.

All the names on the scoreboard were in Japanese, but the positions were in English. It was odd because you would see Japanese character with 2B or something next to it. When the Lions hit home runs the scoreboard actually said "Home Run", when the struck someone out it would say "Strikeout". Ok, those are baseball terms so I can understand the English there but when they were in a big rally the scoreboard said "Great" and "Awesome" and "Nice Rally". Very strange to see the English words mixed with Japanese.

I got a program for the Climax Series because I felt I had to, it's all in Japanese but it has nice pictures.. :) I'm going to go back and read this now and see if I missed anything.. OK, three things I missed.. Sam is the name of the Lion mascot, the toilets had seat warmers and the stadium seats in general are real nice. The seat I was in had a removable pad so they could be washed and was wider than most American ballpark seats which I find ironic because most Japanese people would have no problem sitting in American seats. The seats behind home plate were recliners! How much would you pay to sit in a recliner at the stadium during the playoffs? How about $100? That's how much those seats are.. My seat was $20! My post season tickets at Shea were $150 for the playoffs and $300 for the World Series and those are not field level seats! Tickets on top of the Green Monster at Fenway are $1500 per seat for the playoffs!

On the walk back I passed a 15 story Karaoke place!

OK, I'm done now.. I really need to get some sleep.. I'll sleep when I'm dead, right?

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I uploaded new pictures to the Japanese picture page so go check them out..