Ah baseball. The American-born sport that was the American past time and a part of family outings and kids' dreams for many decades. Now it's just... boring. Commercialized. The majority of fans are there to get drunk on expensive beer and get sunburnt in the non-shaded, bloody-nose, cheap ticket seating (which isn't really all that cheap anyway). Where's the passion? Where are the fans? What happened to this great sport? Where are the musical numbers?
No worries, it is alive and well over here in Japan as they have taken the sport and made it fun and even the second worst of the 12 official NPB teams has a dedicated fan section with flags, and cheers and dances for each of their many many many players and plenty of merch!
But that's not until later. Not that we did much during our first full day here in Tokyo. We did... Laundry! Oh what fun!! First we fortified ourselves with a delicious and cheap meal at the student-restaurant-of-choice: Saizeriya. Think American-Italian food as seen through the lens of a Japanese Denny's. Good, but not great. Filling, but cheap. Perfect! I had some tomato and mozzarella, a garlic focaccia bread (more like a Ciabatta bun with garlic butter on it, and I loved it), and a plate of little sausages and elongated tater tots. Jeff had corn soup (I don't know where it places exactly in the running, but Bikkuri and the vending machine can with the bumpity corn can place first so far) (It was a respectable 5/10.), and a cheese and meat sauce doria. We both got the drink bar and I drank all the muscat white grape Qoo.
The coin laundry we were going to didn't have a change machine so we hit up an arcade on the way back to the hotel and used their change machine. We also didn't feel like lugging our bag of laundry into a restaurant. But once we returned and sniff-tested and sorted what needed to be washed, we were ready to set out on the 15 block walk to the laundromat. Until I said, "Hey, let's see if there's laundry available here like at APA." And you know what? There was! A lovely facility on the 5th floor with 8 washer/dryer combo machines with the PIN locks, a flat folding table, bags, and chairs. All clean and not a one being used! We each took a machine and for 600yen we started our regular load of laundry (with me once again having more laundry than Jeff so he graciously let me throw some of my laundry in his machine.) We set our timer for 2 hours and decided that was just enough time to go to Shinjuku and hit up an official baseball hat and jersey shop as well as a Suica Penguin Pensta store for all my Penguin merch needs.
But first we had to navigate there. Now I've complained about Shinjuku station before, and I only had to make a brief layover in 2024 and it went harmlessly, but today was a lot like when we were there in 2016 when we went to the Toto Toilet museum. Construction everywhere, so many east and east central gates (and signs for the east and west gates all pointing in the same direction), and the Pensta store was somewhere in the maze of stores also in the underground part of the station. Add the fact that you are often like a salmon swimming upstream and it can make for some confusing and aggravating navigating. But we found it! Yay! And I bought plenty of Suica Penguin merch because he will no longer be the mascot after this year. :*(
Next, we went above ground and walked a dozen blocks, past the 3D-looking, giant, animated screen on the side of a building with a calico cat. There's one like that in Ginza and Shibuya as well:
(Not my picture. We were too busy edging around the giant crowds at the corner taking pictures and video.)
We did arrive at the baseball place, called Selection Shinjuku, a minute before they opened, so that was perfect timing! It was mostly American baseball jerseys, especially Angels, Dodgers, and Yankees merch. In the very back was the NPB merch, where we located the Yokohama Baystars hats. There were 3 styles, and one left with the mesh back that I like, and one left in Jeff's size. It was destiny. (Jeff Edit: You don't understand. The one hat I found was a 7 7/8. I can barely find those in America. And this store in Shinjuku just happened to have an all black Baystars fitted hat in *exactly* my size? Impossible.) Another gaijin couple came up and started looking at the hats and I asked them if they were going to the game that night, and they were! I told them that I hope to see them there (and I did! They were waiting in line to get into the stadium in the same section we were in! They didn't see me, but that's okay. I didn't see them after that, but still, glad they made it to the game.) I also bought a Baystars jersey that was luckily my size (I'm a LL or XL in men's size here in Japan) without any player names on the back (since I know nothing about the players). We left the shop happy and ready to cheer on the Baystars!
Time to get back to the hotel, as our laundry was going to be done in about 15 minutes. Long story short, the construction blocked Google's route again, we got lost, went the wrong way on the Marunouchi line, finally found a bathroom, and then found our way again and got back to the hotel laundry 20 minutes after it finished. WHEW! Although, to be fair, we did stop to grab a quick bite to eat at Family Mart and ate that first. We needed a little something to tide us over until the game.
After folding our (my) laundry
(I also folded my laundry, but it took like 3 minutes because I specifically only packed wrinkle-proof boring black, grey, and brown clothing so I wouldn't have to worry about anything complicated), it was time to put on our merch and get ready for the game! We grabbed the Easter Candy and Allergy medicine goody-bag and went to go meet our kind benefactor who let us use her Japanese phone # so I could see the Gackt concert: Amanda! Introduced to us by Sarah, they went to school together in Nagoya for the 6 months the school program ran. She too is a mid-westerner and such a fun person to hang out with! She lives and works in Yokohama, so I bought us tickets to sit on the Baystars side of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows Stadium. We were the visiting team on the Swallow's home turf. We found more merch booths so I bought a cute keychain of the mascot
D.B. Starman (a hamu-star), a lanyard for work, and some hollow baseball bat clappers (not that loud, Japan-forbid)! Doors weren't open yet, so we walked around the outside of the stadium looking at the Swallow's merch (much much more because, again, this was their home stadium), and food trucks. We held off buying any food until we were inside as there were more food options in there. When we got in and found our seats we realized our mistake: it was starting to get cold as the sun was setting and it was windy! Amanda and I ran back to the Baystars merch booth (they allow re-entry, it's great!) and best thing we could come up with was a long face towel with
D.B. Starman on it.
The home team had an Umbrella Dance any time their players scored. They had reflective, tiny umbrellas that they would raise and lower along to the music being played, which gave the effect of a wave of colors that can't really be properly captured on video or in photos.
Anyway, here's Jeff, who understands baseball, to tell you about the game:
The thing to remember about the Baystars is that they're currently in 11th place. Out of 12 teams in the league. Their opponents, the Swallows, are in 1st place. So walking into the game, we weren't expecting an exactly stellar (ha,
Starman joke) performance. It was a closer game than I had anticipated (2-0 in favor of the Swallows).
Japanese Baseball has a few interesting differences from American Baseball. We were a bit perplexed, because there were only three positions listed: pitcher, catcher, infield, and outfield. It turns out that each inning, the pitchers rotate. So one pitcher pitches inning one, the next pitches inning two, etc. When they aren't pitching, they're either on the bench or rotating in with the infielders. Catchers also rotate, though I wasn't a keen enough observer to see where they were when they weren't catching.
Eight pitchers?! In a row?
As the game started, each player for the visiting team was introduced and the fans had a bespoke song and cheer (along with hand motions) for every single one of them. It felt like European football, but without the rowdiness. The same was true for the home team, but they also got Jumbotron Graphics.
There was a reasonable amount of affiliated advertising (each Strikeout was accompanied by a "brought to you by AK Racing" [a gaming chair company] message on the scoreboard, for instance). I joked that this seemed perfect, because everyone who has a bespoke gaming chair is used to striking out. Heyooo~!
The food options were much more varied than the average MLB game (which historically had hot dogs and nachos and popcorn and beer and soda and not much else). Across the stalls inside the park, I saw: katsudon sandwiches, udon noodle soup, karaage chicken, kebabs, long potatoes (a pureed potato pushed through an extruder and then deepfried), corndogs, yakisoba, slopbowls (you know, those like... Chipotle bowls? Like that, but with Japanese ingredients), Calorie Mate, flavored popcorn, ramen noodle soup, grilled fish, cheeseburgers, yakiniku, vegetable skewers, and about 40 different combinations of alcohol.
The biggest change, though, was that there was no boo-ing of the opposing team. When a team was up to bat, their fans would have more bespoke cheers or songs to cheer them on. When a team was warming up to field, the fans would similarly try to hype the players up. But like, when the team you weren't supporting was up to bat, there was no "You suck!", "Easy out!", "Go home!" or the like. Everyone was there to *support* their team, rather than to disparage the opponents. It was very heartwarming.
The Swallows had runs in the second and third inning, then some rather quick innings to close out the game.
We decided at the top of the 8th, due to the cold and the large amount of fans who would soon be descending on the public transport, to duck out and head back to the hotel. I cannot imagine how packed the trains would be *after* the game let out, because we were crammed in like sardines. I haven't had this many people pressed directly up against my body since bad clubs in BG two decades ago. We bid Amanda goodbye at Ogikubo so she could transfer to her train home.
On the way back from the station to our hotel, we hit up Family Mart for some quick treats (you may be noticing a trend). Then, it was off to bed for another day of wandering around the largest* city in the world.
* (Tokyo metro has the highest population of any urban area, but if it's only the city proper we're talking about, Tokyo is third behind Jakarta Indonesia and Dhaka Bangladesh.)
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