Baseball, Broadway, and Blood

Sorry for not writing much lately. Busy times.

The highlights: New school year started this month. This just in: I love new students! They are so happy and energetic and eager to please. They have been the highlight of the last month by far. I can't wait to get to know them better.

We went to a baseball game in Tokyo last weekend. We saw the Yomiuri Giants (the Yankees of Japan) against the Chunichi Dragons (Tom Selleck's team from "Mr. Baseball".) It was quite an experience. When it all boiled down to it the game itself was the same. I admit I had a much harder time paying attention to the game than usual. I think this was for several reasons:

a) There were many new things going on around us. The surroundings were just so different from what I'm used to. For example, you won't find many cheerleaders at American baseball games, but the Giants definitely had cheerleaders. Very interesting.

b) Each team had an official cheering section. The Giants section was bigger because they were the home team, but the Dragons also had a section in the left field bleachers and they meant business. As in all Japanese baseball games, each player had their own cheer so the cheering, drums, and chanting went on constantly. Very entertaining.

c) I didn't know many of the players at all other than the few who had recently played in the MLB. (Edgardo Alfonso being one for those of you who follow baseball.)

d) All of the loud speaker announcements were in Japanese. I never realized how important the PA guy was to keeping the crowd in the game until I couldn't understand him. I can't even honestly remember if there was one actually.

We were Giants fans that night because why not. So anyway, here is how the game went. An early solo homerun by the Giants (Alex Ramirez, obviously not Japanese.) The Giants added a run later to make it 2-0. It stayed 2-0 for quite a while until the Dragons got on the board with a solo homer around the 5th or 6th. Then they tied it up in the 8th. In the top of the 9th the Dragons took the lead on a 2-run blast. It was not looking good for the Giants. But I have seen too many comebacks in my day (being an Astros fan) to lose hope. Bottom of the 9th: First batter singles. Second batter draws a walk. Third batter: 3 run walk-off homerun, game over, Giants win 5-4. In typical Kory form, I gave high fives to the couple sitting behind me.

We went and saw West Side Story in Gotemba the next day. It was a pretty good performance. It was all in Japanese but I know the songs well enough that I could keep up. It was interesting to hear Bernstein and Sondheim done in Japanese. Jerome Robbins' language is universal though, so the dancing was quite good.

And for a completely anticlimactic ending to this blog, we had medical checks at school today. I did good in my vision test where you have to say what direction the thingy is pointing. Right, left, up, or down. Of course the people giving the test speak only Japanese so I had to say migi, hidari, ue, and shita. No problem. I then had some things attached to my ankles, wrists, and chest to measure something. Not really sure but I did as I was told. Blood pressure followed that and then the final step, the dreaded blood sample. They took three tubes of blood. The good part is that they only inserted the needle once which is the worst part. I have no problem with shots, but I hate having blood samples taken. I guess it's just bad memories from when I was on Acutaine and I had the most painful blood samples every six weeks. If only ProActive had been invented already. So hopefully it looks good and I don't have to do it again.

We are now at the beginning of Golden Week. We had a holiday on Wednesday for Showa Day but then had to work the last two days. But now we get the weekend and the next 3 days after that off. So it's a 5 day weekend. No big plans other than possibly going to a kite festival in Hamamatsu. It's going to be nice to rest though.

Here are some pictures from the baseball game. No zoom because I took them with my phone so...yeah.

The game in progress


The outfield


The 7th inning stretch cheerleaders


The Giants cheering section