2019 Japan Trip - Day 11 - Odori Park, Sushi, and Baseball

Day 11 of my 2019 Japan trip was my first full day in Sapporo.  It featured a walk through Odori Park, a sushi dinner and a baseball game at the Sapporo Dome, home of the Nippon Ham Fighters.  

Odori Park and Surroundings.  

Odori Park is one of those places that come up if you google, “Places to see in Sapporo.”  It is almost dead center in the city, cutting it into North and South sections.  The name means “Big Street.”  When the city was being planned it was supposed to be the main thoroughfare in the city, but was turned into a park instead.  It’s long and narrow, about a half block wide and close to a mile long.  

A view of Odori Park from the Sapporo Clock Tower, which stands at one end of it.

Japanese cities are very good at providing green spaces within them for people to walk around and relax.  Odori Park is an example of this practice.  Judging from the posters and announcements we saw posted as we walk, it hosts a number of activities and festivals throughout the year.  Sapporo’s famous Sapporo Snow Festival, where they build huge snow sculptures, is hosted here.  Each block of the park is in a different neighborhood, and has its own set of sculptures, fountains, and other sorts of installations.  

Sushi

When we told the Japanese members of our Japanese exchange group that we were going to be going to Sapporo, we were told that we had to eat ramen and sushi while we were there.  We took care of eating ramen the night we arrived, so we went to have sushi on this day.  

It was very good and very fresh, as expected.  We found a restaurant in one of the office buildings near Odori park.  For me, the biggest hit of the meal was the Oyster Miso soup that accompanied the sushi.  I have to admit that I’m not a huge sushi fan, but this meal was memorable.  

Sapporo Dome

The reason I planned a visit to Sapporo this trip was to see a game at the Sapporo Dome, one of the twelve stadiums in the Nippon Professional Baseball league.  It is home to the Nippon Ham Fighters of the NPB’s Pacific League.  It is the team that Shohei Ohtani used to play for before signing with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, the American League’s Rookie of tYear for 2018.  It also the team Yu Darvish, formerly of the Texas Rangers and the Los Angeles Dodgers, played for when he started his career.  

Japanese fans take pride when a player from the NPB makes it in the MLB.  You can buy Shohei Ohtani Angels’ gear at the Dome.

If I haven’t mentioned this before, the teams in NPB are all owned by big companies.  Nippon Ham is like Japan’s version of Farmer John’s, processing and selling ham bacon and luncheon meats.  So the team name is not the “Ham Fighers” but the “Fighters.”  Something I have to remind myself of from time to time.  The one exception to this is the Hiroshima Carp, which is owned by the city of Hiroshima itself, making them the only team in the NPB that can be rightly called after the city they are located in.

Sapporo Dome is the slickest, most modern looking stadium that I’ve seen in the NPB thus far.  And with only the Lotte Marines stadium in Chiba left to visit, I don’t think it’s going to be surpassed in that regard.  When I got my first look at it, I thought it looked like a giant spaceship that had landed on our planet.  A spaceship piloted by an alien race that came to challenge mankind to a 7 game series for domination of the galaxy.  

Inside the dome feels more like an airport terminal than an average baseball stadium.  Vaulted ceiling and elevated walkways to get to your seat contribute to that feeling.  There are also steps that people will sit on, eating the food bought from the concession stand, watching the game on big screen TVs situated along the concourse.  I thought this a bit odd, why watch a game on TV after paying for a seat in the stands, but maybe it fits some Japanese esthetic that I’m not cluing into.  Or maybe they figure it’s easier to eat and through away your trash there, then go back to your seats to finish watching the game later.  

The field at Sapporo Dome is spacious and very pitcher friendly with huge foul areas to reel a ball in.

We were close to the top of the seating area.  Not the highest I’ve been, but close.

More of the Dome’s internal structure.

It’s a dome surrounding a bowl by the looks of it.

As always, I enjoyed the game we watched.  The Fighters beat the Mariners by a score of 4 to 1.  After the game there was the usual interview with the stars of the game and fireworks.  

Sapporo Dome would have been a fitting Last Game for my goal of seeing all the stadiums in the NPB.  But because of the rainout in Chiba on Day 9 of my trip, the completion of this goal will have to wait.  

2019 Japan Trip - Day 10 - Travel Day to Sapporo

Day 10 - Travel Day - Sapporo

Day 10 was bright and sunny as we left our hotel in Otsuka.  It felt like the Japanese weather was mocking me.  The day before was a rained out baseball game.  And the day before that was another perfect day for baseball.  That’s what Japanese weather is like.  Cloudy and miserable one day, perfect and clear the next, back to overcast and rain the next.  

We had made arrangements to fly up to Sapporo to see a game between the Nippon Ham Fighters of Sapporo and the Lotte Marines of Chiba, the same team we were planning on seeing the day before the game was rained out.  Something about having their home game rained out put the Marines on my bad side.  I usually pick the home team’s side in Japanese baseball games when the team I support in Japan, the DeNA Baystars of Yokohama, weren’t playing.  I decided I was definitely rooting against the Marines this time, to get back at them for having an open-air stadium on a rainy day.  

Getting through security on a domestic flight in Japan was remarkably easy and fast.  One big difference between security on an American domestic flight and a Japanese one is who handles the security check-point.  In America, all pre-flight security checks are handled by the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA.  In Japan, it is handled by the airline company whose plane you’re flying.  Since we were flying by All Nippon Airlines, or ANA, we went through the ANA security gate.  

The experience reminded me of something I had learned in my recent Lean Six Sigma class that I had finished.  The concept of the Voice of the Customer, and the difference it makes when you pay attention to it.  In America, we are not the customer of the TSA.  We may ultimately pay their salaries through taxes, but when it comes to the process itself we are actually the product.  The thing being handled.  Their job is to get as many of us as possible through the process with the time and resources they have.  It does not impact them if we are late for or flight or inconvenienced in any way.  They just keep processing us through.  

In Japan, though, we ARE the customer.  ANA will be impacted by how we perceive the experience.  If it’s bad enough, we may choose to use a rival airline the next time we fly.  Going through security is not something customers are willing to pay for, it’s required by government regulation.  This makes it what is called a “Non-Value Added” process.  Essential it is a form of waste, but one which is necessary due to regulation.  Therefore, it is something that should be managed in such a way that it’s impact on the customer is minimized to the greatest degree possible, if it can’t be eliminated entirely.  

This is what the Japanese do.  As usually, I was bracing myself for the experience, but was through the security gates so quickly that I was left wondering that had just happened.  I made a point of reminding myself to pay better attention on the return flight to make sure this wasn’t just a fluke in terms of my experience. 

We took the bus from the airport to the stop closest to our hotel.  We then went walking to see the sights.

Safety First on Japanese buses.

A familiar business on the way to Sapporo

Sapporo Dome spotted on the way to the hotel.  A very alien looking building.

Sapporo is a lively town, with lots of people walking around downtown and lots of things to do.  We had been told that Hokkaido was famous for its ramen, so the first place we went to was to the Sapporo Ramen Yokocho, or Ramen Alley.  It’s a small pedestrian side street where all of the shops are ramen restaurants.  There are You-Tube videos about the place.  

The entrance to Ramen Alley in Sapporo.

A very narrow place.  They could have called it Ramen Hallway.

We went walking down the alley trying to figure out which place to pick when one of the places picked us.  The owner of one small shop saw us looking at the pictures of the type of ramen he offered and called out to us, “Irashaimase!”  That’s a standard greeting Japanese store owners give to customers entering their stores.  I asked him about about the ramen he offered and we ended up going inside.  

The ramen we ate was very good.  It was miso based stock with pork and vegetables added.  The best thing about it was that the spiciness level was perfect, exactly where I would want to have it.  

After that, we found a place where we could rent time in a batting cage called “Sluggers.” We decided to go in and take a few swings.  

I hadn’t swung a baseball bat at a baseball in years.  Based on my performance in Sluggers, I probably would have been sent back down to the minors to work on my swing (I kept swinging early).  But it was fun and made me want to try again sometime after I got back home.  

We continued wandering Sapporo for a while after that, just looking at the sites.  There were a number of places that were clearly for “adult entertainment.”  I contented myself with just taking some pictures before heading back to the hotel.