Monday, April 29, 2019

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.  

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home