Baseball or Horse Archery, THAT is the Question!

 I have a dilemma.  I’m going to Japan.  That’s not the dilemma.  But the dilemma stems from that.  

It will be my first trip to Japan since Covid cancelled the trip I was supposed to take in 2020.  It will be the first time I’ll be going alone since 2017.  The last two times, in 2018 and 2019, I went with my friend, William Ruzicka.  We were supposed to go the trip in 2020, but Covid, right?  We were talking about another trip together this year, but William passed away in February this year so…  Going alone.  

There was a resistance of sorts in getting started planning the trip.  But this week I finally got Delta Airlines to finally make the final FINAL corrections on the credit they gave me for the William’s ticket and bought the flight to Hanada Airport.  Once that was done, an excitement of the prospect of returning to Japan sprung up inside me.  I immediately booked a room for the first few days of the trip just to have an address to where I could have baseball tickets sent to me for when I arrived.  

That has been one of travel goals when I went to Japan.  To see a baseball game in every professional park in the NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball).  On our 2019 trip William and I made two tries to see a game at Chiba Lotte Marine Stadium, which is just east of Tokyo, across the northern edge of Tokyo Bay.  The first time we went the game was rained out (it was perfectly sunny the day before and the day after).  The second time we went, the tickets were for the wrong stadium (due to my error reading the schedule, written in Japanese, on the photocopier machine in the convenience store where I bought the tickets).  

Yeah.  Photocopiers in Japanese convenience stores can sell you tickets to baseball, games, concerts, and other forms of entertainment.  They’re quite handy.  Just make sure you’re reading them correctly. 

So, one of the goals of this trip are to see a game in Chiba Lotte Marine stadium.  I arrive on a Friday, and the Marines have a home stand that weekend through Sunday.  Perfect.  I have a site where I can order tickets in advance and a Japanese address (the hotel I’m staying at) to mail them to.  Perfect. Right?  

Then I discovered a couple of other things.  

First, one of the teams in the NPB has a new stadium that they started using this year.  The Sapporo Ham Fighters.  I feel the need to explain that the team’s name is the “Fighters.”  The company that owns the team is “Sapporo Ham.”  Think of it as a Japanese version of Farmer John’s and you won’t be too far off.  They’re not a team named after people that punch hams hanging in a giant refrigerator like Rocky did with sides of beef.  I wondered about the name until I found out about Sapporo Ham.  

Anyway, when I went with William in 2019, one of the places we went was to Sapporo where we watched a game between the Ham Fighters…  Uh, the Fighters, against the Marines.  The very same team that plays in Chiba.  We saw them play in the Sapporo Dome, where the Fighters played at the time.  This was my 11th professional baseball stadium in Japan where I saw a game.  Eleven out of twelve.  

But, Chiba Lotte Marine stadium didn’t work out.  We tried before Sapporo (rain) and we tried after Sapporo (my ability to understand photocopier instructions in Japanese).  I promised myself, on my next trip to Japan, I would go to Chiba Lotte Marine Stadium and see a game there.  

The Fighters now play in EsCon Stadium.  Or EsCon Stadium, I’ve seen it written both ways.  I knew that Sapporo Ham was looking to get a new stadium built (Sapporo Dome is owned by the city, and they get all the proceeds from the food and drinks sold there, plus they charged the Fighters rent on the days they had games).  I just thought that we’d get a chance to go back before than happened.  

But it didn’t.  And now, if I were being really picky with myself, I would have to say that after I go to Chiba and see a game there I will need to go back to Sapporo to see a game in Escon or EsCon Stadium to see a game in every professional part in the NPB.  

So why don’t I just add a trip to Sapporo and do that this time?  Well, yeah, I was thinking that, but…  There are issues.  

Such as another thing I was planning on seeing during the trip that is happening at ALMOST the same time.  To the point where they overlap by a day.  

The Reitai-sai is a festival in Kamakura, an ancient capital of Japan, which is southwest of Yokohama, which starts on September 14th.  The highlight of the festival takes place on the last day, the 16th, which features a horse archery competition.  

This is another of my travel goals for Japan.  Every since I saw videos of the Reitai-sai on YouTube I told myself I would definitely go if I had a chance.  I even talked about moving our annual trip in the spring to the time when the Reitai-sai would take place with William.  He was down with the idea as well.  When talking with William at the start of the year of taking another trip together, he was planning a solo trip in February.  I told him I would be able to go until around the Fall and his reply was, “Just because I go in February doesn’t mean we can’t go together then!”  

Not for that reason, no. But…  Anyway.  There are other bucket-list things that are making the schedule difficult.  

One of them is the Sessho-seki.  It’s a big rock in a place called Nasu, in Tochigi Prefecture, that according to legend contains the spirit of one of Japanese three greatest demons.  A fox spirit called Tamamo-no-mae.  You may have heard of it last year, May of 2022, when news went around the internet when a chunk of the rock split away and fell off.  The reoccurring meme that went around was that Tamamo-no-mae had finally escaped her twelve hundred year imprisonment and was roaming the world again committing evil deeds.  

I mentioned the Sessho-seki to William when this happened.  The idea of a vengeful fox spirit escaping twelve centuries of imprisonment intrigued me.  There was a story somewhere there.  I just didn’t have one in mind to put it to.  But then this year, William died.  And one came to me. 

During the time William and I worked on making comic books, there was one book we pitched that got a lot of positive feedback but which never quite got anyone to agree to publish it.  It was a story called “Modern Shamans,” about people in the modern world, using modern tools, to go into a Dream Realm in a shamanistic way to make things happen.  The most compelling aspect of their craft is that they could never prove to anyone that something happened because of their shamanic gifts.  There would always be a reasonable explanation that people would see.  

William eventually decided that his art style was too different from what the story needed and suggested that I try to find someone else to draw it for me to get it published.  I didn’t agree with his assessment, but I decided to not try to force him to keep working on it.  I’ve kept the background I created for it since then.  

After William’s death, and a series of dreams I had about him…  With him, I almost feel like saying, an idea for the Modern Story came to me.  One that a character very much based on him, and another very much based on me, are prominent.  I’ve started working on it.  It feels like it’s going somewhere.  And because of it, I have to take a look at the Sessho-seki with my own eyes.  

The first part of my trip is set.  Arrive.  See a baseball game in Chiba, another in Yokohama, where the team I support, the DeNA Baystars, play, and hopefully see a Sumo wrestling match, when the Grand Tournament in Tokyo starts a couple of days after I arrive (another item on the Japan travel bucket list).  

After that, I have a choice.  I can go south to Kamakura for the Reitai-sai, then north to Nasu in Tochigi Prefecture to visit the Sessho-seki.  By that time, the Fighters home stand will be over, with the next one starting the week after I go home.  

Choice two would be to go to Nasu to see the Sessho-seki after I leave Yokohama, and then keep going north to Sapporo to see a game at EsCon/Escon Stadium and complete my collection of Japanese Baseball Stadiums I’ve Seen Games in, bringing the total to thirteen.  But that would mean completely missing the Reitai-sai in Kamakura.  

Kamakura is closer an easier to get to from where I start.  But going to Sapporo is more doable if I got see the Sessho-seki after leaving Yokohama.  

What plagues me is, due to the events since I’ve last been to Japan, I’m more aware of how any choice I make may preclude a second chance to do anything going forward.  I just can’t count on it for next year.  

That makes it tough.  And it almost makes me feel that whatever I chose, it’s going to be, very certainly ought to be, special.