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.  

William Ruzicka - 10/24/77 to 2/1/23

 I met William around 1994 when we both worked in the same office.  The colleague who supervised the him, a prototypical New Yorker named John Maciag, came up to me at my desk one day.

“Hey, you do that sci-fi stuff, right?”

“Uh…  I write science fiction, if that’s what you mean.”  

“Yeah, yeah.  you write that sci-fi stuff.  There’s this guy I’ve got working for me.  He does the same thing, only different.” 

“Only different?”

“Yeah.  He draws stuff.  I was telling him about you and he’d kinda like to talk with you.  It’s Ok if he comes over, right?”  

“Sure.  Yeah.  What’s his name?”  

“Vinny.”  

“Vinny” came over at lunch.  A big, friendly looking guy with a thick sheaf of papers in his hands.  

“Hey,” I said,  “Hey,” he said back.  “You’re Vinny?” I asked.  He smiled in a quirky way.  “Yeah.”  It wasn’t until some weeks later that I would find out that “Vinny” was the nickname John Maciag gave him when he started working for us.  “‘Cause he looks like a ‘Vinny’,” John said.  

After the introductions were done, he handed me the sheaf of papers.  “It’s a comic I’m working on.  It’s not very good.  The character is one I’ve been playing around with.  Would you mind taking a look at it and telling me what you think.”  

It was a Friday.  The sheaf was pretty thick.  I told him that I would read it over the weekend and give him my feedback on Monday.  He thanked me then went back to his section.  

The comic was called “Chronoshock.”  The story was disjointed.  With lots of jumping around.  More of an excuse for action scenes.  But it had a germ of an idea that I found appealing.  A Celtic-ish anthropomorphic warrior that’s transported to the future and meets someone that looks like the woman he loved and lost in the past.  The art was really good.  I spent the weekend reading it and writing up things he should think about.  I didn’t want to rewrite it for him.  I did think it would be fun to try. 

We met on Monday.  He sat opposite me at the lunch room table.  As I talked through my notes, he kept nodding his head saying, “Yeah,” “Ah,” “Okay…”  now and then.  At the end of my feedback he said, “That sounds great.  Would you like to write it for me?”

That started a creative partnership that lasted about a decade, and a friendship that lasted almost 30 years.  

As we worked on the comic, changing the name to “Time Venturer,” I found that William was like me, but different. 

I was older than him, though by how much I couldn’t tell.  I didn’t know exactly how old he was until he passed away.  It never mattered much.   

We were both science fiction fans, loyal to the show that brought us into the genre.  Mine was Star Trek, his Star Wars.  

We both were enamored with Japan.  Me, from the novel Shogun, which I read when I was 13.  Him, from the manga and anime he loved, like the Transformers, and Ranma 1/2. 

The biggest difference though is best described as two character types in a story.  Doers and Be-ers.  Be-ers adapt to the situations they find themselves in to find what they want.  Doers will try to change their situations to reach what they want.  I was the Be-er.  William was the Doer.  And the one thing he did all the time was draw. 

I mean, all the time.  Every spare moment.  While waiting for his order in a restaurant.  Standing in line at a moving theater.  Talking to a location on the phone at work.  Waiting in the theater for the lines to dim before the moving started.  He would whip out his notebook and a pencil, and later his iPad and stylus, and start sketching.  

One time, in the lunchroom at work, going over the pages of our comic, he said, “I’ve got something you gotta take a look at.”  He turned his notebook around and handed it to me. 

It was one of the characters of another comic we were working on.  Only, she was dressed in samurai styled armor, a sword in hand, looking like she was taking a breath in the midst of a fight.  It was a cool drawing, but…

“There’s no scene in the script I gave you where she looks like this.”  I said as I handed the notebook back to him.  

“I know.”  He flipped the notebook around so he could admire his work.  “I got the idea for this look and had to draw it so I could see it for myself.  Cool, huh?” 

This was one of the times I got something unexpectedly from William.  Prior to that meeting, whenever I wrote it was for a specific story or project I wanted to publish.  But William always drew for fun.  Sometimes it was for one of our comic book projects, and other times it was something else.  But always for fun.  It made me think about my approach to writing.  I changed how I journaled, which I did daily, to focus more on things that were cool or fun.  Things I just wanted to see how they sounded like when I put them on paper.  I think my writing has improved a lot because of that. 

On another occasion, William brought a Japanese text book with him.  He had started taking lessons to learn Japanese.  I asked him why, and he told me that he’d heard that the dialogue, and even the storylines, of Japanese manga and anime could be radically changed when it went through translation (I’ve discovered that this is true).  He wanted to read the original manga, or hear the original dialogue, for himself to discover the artists’ intent.  Plus, he wanted to visit Japan himself one day.  

I thought it sounded like a good idea.  I wanted to hear and see what the artists’ intent.  I wanted to go to Japan one day.  I just never thought of myself as someone who traveled to foreign places.  Seeing William preparing to go made me think that I should do the same.  So I started studying Japanese on my own, and later took classes through UCLA’s Adult Education program.  

Since then, studying Japanese has become a daily routine in my life.  I have been to Japan five times now, and I’m planning my return to Japan after Covid in September this year.  I’ve added Korean and Spanish to my daily language studies.  And I’m thinking of trips to countries where they speak those languages as well.  All this from William’s example of getting ready to do something even if it seems so far away, and so impossible to do. 

William was an inherently generous person.  Not only through examples.  He gave personal gifts to others routinely.  My home is filled with books, pictures, plushy toys, that he would just hand to me, saying something like, “I saw this somewhere and thought you’d like to have it.”  

Sometimes these gifts would serve as little nudges.  Encouragements to do something that he knew you wanted to do.  William believed that everyone would be happier if they just did what they wanted to do.  Doing something to earn money was sometimes necessary, but always considered to be a temporary activity.  There were countless times when I would be sitting with William while he was talking to someone else, a family member, a fellow artist friend at a convention, extolling them to do this or that so they could ultimately do what they really wanted to do.  To get closer to the life they wanted.  

William’s application of this point of view to his own life eventually lead to the dissolution of our partnership.  Teaching himself how to use software meant for animators to draw comics, he came to realize that what he really, REALLY wanted to to was work in animation.  With this discovery, drawing comic books became a distraction.  Now that he knew the path in life he wanted to take, he needed to start doing it.  

It was a difficult transition for us as friends.  I resigned myself to it.  We didn’t communicate with each other for a time.  

But then, one day, he sent me a text.  He had something he wanted to talk about.  Could we meet for dinner, his treat?  I replied, “Sure.”  We made arrangements to meet after work on a Friday.  

He was already at the table when I got to the restaurant.  It was awkward at first, catching up.  He stopped taking animation classes after he started getting work as a storyboard artist.  He had already worked on several well very recognizable projects.   

He took out his iPad and set it up on the table.  “I’ve got something I want you to look at.  Tell me what you think.”  It was a short animation video.  The drawing was quick, sketchy, but the action was sparkling, grabbing your attention.  When it was done, he asked me what I could tell about the story from it.  It was part of a pitch he wanted to make to his bosses at the studio.  

I gave him my feedback.  He nodded, he asked me questions.  He told me what his intent was in the story.  I replied with suggestions as to how he could bring that out.  Two things struck me in the conversation.  One was how much he had come to understand story and how to present it with his images.  The other was how into he was in the process.  This WAS what he was meant to do.  A lot of my resentment over the ending of my partnership went away at that moment.  

We spent the rest of the dinner renewing our friendship.  We made arrangements to go see whatever new comic book hero or sci-fi blockbuster that was scheduled to come out.  As we were leaving the restaurant to head to where we parked, he stopped me.  

“I want you to know something.  The time we spent, working on the comics?  That taught me that it wasn’t a wasn’t a pipe-dream.  That I could do this for real.”  

That stands as the most gracious thing any contemporary of mine has said to me.  

We kept in touch after that.  We went to movies and dinner.  He sent me texts about something I should see that was so cool and stupid.  He asked me if he could tag along on my next trip to Japan.  He would let me plan everything, so he could see how I took care of things.  We ended up going to Japan twice.  When he saw how well I spoke Japanese, he started studying again.  “Just remember,” he told me, “It’s because of me that you learned to speak it that well.”  Yes.  I remember.  

The third trip together was cancelled because of Covid.  For the next couple of years, our “get togethers” were restricted to calls, messages, and Zoom meetings.  

The last time we met in person was on New Years Day this year, in Little Tokyo, at the Oshougatsu Festival.  As usual, we didn’t plan to meet up there.  We both went.  Then we texted to see if we were both there.  We made arrangements to meet up, with other friends and acquaintances at a pop-up bar set up for the festival.  

As I sat down at the table, he reached into his bag and pulled something out.  “I saw this while shopping and thought you might like to have it.  You like doing stuff like this, right?  Writing?”  

It was a belated Christmas present.  A thick writing journal.  Wrapped in a leather cover, with pages made to look aged, like parchment.  Pretty cool.  Yeah, I told him.  I do like to write.  As I handled it, I thought that I needed to come up with some special use for it.  This was no mere diary.  

That feeling intensified when I heard of William’s passing.  

There is a quote by the 19th Century novelist, Henry James, that I’ve been remembering recently.  It goes like this: 

“Life is a slow, steady advance into enemy territory.”  

The metaphor expressed was always clear to me.  As we march forward in life, unable to retreat, forced to advance, even if afraid, we get farther and farther from the place we think of as “home.”  The terrain becomes more foreign.  We find ourselves increasingly surrounded by people that seem to be speaking a foreign language.  

And the comrades with us, suddenly, inevitably, start to fall by the wayside.  

William is a special example in this.  He is not someone bound to me by blood or genetics.  Not some hero that blazed a trail that I wanted to follow in life that has met his end.  

No, he is the first of my inner circle to fall on this march.  A squad mate.  A member of my tribe.  Someone marching with me because while we did different things, either smearing paint on the walls of a cave to show the wonders we’ve seen, or dancing around the fire, telling others new myths and legends of our journey, we were going in the same direction.  

Thinking this way, I realized what I needed to do with the gift he gave me, to acknowledge the nudge he gave along with it.  It has become my Word Palette.  W

A Review: Call Me Chihiru

 I saw a film on Netflix that I wanted to talk about.  It’s a Japanese film called, “Call Me Chihiru” (Japanese title: “Chihiru-san”).  

While watching it, it occurred to me that most would describe it as a “character study.”  A movie where we follow the main character from one moment to the next, where nothing dramatic happens.

A better perspective to take is that it’s a story where all of the dramatic action takes place inside the main character.  We derive her goal and inner struggles from the clues presented from her interactions with others.  This view fits in with the society this movie comes from, where the expression of strong emotions and personal desires are constrained by obligations toward group harmony.  

We start with the main character herself, Chihiru, in the opening scene where she comes upon the neighbor cat in the street.  She gets down on her hands and knees to stroke the cat, using what the Japanese call a “cat stroking voice,” the high toned, sing-song voice people use when trying to get on a cat’s good side.  We immediately see a kind, happy person, that responds sweetly to the cute little creature that everyone has a hand in caring for.  She has been given a stamp of approval by the film makers.  This is a good person.  

The movie starts by presenting us with the title character, Chihiru.  We see her greeting the neighborhood cat in the street.  She gets down on her hands and knees to stroke the cat, speaking to her in what the Japanese call a “cat stroking voice.”  We are presented with a seemingly happy person, that responds sweetly to those she meets.  It is a stamp of approval of her character.  

In the scene that follows we discover more about her.  While working at a take-out only bento shop, one of her co-workers tries to shush her when she mentions her past work as a sex worker in a massage parlor.  But it turns out that “almost everyone” in the town already knows this about her.  This is boisterously confirmed by the crowd of male customers waiting to order.  In a country that came up with the saying, “It’s the nail that stands out that gets hammered down,” Chihiru is remarkably open and unconcerned about who knows about this part of her past.   

We start the issue Chihiru is dealing with as she interacts with the people in the town.  It starts with an old homeless man that hangs around the town.  One day, Chihiru sees a group of school boys tormenting and bullying him.  She looks over the fence and calls out, “That looks fun.  Can I join?”  The boys scatter and run away.  Chihiru comes around to check on the old man.  She sits and talks with him.  She brings him a bento box from the shop to eat.  Then, she invites him to her apartment to take a bath, where she washes his back and hair.  Later, as he bows politely to her in the entrance way of her apartment, wearing a clean t-shirt she’s given him, she asks if he’s sure he really wants to leave now.  He does, leaving without having said a word.

Later, Chihiru goes looking for him, another bento box in hand.  She eventually finds him.  Dead.  Laying alone in an overgrown empty lot.  

Here, again, Chihiru’s behavior deviates from the norm.  Instead of telling the police about the body, or going out to find whatever family he may have had, actions in keeping with real life, either as actually lived or in a movie, she returns to the body late at night, with a shovel and lamp strapped to her head, to wrap the body in a sheet and bury it right where she found it.  We then see her in her apartment, showering off the dirt from the burial.  It is a sad and quiet scene.  

In the following scene, she finds another body.  A seagull.  Laying on the road by the ocean that she walks along at night.  She gives the dead bird the same treatment as the old man, a midnight burial in the same overgrown lot.  The next day, she tells a customer that she always seems to get hungry after burying a body.  The customer laughs and asks, “Who are you?  You sound like an assassin!”  Chihiru laughs with him, but doesn’t explain.  We’re left to wonder if this is really something she has done an unknown number of times before.

The movie goes through a series of interactions with other townspeople.  All of whom suffer from loneliness and isolation.  A friend from the massage parlor, who had the money she saved to start her own business swindled by people she thought she could trust.  An elementary school boy who hangs out in the playground until his single mother comes home from work.  A pair of high school girls, one that skips school to read manga when her parents kick her out of the house, an almost daily occurrence.  The other, who seems to have an ideal life, but has no one close to her.  The wife of the bento shop owner, hospitalized due to losing her sight, feeling useless as a result.  

Chihiru will offer these people help and support.  But with some degree of separation.  Her former boss at the massage parlor, who has come to the town to raise and sell tropical fish, describes her as a ghost that moves through people’s lives.  

From flashbacks, and little moments in the present, we see that the antagonist keeping Chihiru from overcoming her loneliness is her past.  Flashbacks of her as a little girl, wandering alone at night in the town she lived.  There she met a woman named “Chihiru” who looked like someone who made their living on the street who kept her company.  Later, grown up, wearing the uniform of an “OL” or Office Lady, black blazer, black skirt, white dress shirt, but with old, worn out shoes, she is applying for a job at the massage parlor.  When asked for a professional name to use, she gives “Chihiru” as what she wants to be called.  A call from her brother, which she ignored times before, telling her that their mother has died.  Chihiru tells him he’s too busy to go to the funeral.  She has sex with one of the bento shop customer she meets in town.  During the act, laying on his back with Chihiru on top of him, he covers his face with his forearm, as if realizing that he will get no closer to her than he was before through this act.  It’s Chihiru’s past, and her relationship to it, that’s keeping her from alleviating her own feelings of separation.

There is one character that Chihiru impacts the most.  And other that has the greatest impact on her.

Okija is the person Chihiru has the greatest influence on.  She is the high school student with the ideal life.  A “cool” father that “still takes the family on outings.”  A mother that makes meals, “beautiful and nutritionally balanced.”  A little brother that sits quietly with the family, not making trouble. 

Okija’s life is not so perfect, though.  Her father is like the director of a play depicting an ideal family.  Even to the point of freezing in place when someone makes a miscue.  He will stay silent and wait until it is corrected.  Okija admits that her mother’s meals are “strangely tasteless.”  Even her name, “Okija,” is a nickname.  A label given to her, whose origin has been forgotten.  

Okija has noticed Chihiru around the town.  She takes pictures of her with her phone, flipping through them during the day, looking at them intently as if trying to find something important.  A classmate sees her collection and tells Okija who she is and where she works.  She then goes to the bento shop as a customer to meet Chihiru face to face.  After taking her order, Chihiru strikes a classic Japanese photo pose, big smile, fingers in a “V” by her face.  When Okija stares back in confusion, Chihiru asks, “What?  No picture?”  

Mortified, Okija hurriedly apologizes and runs away.  Later, she will spot Chihiru again.  Standing in the waves by the road that runs close to it.  Okija will gather her courage, take off her shoes, and go ask if she can join her.  Chihiru assents, and they are soon playing in the waves, splashing and kicking them at each other.

Chihiru takes steps to lead Okija out of her isolation.  She introduces her to Mokoto, the school boy that wanders by himself, alone, while waiting for his single mother to get off work.  She becomes like an older sister to the boy.  Helping him with homework, keeping him company, squabbling like siblings.  Chihiru gives her a “treasure map,” which leads her to Betchan, the girl that skips school to read manga in her hideout when her parents kick her out of the house, an almost daily occurrence.  They become fast friends, with Betchan returning to school to be able to hang out with Okija.  

Okija begins to assert herself more with her parents.  Resisting her father’s plans to make pottery on the weekend so she can spend time with friends.  Fighting with her mother over “the mess” she’s making when she learns that Mokoto has locked himself out of his home on a rainy night, with nothing to eat.  Okija leaves the mess for her mother and goes to Mokoto to sit with him while he eats the rice balls she made for him.  When Mokoto’s mother arrives, she invites Okija in to eat, making friend noodles, which Mokoto declares is the most delicious thing she makes.  While Okija eats, the mother trying to clean up the dirty kitchen, she begins to cry.  The greasy, messy noodles apparently are far more delicious than her mother’s perfect meals. 

The character with the greatest impact on Chihiru is Tae.  The wife of the bento shop owner, hospitalized for an illness that has left her blind.  Chihiru comes to the hospital, calling herself “Aya,” after seeing Tae when she came to visit her own mother.  She gives Tae comfort just by listening to her talk about feeling useless, no longer able to help him in the bento shop where she loves to work.  At Chihiru’s last visit before her release, Tae reveals that she knows Aya is actually the woman that replaced her at the bento shop’s counter.  She tells Chihiru a story about outings she would go on with her daughter, gathering acorns.  At the last one, she realized that she had gathered all acorns they brought back.  Her daughter had grown too big for doing it.  In the following scene, we see Chihiru at her mother’s grave.  This is after we find out that Aya is Chihiru’s real name.  After praying and lighting incense, Chihiru piles something on the gravestone.  When she leaves we see a pile of acorns left behind.  An offering to a past she can no longer change or make up for. 

By the end of the movie, it is clear that Chihiru hasn’t reached the goal she’s been struggling toward.  On a rooftop patio, Chihiru is with her circle of friends at a barbecue.  The camera pans around them, showing them laughing, chatting, and enjoying each other’s company.  When it returns to Chihiru’s seat, it is empty.  No one seems to notice she’s left.  

The final scene shows Chihiru in another place.  Diligently working at something else.  There are clues that, while she might not have a solution to her own loneliness, her time in the seaside town has given her the means to reimagine her past.  In a way that may allow her to find what she wants in the future.

Which may be the best any of us can do to find our way forward.

My Japan Baseball Diary - Know Which Side You're On

Going to my first Japanese baseball game was the result of two life goals becoming one.  One goal, as a science fiction fan and writer, was to attend a full week of WorldCon.  World Con, or by its full name, the World Science Fiction Convention, is a science fiction convention which is held in a different city somewhere in the world each year.  It is where the Hugo Awards for the best works in science fiction are voted on and awarded.  

The second goal, as a student of Japanese and a lover of Japanese culture and history, was to visit Japan.  To see the places I had been talking about in my lessons and read about in history books.  To use the language I’d been studying with the people that spoke it day in and day out.  

In 2006, attending the WorldCon in Los Angeles for a single afternoon, I discovered that the convention next year, 2007, was going to be held in Yokohama, Japan.  My dreams of “someday” had become “Now!”  Forgetting that I had always thought of myself as someone who would never go to a foreign country in their lives, I did what I needed to do to get there.  

One thing I wanted to do while I was in Japan was to see a baseball game.  I was going to use it as a sort of Rosetta Stone.  I understood the game of baseball.  Going to a game in Japan would give me insight into Japanese culture and the Japanese way of thinking.  

I got my first lesson when the tickets were being purchased.  

“Which side do you want?”  

This was a phone call from a friend I’d made online during the process of setting up my trip.  She’s a German woman who has lived and worked in Japan for decades, who was also a science fiction fan and writer.  She agreed to buy the tickets for the game for me.  

“Hmm?”  Her question confused me.  “What ‘side’ do you mean?”

“The Giants side or the Baystars side?”

That didn’t help.  I knew the Yokohama Baystars were the home team.  And that they’d be playing the Yomiuri Giants, from Tokyo.  But “sides”…?  

“Uh…  Which are the better seats?”

“Ah!  Got it!  Got it!  I’ll get tickets on the Giants side.  Got it!”  

She hung up.  I gave my phone a look.  I shrugged.  I carried on with whatever I was doing at the time.  

We caught up with each other during the convention.  She gave me the tickets.  A couple other friends I’d made through the convention and I got into a taxi and headed to the stadium.  

I found out what the friend that bought the tickets meant by “sides” when I stopped dead in my tracks at the top of the steps above our seats.  

It was a sea of Orange and Brown.  From behind home plate, all along the left field foul line, across the left field bleachers to half way across the seats behind center field.  That’s where it ran into another ocean of color, Blue and White, that took up the other half of the stadium.  

This is how I discovered that seating in Japanese baseball stadiums is segregated.  Seats for visiting fans are reserved somewhere on the left field side of the stadium.  The size of the visitor’s section depends on the distance between the cities of the two teams and the number of people willing to travel. 

This game was in Yokohama.  Downtown Tokyo was about a hour away by train.  And the Yomiuri Giants from there are the most popular team in Japan, with fans everywhere that are willing to travel.  They had come out in force.  

A fan of baseball in North America might recognize that the colors of the Giants from Tokyo are the same as the colors as the Giants from San Francisco in the MLB.  It went beyond that.  The uniforms of the Yomiuri Giants were IDENTICAL to those of the San Francisco Giants.  The same “Giants” across the chest, stitched in the same font.  

And the colors on the other side were familiar to me as well.  The blue was a softer shade than Dodger blue, but at that moment it didn’t matter.  Looking across at the fans on the other side of the stadium I made an immediate decision.  

“From this point on,” I said to my companions as I stabbed the air emphatically pointing to the fans in Blue and White.  “I am rooting for THAT team over there.”  

One of them, who lived in Phoenix and was a D-Backs fan, looked back at me and nodded.  “I get it.”  

We got to our seats.  The game started.  That’s when I discovered something else different about Japanese baseball games.  The Giants Fans, who had been sitting patiently in relative quiet, started to make some noise.  A LOT of NOISE.  They clapped.  They banged drum.  They blew horns.  They cheered.  They chanted.  A different chant for each batter that came to the plate.  They didn’t stop.  When one batter got out, they’d applaud his effort then start cheering for the next guy in the lineup.  

And on the other side of the stadium, it was quiet.  The only noise they made would be polite clapping at a defensive play that got someone out.  Kinda like fans at a golf tournament.  

The Baystars retired the side quickly and that’s when the atmosphere shifted.  The Giants fans were now watching intently in relative silence while the Baystars fans now clapping, banging drums, blowing horns, cheering, and chanting a different chant every time a new batter came up.  And they had more to cheer about this inning, getting to their feet with a roar when someone got a hit to get on base.  With two men on, the next batter caught pitch and sent it high into the air.  Taken up with the moment, I got to my feet to add my American style of cheering the fans on the other side.  

“Go!  Go!  Go!”  I was yelling at the top of my lungs as the ball sailed over the field and into the seats behind left-center field.  “Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!”  

I kept cheering right until the moment I realized I was the ONLY PERSON on their feet in that half of the stadium.  

I looked around.  Everyone around me was staring at me.  I dropped to my seat.  I took a pick and found the woman in the seat to my left was staring at me.  Her expression seemed to say, “Should I worry about this crazy American sitting next to me?”  

I decided I needed to explain.  I took a moment, gathered my meager Japanese at the time in my head, and turned to face her in my seat.  She scooted back in her seat as much as she could.  I bowed my head toward her and said, in stilted Japanese…

“Excuse me.  I am from Los Angeles, California in the United States.  The team I root for there is the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Our strongest rival is the San Francisco Giants.  Because of that, throughout the world, I must oppose any team called ‘Giants.’”  

The woman narrowed her eyes at me.  She looked away to think.  She glanced back at me quickly, as if she’d caught me in a lie.  She looked away again and thought a moment more.  Then…

“Sou desu ka?!”  This is Japanese for, “Oh!  I get it!”  She was looking at me, mouth open, eyes wide with sudden understanding.  

Her friend, sitting on the opposite side from me, leaned forward.  “Nani?   Nani-nani?”  “Huh?  What is it?”  

The woman turned toward her friend and started talking in a rapid blur.  

“NanikananikananikananikaLOSANGELESnanikananikananikaDODGERSnanikananikananikaSANFRANCISCOnanikananikananikananikaHEHASTOOPPOSETEAMSCALLEDGIANTS.”

Her friend’s eyes got wide and her mouth fell open.  “Sou Desu Ka?!”  

Her exclamation got the guy in front of her to turn around in his seat.  “Nan desu ka?  Nani?”  The woman’s friend leaned forward quickly repeating what she’d heard.  Only the words, “Los Angeles,” “Dodgers,” “San Francisco,” and “Oppose all teams called ‘Giants’” were clear.

While she was doing that, the woman had been tapped on the shoulder by someone sitting behind us, and was repeating what I’d told her to that person.  My explanation started to travel like a wave around me, front and back, as it was passed from one person to another.

“Sou Desu ka!”  

“Sou Desu ka!”  

“Sou Desu ka!”  

“Sou Desu ka!”  

“Sou Desu ka!”

Then, it was quiet again.  Everyone, apparently satisfied with what they’d been told, were watching the game intently again.  I looked around.  No one seemed to be paying attention to me anymore.  So…  I guessed…  I was…  Ok?

I got my answer a couple of innings later.  The Baystars had another rally in the bottom of the inning.  With men at the corners, the batter at the plate drove a ball into the right field corner.  The fans in blue and white went nuts.  I started to get to my feet, but stopped myself as I remembered what happened before.  I glanced at the woman I’d given my explanation to.  

She was clapping and smiling at me.  “Omedetou!  Omedetou!”  Congratulations!  Good for you!

I smiled and nodded back at her in thanks.  I didn’t get up to cheer.  It would have felt like I was rubbing it in.

The Giants scored in later innings to tighten the game up.  The Baystars scored again late to put it away.  The final score was 6 to 3 for the Baystars.  

It would be nine years before I saw my second baseball game in Japan.  These are the things I took away from my first visit.  

The Baystars would remain the team I cheered for in Japan.  They became my adopted team in the moment of discovery about the segregation of the fans and rewarded me with a win.  And like my team at home, they were a team that wore blue and white that had a hated rival to the north of them called “the Giants.”  

The atmosphere of the game was a blast.  The fans are friendly.  And they have a passion for the game that often exceeds what can be found at home.  

The stadium was as clean when we left as when we arrived.  Every third inning stadium employees would walk the aisles carrying trash bags and the fans would pass their trash down the seats to give to them.  

Finally, I really wanted to come back and experience it again.  I had already made up my mind at this point in my trip that I wanted to see more of Japan anyway.  

And seeing more Japanese baseball was now one of the reasons I had to return.   

A Purpose to Keep Me Going

Last Monday, after reaching to grab my phone and turn off the alarm, I opened Twitter to see what might be happening out there in the world while I was asleep.  

After scrolling through my feed a moment or two I was just about to log off and get up when one last scroll brought up a tweet that stopped me.  

It wasn’t from anyone I followed.  The message said something like, “This will be my last tweet.  After this, I’m going to take the injection that will end my life because MS has won.”  

I clicked on the posting and started scrolling through the thread.  There were hundreds of replies.  Maybe thousands.  A lot of messages of support.  One reply asked her to say hello to their pet dog that had “passed over the rainbow bridge” a few days before.  A lot of them were in German and were unintelligible to me.  It turned out the woman lived in the Netherlands.  

One person asking the woman making the original tweet, “How can you do something like that?”  Her question was one of practical ability.  Where she lived it was illegal.  Several people replying to her tweet said that the Netherlands, where the woman lived, and Switzerland, as another example, had laws that were more “humane” and supportive of people’s decisions to end their lives on their own, which checks to make sure there was no abuse involved.  

I had been asking myself the same question.  “How can you do something like that?”  But my question was based more on a philosophical point of view.  

I will stipulate, here and now, that I have never been in such pain, or such mental anguish, that I’ve seriously considered thoughts of suicide.  But having said that, I can say with certainty that my instinctual reaction is to reject such an option.  I’m definitely in the “Rage against the dying of the light” camp, to use Dylan Thomas’ word on the matter.  Maybe if I go through something that the woman who sent the tweet had gone through I might reconsider.  But my reaction to that is to state that I hope I don’t go through something like that.  Not just because of how horrible it would be to go through something heretofore unthinkably horrible, but because I want to keep wanting to live.  

As I was reading the string of responses to the initial tweet, I began to think of reasons someone might choose to die.  The first example that came to me was a fictional one.  The movie, The Europa Report, about a scientific expedition to the Jovian moon referenced in the title to see if it sustained life in the ocean of liquid water beneath its ice cap. 

SPOILER ALERT - I’m going to give away the ending of the movie in the next three paragraphs.   

In the final scene, as the landing craft is sinking into the depths of Europa’s ocean, the last surviving crew member does something that I didn’t understand at first.  She goes down to the panel that controls the lander’s airlock and opens the airlock doors.  Freezing water begins rushing into the craft as she climbs back up ahead of it. 

As well as an alien creature.  You see it riding the torrent of water flooding the craft.  It turns and rises up toward the camera.  You get a glimpse of tentacles thrashing about, and a circle of what appear to be bioluminescent eyes, right before the feed from the craft cuts off.  

What follows are voiceovers of people back on Earth that had seen that final transmission from the lander.  They are eulogizing the last crew member and her “bravery” in making the decision to open the airlock and provide proof that their expedition did what it had gone there to do, discovery life on that moon.  

Remembering the movie, I then remembered a similar, real-life example.  The Terra Nova expedition lead by Robert Scott, to reach the South Pole.  Those that are familiar with the expedition, and the death of Robert Scott and the other members of his expedition, might not be aware that his expedition had a scientific purpose: To find fossil evidence that the Antarctic Continent existed and was once connected to South America and Africa.  

It was prompted by early criticism of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.  It had been pointed out that there existed fossils of a time of tree, actually more closely related to ferns, called “Glossopteris.”  Fossilized samples of this plant had been found both in Africa and South America.  This was used as evidence that Darwin’s theory, as having identical plants in such distant locations, would indicate that they had not evolved naturally as he proposed, but must have been created as part of some design.  Darwin replied that, for his theory to be true, there must be a continent or land mass south of both Africa and South America that had once been connected to both.  

This was news to the world.  At the time Antarctica was thought to be a giant sheet of ice over water, similar to what’s found at the North Pole.  It was this suggestion that something else was there that started the surge in Antarctic exploration.  

And Robert Scott discovered it.  On his first expedition, called the Discovery Expedition, he found the plateau on which the South Pole is located that showed there was land beneath the ice.  On his next expedition, Terra Nova, returning from the South Pole after the Norwegian explorer, Amundsen had reached it first, Scott diverted the expedition to dig for fossils at what his geologist had decided was a good place to dig.

The geologist was correct.  Amongst the fossils they collected were samples of Glossopteris.  But the decision to dig for them proved to be a fatal one.  The time spent digging allowed a storm to catch up with them.  It slowed, and eventually stopped their progress.  They ended up starving and freezing to death.  The fossil proof they dug up would be found by the expedition come to find them some nine months later.  Scott is regarded as a hero to science.  

Then, after remembering these two examples, I remembered something much more recent.  The soldiers of Ukraine fighting to keep their country free from the tyranny that Vladimir Putin would impose if he gets his way.  Or any soldier that has fought to defend their country.  Or any fireman or rescuer that has risked their life to save someone else.  This situations are not ones where someone is choosing to die, per se, but where someone is putting their lives at risk for some purpose that they have calculated is worth as much or more than actively protecting their lives.  

It was with these examples in my mind that I finally stopped my scrolling and got out of bed.  I headed to my writing desk.  I had scheduled myself to work on the rewrite to my fantasy novel, specifically to write the background story as to why the main character is betrayed by his older brother (hopefully I’ll be able to create a chance for you to read it soon).  

As I sat down to write, though, another thought took hold of me.  That I needed to write a letter to the congressmen that represent in the government, as well as one to the President himself.  

I have been following the war in Ukraine very closely.  I regard it as the front line in the most recent effort to supplant democracy with authoritarianism.  I’ve been meaning to express my opinion formally to someone who could possibly be moved by my opinion, or at least by the weight of numbers of similar opinions that I was adding my voice to.  Every weekend, with each news update, I told myself, “I need to say something.  I need to do something.  I need them to do something.”  And each weekend so far things would conspire to prevent me from doing so.  

But Monday morning was different.  When I sat down I felt that I HAD TO write that letter.  And I did.  It ended up being 391 words.  A little less when I edited it to fit into the text box to email my senators, which was smaller than the others.  I then sent it to my representative, both senators, and the President.  I checked the boxes saying I didn’t need a reply when they were then.  I got an email from the Office of the President, with a scanned copy of Joe Biden’s signature on it, telling me about how concerned he was about the situation.  

Glad to hear that, Joe.  But what I’m writing about now was that impulse to finally do what I was going to do “sometime.  Sometime soon,” that wasn’t getting done.  

I think it had to be that purpose.  The purpose that the fictional scientist in the Europa Report had, which was mirrored in the real purpose Robert Scott had when he made the decision to stop and dig for fossils.  The purpose the soldiers in Ukraine have to ensure their country remains free.  While I’ve been writing this entry, an unknown number of them have died already trying to fulfill that purpose.  

I want to make clear that I am not questioning the decision made by the woman whose tweet I read.  I tried to go back and find that account, that tweet, but none of my searches turn it up.  It’s already lost in the flood of noise washing through the Twitter-funnel online.  She had her own circumstances to contend with.  I have no basis on which I can either praise or condemn her decision.  It was hers to make.  

But, I do hope…  I do want to do all I can for myself, to find a purpose that will be strong enough, deep enough, overwhelming enough, for me to choose to keep carrying on, despite how hard it may be to do so.  I think I will live a better life for myself if I do.  

Pandemic Journal Entry - 4/17/22

Here was my entry for this week for UCONN’s Pandemic Journal Project.  You can find the homepage for the project here: https://pandemic-journaling-project.chip.uconn.edu/

Question: How has the coronavirus pandemic affected your life in the past week? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

Last week I continued to move forward my travel plans for this year.  I am hoping to build on the breakthrough year I had last year, when I finally got to go places for the first time since Covid.  I continue to book rooms and schedule flights for a variety of trips, to go to baseball games with one of my nephews, visit the family over the Fourth of July weekend, attend a science fiction convention that I used to go to every single year, but which I haven’t been to since 2018 (first due to work, then because of Covid).  

But international travel is still on hold, at least to my preferred destinations.  The trip I planned in 2020, which was cancelled due to the virus, included going to see a baseball game in the one remaining baseball stadium in Japan I haven’t visited yet, in Chiba, Japan, next to Tokyo.  It also included going on a side excursion to visit Busan, South Korea.  

I finally got a credit voucher from the airlines for that flight, after rescheduling it again and again, pushing it as far out as I could in the hopes that, “by then,” I’d be able to rebook a flight taking me to either or both of those countries.  

Last week, while I was submitting dates to get PTO days at work, I checked the travel status for Japan and South Korea, something I do just about every other week or so.  Both are still listed as Level 4 - Do Not Travel.  The feeling that I’ll have to push that trip back another year is starting to grow inside me again.  

Last night, I went to see a play at a theater run by a couple that are friends and former colleagues of mine.  It was the first live performance they’ve staged at the theater since the initial quarantine orders in the state.  When I arrived, I was surprised to see everyone was wearing a mask.  Both the state and the county have lifted mask mandates for some time now.  Fortunately, I had one of my mask sets (A cloth outer mask, and a surgical procedure inner mask, with a little plastic from or support to go over my nose) and I put it on to be in compliance with their request.  Because the theater is so small, and the performers were not masked, they felt it was an appropriate action to take.  

While catching up with my friends, I found out that another member of our group is still quarantined in his house.  This is because of a form of blood cancer he has being controlled by medication.  I knew about his condition, he has been under treatment for years before Covid, but I had wondered/hoped he might be there at the showing as well.  I wondered when he’ll be able to go to the theater like I know he wants to. 

The situation made me think that I should always go out with masks with me.  That it would be the right thing to do to be ready if I go someplace where others would feel more comfortable if I had one on.  One of the changes that have taken place.  Because of the virus.  

Ironically, the play, which my friends had commissioned and started working on a year or so before Covid, was about people being isolated during a crisis (set during World War 2, when Children were evacuated to the countryside because of the bombings).  I enjoyed the presentation, but it was a reminder about how the same issues can keep coming back around in different forms. 

Question: Some people have said that the pandemic has changed them, or led to changes in their values or even their personalities.  Do you think you’ve changed as a result of the pandemic?  If so, how?

I think living through the pandemic has changed me (how could it not?), but I’m still wondering in what way and to what degree.  

I find myself to be more introspective in one sense.  I find myself questioning my reasons for how I react to things, such as an angry outburst when I realize I forgot to do something, or forgot to bring something I needed when I leave home during the day.  I have spent more time writing in journal about what I want out of life, and why.  I have spent more time writing out affirmations to try and lead myself in those directions I want to go, or imaging the type of person I want to be.  

Or my reaction when I encounter people on the street.  Why am I feeling leery?  What do I find so fascinating about that person?  Part of that might come from how I don’t take meeting people for granted as much as I did before.  It used to feel like there was a sea of people I was swimming through when I left my home, and I would take note of them in a half-conscious sort of way.  Now I focus in on others more, wondering what they think, why they do what they do, and what situation they came from?  I’ve thought of myself as someone that has had a fascination for people for most of my life.  I don’t think this is a change, though it feels different to me.  A specificity in how I look at them, and how they react to me and my presence.  Wondering if I make them nervous, or afraid, by how I carry myself.  

I’m not sure.  But after Covid, I think I think more about why people do what they do, how they are who they are, both for myself and others.  

What I look for in a Baseball Park

After weeks of a lockout that looked like it could delay or even cancel the season, Opening Day came last Thursday, kicking off a full 162 game schedule.  

That means it’s time to go to a ballpark.  

Every year there are surveys where they rate the parks from best to worst.  From which is the best overall to which has the best food to which one has the vest overall value for going to a game.  I enjoy reading these surveys, especially now that I can compare my experience with whatever is said about a growing number of these parks.  As of the writing of this blog post I have been to 28 professional baseball stadiums.  Fourteen in the MLB.  Eleven in Japan’s NPB.  And three minor league parks.  

I’ve thought of writing my own such survey of the parks I’ve been to.  My own problem would be ranking them.  Calling any baseball park “bad” is difficult for me.  As an example, I visited Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum four years ago (now going by the name RingCentral Coliseum).  The home of the Oakland A’s is routinely near the bottom of most of the surveys I’ve read.  While driving with some friends to get to our game I was bracing myself for what I was going to find.  

I loved it!

Yeah, the park was old.  There was a warehouse sort of feel to the place as I walked the concourse.  But there were lunch trucks lined up at the entrance selling a variety of food you couldn’t normally get at a baseball game, which you could bring inside with you.  Our seats were good.  The fans enthusiastic.  The game was entertaining (unless you were a Rangers fan, who got clobbered that day).  

It made me realize that, for me anyway, no stadium could be that bad as long as baseball was played there.  

In lieu of a survey ranking them, I can write about what I think impacts the impression one gets from a baseball park.  So here I go…

The View of the Game

This is the most important quality of a park.  You want to ensure that the fans have a good view of the action no matter where they seat.  Older parks can have a problem due to the construction methods of when they were built.  At Wrigley Field in Chicago, there large poles supporting the levels above in the middle of the seats.  The one nearest me ran right behind my view of the pitchers’ mound.  A few more seats to the left, and I would have missed seeing the pitchers wind-up and any throw out at first.  Dodger Stadium, has the best sight lines of any stadium I’ve been in so far.  I’ve sat in the “nosebleeds” and along the line, and in the outfield, and at every spot I could see the game clearly without obstruction.

The Neighborhood

This is something I’ve become more aware of as I’ve traveled to see games in other parks, and how the area around and its atmosphere can impact the experience.  

This is the one area where Dodger Stadium gets low marks.  It’s surrounded by a big parking lot.  And by freeways that seemed designed to make you late if you don’t take the day off from work or leave hours early to get to your seats.  Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City is the same.  The fun of having watched a game dissipates as you struggle through traffic to leave.  

Stadiums situated in neighborhoods have it better.  Petco Park in San Diego is right next to San Diego’s Gaslamp District, with lots of place to go to eat and drink.  There wasn’t much of a baseball vibe there, though.  Wrigley Field has a lot of local establishments around that look like they had fans coming to after games since the stadium was built.  Truist Park in Atlanta has a stage in front of a mini baseball field outside the entrance where they gather and have DJs and music before and after a game.  And at Oracle Park, in San Francisco, after a game King Street is awash with fans that are shouting, cheering and making their way to the nearest bar or eatery.  The roof top bar at my hotel was packed by the time I crossed the street to make my way there.

But far and away the best stadium environment was at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.  They close off streets around the park and turn the area into a giant baseball block party.  I could hear the music start up in my hotel room two blocks away two hours before the game.  Definitely a baseball town!

Food and Drink

There are several surveys about which park has the best food, widest variety of things to eat, or the “One Thing” you need to eat if you go there.  My biggest concerns, though, are prices and how long the lines are at the concession stands once the game starts.  I tend to buy what I’m going to eat or drink to last me the first three innings of the game.  After that, if I have time to go get something and get back to my seat before the action starts between innings, I might get something more.  If not, then I might go if one side has a really huge lead, or just wait until the game is over.  

Truist Park in Atlanta had some of the shortest lines I’ve side at a baseball game so far.  I had no problem running up to stand to get something and get back before the next pitch.  At Busch Stadium in St. Louis, they had a system, for at least one stand, where you could place your order with your cell phone and then go pick it up when it was ready.  I thought that was pretty neat.  

Overall, though, the best food and drink experience at a baseball stadium is to be found in Japan.  First, they don’t gouge you with the prices.  Most items are priced about what you’d expect to find at a restaurant or convenience store outside the stadium.  

The food they offer is really good.  You won’t find a lot of traditional western baseball fare.  No peanuts.  No cracker jack.  And the one hot dog I’ve tried at a Japanese baseball stadium, at the Koshien, the oldest baseball park in Japan, was…  Odd.  I’ll leave it at that.  BUT, you can get yakisoba, grilled soba noodles often served with chicken, or karage, Japanese style friend chicken, with french fries.  The best thing I’ve had was kalbi don, at Mazada “Zoom Zoom” Stadium in Hiroshima.  It’s Korean style grilled rib meat on a bed of rice and vegetables.  Really yummy. 

And then there are the drink girls roaming the seats.  At every park you’ll find an army of young woman, running up and down the stairs between the seats, with these kegs on their backs, dispensing a variety of beer and chuhai, a Japanese version of a highball, made with shoju instead of whiskey.  A twelve ounce cup will cost you between about five to seven dollars after you figure the exchange rate.  A lot better than the $12 for a tall can of beer I’ve paid at some stadiums.

Of course, nothing says, “baseball is back” better than a Dodger Dog, in my humble opinion.  

Funky Factor

These are things that are hard to quantify or compare, but which make the parks that have them more interesting.  Something that sets them apart from the rest.  

Oracle Park in San Francisco has a garden behind the center field seats where they grow the vegetables used by some of the food places there.  Also, on the McCovey Cove side of the park along the walkway going around the pier, they have an opening where passerbys can stand and watch the game for up to three innings before they have to make room for someone else.  And, during the seventh inning break, they send someone around to collect any recyclables to make sure they don’t get thrown away.  Very Californian.  This is something they do at several stadiums in Japan as well.

The retractable dome at T-Mobile Park (formerly Safeco Field) is impressive.  I remember feeling a drop of a coming rain hitting my face and wondered when they would close the roof.  I looked up to see the doom was just closing up.  Something that huge moving that quietly was amazing.  

Another doomed stadium worth mentioning is Seibu Dome in Saitama, Japan (the current official name is Belluna Dome, having changed this year from Metlife Dome, after being changed from Seibu Prince Dome, and so on…).  The dome itself was a retrofit, placed over the stadium, which is built into the side of a hill.  The dome sits like a giant umbrella over the stadium, with natural air flowing in from all sides.  As a result of this construction, it is possible, and has happened, for home runs to be hit out of the park.  The only domed stadium (that I know of) where that can happen. 

And Sapporo Dome, in Sapporo, Japan, looks like a giant alien mothership that has landed on Earth.  The impression remains when you go inside, with vaulted concourses and bridges crossing overhead to get to your seats.  

I’m hoping to find more interesting funkiness in the parks I visit this season.