Kyle's World

Japanese baseball games can end in a tie. What's up with that? What kind of bastardized version of baseball do they play here? Part of the beauty of baseball is that you play till someone wins, whether it takes 6 hours and 18 innings or not. There are no ties in baseball. So it's so foreign to see ties in the morning paper boxscores.

A foreign relief pitcher, Marc Kroon, apparently hit 159km on the radar gun when he pitched tonight, a new Japanese baseball record. Since there's 1.6km's in every mile, he almost hit 100mph which seems strange that it's a record. I think pitchers (whether on steroids or not) regularly hit 100mph and beyond in the big leagues.

And further eveidence of just how Kiyohara is a turkey. He homered today, then was hit by a pitch in his next at bat. Well he sparked a bench clearing brawl. The pitch may have been intentional, but there's never bench clearing incidents in Japan. I think he thinks he's hot shit...not the case. I can see through you Kiyohara!!

If you read my post about Japanese photocopiers a while back, you'll know that a certain level of faux-efficiency is here in Japan. I don't know how that started; the Japanese certainly don't do a lot of patting themselves on the back saying "Look how efficient we are". I guess it is us, the non-Japanese living here, who propagated the rumours before coming. You can think that Japan is the most efficient country in the world before coming, then when here, you'll start to believe the opposite.

This is not to say that Japan is the most inefficient country, just that Canada has it beat on a few things.

In Canada (or at least Vancouver, but probably the rest of Canada too), when you buy a ticket to an event, you know what you're getting. You know the price range you want, you know if you're standing or sitting, you know what section, aisle, row, seat whatever. The clerk will find out just what kind of ticket you are looking for, will search for it, if it's available you can get it, and if not, the clerk gives you alternate selections with which to choose from. Sometimes even a map of the venue is pulled out. For example, if I wanted tickets to an event at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, I might be able to choose lower balcony row 15 seat 6. No problem, it's all easily layed out for the customer's benefit. And all very high-tech I must say.

Let's forward to getting tickets in Japan. First of all, there's no Ticketmaster here, or equivalent option of getting tickets through an agent. I don't know, maybe it exists in Japan but just not inaka places like Kumamoto. For the most part, you have to get tickets through a machine at a konbini. If you're lucky enough to know what buttons you are pressing, you can proceed to looking up your tickets (this is really challenging; one wrong button can send you spiralling back to the beginning). From this machine, you are pretty much flying blind. You can't see the stadium or concert-hall where the event is taking place, you don't know if what you pay for your ticket is worth it and what not. Completely ridiculous how the cutomer doesn't really have the final say...

Here are three examples of dicey ticket purchasing moments I've experienced:

I bought a ticket for last year's Summersonic concert, as did my friend Mihoko. That was all fine and well; festival ticket, general seating, we were in good right? Not exactly. Apparently my ticket stipulated that I get a green wrist band, while Mihoko's said blue. We were gonna have to sit in different parts of the venue, even though we went together. Did the comp at the konbini tell us what colour wristband we were to get? No. But luckily we ended up together after all.

I bought yet another ticket to the Japanese-American all-star baseball tour last year too. When the price menu came up, and knowing that I effectively wouldn't know where I was sitting, I ordered the most expensive tickets. Well I ended up getting burned with right field nose bleed bleacher seats at Fukuoka Dome, so far from the action that I needed binoculars to see the game. Of course I didn't bring binoculars though.

And most recently, I bought tickets for my brother and I to the Giants-Lotte Marines game at Tokyo Dome. I had to get these seats just right though since I really want to show my brother the craziness of Japanese baseball. I asked where Giants fans sit, and these two girls at the Family Mart called their supervisor, who then called the ticket broker, who then probably called someone in Tokyo all because I wanted confirmation of where I'm sitting. Seem like a waste of time? Yes. At least I kind of got an idea of what ticket to buy... stgay tuned however for whether it's the ticket I wanted or not.

今日俺の友達からＭｉｃｒｏｓｏｆｔ　Ｏｆｆｉｃｅ　２００３を借りた。そしてすぐに日本語が出来るようにプログラムをinstallした。まだその使い方全く知らないのでめちゃくちゃに書きます。

あまり面白い話がないけど一応日本語で書きたかった。又自身が上がったらメッセジを書きます。

A couple of friends came up from Amakusa the other day. For some reason, one of them, Kensei, wanted to climb the 3333 steps which are near my house. I think it had been his dream to climb the steps ever since he was a child. I guess the steps were more famous than I thought. Meanwhile, my other friend Yuichi and I weren't really into the whole hiking thing, but since Kensei was visiting from Amakusa via Vancouver, we thought we'd let him choose the day's schedule.

So we embarked on our hike, everyone with a 2 litre of their favourite drink. Yuichi hiked in camouflage cargo pants, and Kensei in jeans. Needless to say, they hadn't done such a good job preparing. I had shorts and a sweat preventing coolmax shirt on.

People tend to think that steps are easy, but they weren't. Especially with 3333 of them. We took our time, making sure we had ample time for breaks or what not. We knew Kensei was the most fit, but between Yuichi's smoking and my not-built-for-excercise body, we wondered who was the most unfit.

After like 2 hours, we reached the top, appropriately all arriving at the 3333 step at the same time. Going down was pretty easy, and it was much faster, though plenty of people told us that going down is what kills.

Anyway we did it...I thought I should do it at least once while I live here, but actually my more ambitious plan is to do it every Monday after school since there's no baseball practice on Monday's and that's the only day the gym isn't open. We'll see if I hold myself to it, and if I do, how it goes.

I got home from dins tonight, to find another giant brown spider on my wall. I'm on a pace where I see one about every month. But what is it about giant spiders and my apartment? How do they get in? I don't leave my doors or windows open. Maybe they start off as little spiders then grow big in my apartment before I find them.

Of spiders, cockroaches and mukade (poisonous centipedes), which is the worst to find in an apartment? I ask my faithful readership on that one. The thing is that I seem to have a problem with these giant brown, ping-pong ball sized spiders. I guess they eat the cockroaches. I really dislike spiders, but I suppose it's alright that i find them every month or so, even though they all invariably meet the same fate.

I sprayed and drowned this one is a puddle of Febreeze, making this one clean smelling dead spider and livening up my kitchen in the process.

Current score (since I've started keeping score on my blog): Kyle 2-0 spiders

I remember growing up in Ontario, where there'd be electrical storms fairly often. I would look in fascination at the lightning bolts outside my window, and I'd fall asleep to periodic thunder and the lighting up of my dark bedroom. Then we moved to BC, which produced electrical storms very rarely, I'd say once every 3 years or so. I guess Vancouver's weather is much too moderate to have decent electrical storms.

Well, Kumamoto has some pretty decent electrical storms too. I saw a good one yesterday as I drove home from the city. It was raining so hard yesterday that I couldn't clean my windshield of rain at the highest wiper speed. But I digress...I'm happy that Kumamoto has more 'extreme' weather patterns, where warm air masses collide with cold air masses. This summer should once again provide me with endless entertainment as I watch these magnificent electrical storms.