31 October 2016
Baseball legend
Indoor sports centres of Japan
I have often wondered if I would be able to make it to the majors, now I have that answer, unequivocally YES.
Before we get to my new amazing career, I must as usual describe the weather. Stopped raining, and not as cold as it was all day. Google disagrees with me and tells me its currently 0 degrees, but I swear it feels a lot warmer outside now.
Despite this, I still mainly wandered around underground, looking at flowers. Astute viewers may recall my trip this time last year to Hiroshima where they had chrysanthenumthemunumium judging going on at the castle. Or maybe it was Nagoya, or both.
Here in Sapporo they dont want to miss out. But because of the cold, it now occurs inside the big tunnel to the station. With no barriers around the prize winning bonsai plants and about a million people an hour rushing past in halloween costumes.
Seems risky to me, your 50 year old meticulously pruned and shaped flower bush could be knocked over by a harry potter godzilla zombie hybrid at any moment.
Now onto my baseball skills.
I was almost back to my hotel when I saw a SLUGGERS BAR. Potentially this could mean a lot of things. However they had a useful graphic at the bottom of the stairs showing people with baseball bats, rather than androgonous people in slug suits pretending to create more slugs.
So I went upstairs, and it seemed awesome, I observed for a while. A computer graphic of a person winds up to pitch at you, and then a ball fires out of the wall where there arm would be.
You can choose your speed, anywhere from 70kmph to 180kmph, which as I understand it is faster than any human pitcher. I settled on 90kmph, which is probably slug pace.
Anyway, you get 3 games of 20 pitches each for about $7, so I thought it was good value.
Game one, I hardly hit a thing. Japanese guys taking it seriously by bringing their own bats, batting gloves and ridiculous long socks and shoes were laughing at me. So I attacked them with my metal bat.
Game two, I got my eye in, and realised I was standing too close to the plate. Most of the pitches I hit went into the ground.
Game three, I was on fire, hitting everything. At the back of the big shed on a roof this was all in there were targets on the wall. I hit one, music played, cheering effects came out of loud speakers. No one else hit a target. Where were the scouts recruiting for the majors?
Part one of the flower show, full sized flowers. They all look half dead. Probably because they have been inside a subway tunnel for a week. I saw the old male judges taking this very seriously with head lamps and magnifying glasses on my way back.
Part two of flower show, superior bonsai version. Nowhere near as good as the ones I saw last year.
Thats a great deal!
Running off either side of the overly heated tunnel are numerous large shops, buildings, and in this case, multi storey brand new food court. Each level was a different quality, I stopped at a mid level for good quality but cheap.
As you can see, I am the only person here, but that might be because its new.
Soba time. With deep fried prawns and fried rice. Cause you need rice to go with your noodles. This was really quite nice. Even the white miso paste stuff on top of the noodles was ok.
Like many things in Japan, it smells fishier than it tastes.
Everyone knows there are strange kitkats in Japan, but I had not seen this higher class version of a kitkat before. Much more expensive, and only sold in Daimaru basement.
Somewhere along the tunnel is what I presume used to be a bank vault, they left the vault behind. It was probably easier than removing it.
Now onto the baseball. A fun activity for sure. First I photographed someone else playing.
And then here I am with my special helmet. Wearing a helmet was not mandatory, but I love a good helmet.
Also though, I dont understand the helmets, since you are most likely to get hit in the face and yet there is no grill.