Good afternoon America! It's Wednesday morning here and I just woke up. We had breakfast and Brandon already left to catch his train. We already have a good routine started. I am getting used to being a morning person and it works out pretty nicely with everyone's schedule back home. I think I told you but its 15 hours ahead and the quick way to calculate is add three hours to your time (Missouri/Alabama) and then its the opposite of your day or night. Make sense?
Yesterday I caught the train by myself and again I can report I have no disastrous story of getting lost but it's coming one day, its inevitable. I arrived at the stadium and one of the team's translators, Yohei, was waiting for me to help me get my ticket and find my way. For all the baseball wives out there if you think its hard with a new team learning the ropes of where you get your ticket and enter imagine it with a language barrier. I'm so grateful that I had some help and that everyone here is SO friendly.
Today I have lots of pictures and some video for you. The team plays at the Kyocera Osaka Dome. As you can see it is really nice. For spring training games you can sit wherever you like and it wasn't really busy yesterday hence the many open seats. The vendors are mostly girls and they wear the cute little dresses, much more appealing than the beer guys in America.
Here below we have the cheering section. There was one for each team and it sounded like a parade the. entire. game. When I got there even the players were all yelling out. I don't know how Brandon pitched through it but he says he can't hear it. The cowbell type noise you hear is the man next to me. They have these plastic tubes that they beat together. I'm sure I'll end up with a pair eventually. I love the enthusiasm and I can't wait till this place is packed out. I'm also going to learn the chants!
Genius me forgot to charge the video camera so all these are from my camera.
After an hour of trying to get my pictures to upload, which they didn't, I'm giving up. Videos will have to do for now until I can sit and mess with this again.
They ended up losing yesterday in the 9th inning 8-4. Brandon pitched 5 scoreless. Then one of our pitchers hit a guy in the head. The rule here is if you hit someone in the head you are automatically out. Also one of our guys hit a home run and when he touched home the camera guys jumped over the wall and rushed out to take pictures of him going in the dugout. It was pretty cool to me. I wasn't brave enough to try any stadium food but I did do a full 360 around to see what my options were. KFC is universal and I did see some other items that I probably won't make it the season without trying. CREPES!
After the game we came back here, picked up a few things at the market (I went on my own I was super nervous about it) and I fixed dinner. Brandon requested hamburgers and macaroni and cheese. Easy enough for me. After dinner Brandon taught me how to count in Japanese. I think he was starting to see how frustrated I was at not knowing anything. He picked up on it from practice because when they run drills and do squats they have to count out loud.
One - ichi - (ee chee/itchy)
Two - ni - (knee)
Three - san
Four - yon - (yawn)
Five - go
Six - roku- (row coo)
Seven - nana - ( banana)
Eight - hachi - (ha chi)
Nine - kyu - (Q)
Ten - jyu (jew)
ichi ni san yon go roku nana hachi kyu jye.
Don't make fun of my pronunciations.
And now you know as much Japanese as me.
Brandon is at work today so now I have to figure out what and where I would like to explore. Talk to you soon!
Lauren
I don't know if the videos are showing up for you but I provided the direct links underneath in case.
Branduun dicksuuuun! I love it!
ReplyDeleteMe too!
Delete