Yakyuu, Jazz Circles, and Klass Karaoke

      The team's first baseball game was at a place called Tokyo Metropolitan University, which I had never heard of and took about an hour and 45 minutes to get to from home. Knowing how popular high school baseball is in Japan, I had high expectations for the game, thinking that both teams would have fans there, each player would have a little song like in the pros, the field would be nice, etc. Well, none of that is true, actually. Maybe it's just the division we're in (Sophia's in division four, which I think may be the lowest), but we had few fans (a couple players who didn't bring their uniforms, an alum, and a dad), a rather crappy field, and no singing. Doesn't mean it wasn't fun, though!
      Much like high school sports in the states (and maybe college, too? I'm not sure), all of the team members had to dress up in suits and come to the game. Unlike other college sports, though, we just changed into our uniforms outside. This was our first game, so we hadn't yet gotten our uniforms, but we wore our practice ones instead. We warmed up a bit, and after the game that was being played finished, we all ran out to the field and cleaned it up with rakes. Once everything was in top shape, we started throwing the ball around until it was time to start. In the beginning, all of the members of both teams run out to home plate, stand in a line, take off their caps, and bow to the opposing side. Once that's done, the game begins.
      This first shot is of one of the funniest guys on the team, Kosuke, who is the starting pitcher for the team. He tells me to call him Kosukebe (Kosuke + do[u?]sukebe), does hitomane (imitations) of people (including one of me, which is just him looking around confused saying "anooo"), and has this really deep voice that is especially threatening and commanding on the field. As one of the best batters on the team, he hit a grand slam that day. You'll recognize Akira in this one, but the other two are Shuuji and Kurokawa. Shuuji's my best senpai friend on the team because he actually is willing to hang out outside of baseball, while Kurokawa speaks really fast, unrecognizable Japanese all of the time. Supposedly he was nicknamed Kuro-san in school to cut down his last name, but at first people thought he was called that because of how dark his skin is. Here's a batter!
      Next is a picture of Yasuda-san warming up on the sideline. Hailed as one of the best on the team and a batter with an average this semester of about .800, he is one of the oldest members of the team, being 23. He's very comical and has a loud presence about him, but he is very serious about baseball. Dugout shot. Kosuke again. The next shot is terrible, but I guess it's good for checking out our uniforms, which I think are very snazzy, especially because of the blue and white color scheme (which just happens to be my favorite). Another team shot (sorry Justin, haha). Here are some managers, who don't actually wear team uniforms (that's to be expected, yeah?). During the game they're filling out score sheets, which is really important because after the game we have these long meetings in which we discuss what happened and what could be improved (this includes a 'point-to-people-and-ask-questions' session). The missing two managers (the one on the right is a senpai)... someone from the opposite team batting... From the opposite team there was a really short, scruffy guy who had a sort of mohawk-looking haircut that looked like he could really kick ass. The field. The stands which, as I said, harbored very few. Akira and the fabled Narita. Oh, update on Narita, seems that another member of the teach got to his girl first. Oops! Post-grand slam running, and post-grand slam manager Nohse. Nohse's really goofy and gives everybody the ol' slap on the butt during the game and practices. Team members, including Nemoto Hiroki, the third baseman/relief pitcher, who has odd ways of doing everything. In terms of actions, Nemoto is probably the most ridiculous person on the team. I would describe him as "squirrelly". For example, last game he had pick-off attempts thrown at him while he was on base and when he'd run back he'd do a little duck and hold his helmet with both hands. When he DID get picked off, he ran back in an indescribably goofy manner (think about the ducking thing). Not to mention, he has a strange way of both batting and pitching. You can watch a video that I'll post later of him pitching, which is of submarine style, but his batting is such that he throws a ton of weight on the back foot and bobs up and down so that his other foot leaves the ground, sometimes going really high into the air. Maybe I can get that on tape next time, too... But, saying all this, he's an awesome player. Last game he hit every time at bat and made some great third-to-first plays.
      More pictures, lesse... shot of the first years (in front is a first-year named Takahashi who I don't know very well but is very friendly) and of the scoreboard (our score is on the bottom). We ended up winning that game, and hey! We've won every game so far this season! More on that later, but first, an interesting fact about Japanese baseball that is very Japanese: there is a LOT of bunting, and it is an important strategic aspect of the game. If someone's on first and there are no outs (sometimes one out, too), the next batter usually bunts to sacrifice himself so that the guy on base can get to second. I can't help but wonder how this would affect things is we integrated that approach into American baseball.

      The next few pictures come from my Jazz gasshuku, which was in early May, I think. I'm going to try and be brief on this one, but basically, I paid a lot of money to go up to the mountains for a weekend with the jazz circle, thinking that the weekend would be everyone playing for hours on end with the new kids learning stuff elsewhere. This was unfortunately not the case at all. Instead, Friday night we got to the place, slept, woke up early, and the senpai taught the freshman about jazz. Most of the first years had never touched jazz before. Some had never touched their instruments before (this is no exaggeration--one saxophone player had to study a fingering chart). This obviously served as a bore to me, and lasted all morning. After lunch, people broke up into their respective instruments and had classes taught by the senpai. Lucky for me, I switched into a drum class instead, borrowing my Australian friend Brenden's sticks, as he went to the vocal class. That was pretty fun for the most part, but overall it was turning out to be a total drag. Thankfully, the night changed that.
      The place that we stayed was this lodge up in the mountains that had another building across from it that harbored nothing but studio rooms. The basement floor, though, had a HUGE room that had a stage, tons of mics and amps, and was very, very cool. It was here the actual great part of the evening happened. The senpai got all of the food and drink set up on the floor and did a sound check with the mics, and then the 10-hour concert began, starting at 6pm. A white board was brought out to the floor with every freshman's name on it, randomly placing people in groups with one or two senpai included. The players included absolutely EVERYONE, including the people who had just started playing their axes, which was the amazing thing about the night (I was on their twice... once for sax, once for drums... haha). Some of the kids were really shy to play and didn't even while placed on stage (everyone played "Billie's Bounce", by the way), but the ones that did played with an astounding amount of energy and passion that I think a lot could be learned from, even by those who can already play. There were some that didn't hold back at all and really played their soul out, and even though it was ear-wrenching at times, it turned out to be awesome. As for my drumming, there's a website with MP3s of every performance out there, but to save myself extreme embarrassment I will NOT post that link. It was pretty bad. I didn't think that at the time because I was buzzed, but now I know WHOAAAA kindabad. Here's a photo of some of the members, including the highest-ranked saxophone senpai, Ryuuichi, vocalist Linda, crazy guy bass player, and others.
      Some impressions that I got from this trip and being with with the members of the jazz circle are that jazz is definitely bigger amongst the youth of Japan, ESPECIALLY amongst females (Haruka and Linda... I have no idea what they're doing). Just the idea of people transferring from rock and metal backgrounds to play jazz at their age is crazy to me, especially the idea of those that were heavily influenced by another instrument's player deciding to not only switch genres, but also instruments. Also, I've never seen this many girls interested in jazz. Ever. I won't even fault the Japanese for some of the jazz that they like because of how great I think that these youth are praising John Coltrane over Avril Lavigne.

... Okay, maybe some of them still like Avril more.

      Whatever, there were a lot of people and a lot of alright players. Here's the stage. Anyway, the night was awesome. After the freshman groups played it was an open session until 4am. Everyone just drank, talked, and played all night, and THAT'S what I expected from the weekend. Not some silly training camp. But, oh wait, look at the word "gasshuku" closer and what does it mean? Awwww man...
      Before I get off this topic, the two senpai vocalists are just no good, to be honest. I like them as friends, too, which is a problem. Both are girls, and both try to have a gruff timbre in their voice and it sounds REALLLY bad. Unfortunately, they weren't recorded so I can't give you an example now, but maybe I can June 21st when we have another concert.

      Last for this post is an outing that I did with my class a long time ago! We went to an Indo-curry restaurant near the school for dinner that rocks (I've been there a few other times for lunch, actually). I took a picture of this drink called a "mango lasse" which, rather than being a mango dog, is a rather delightful smoothie-ish treat. At lunch time, sometimes these are given free as service, yoink!
      Aside from the class just coming, our awesome teacher Kobayashi-sensei came and brought his girlfriend, who, I found out later, he actually hadn't seen for quite a long time until that night, haha. We're really glad he likes us that much. Check out that big piece of nan bread, too!!! Man, that stuff is great. In that picture, you'll see to the right of me my German friend Jonas and my Utah-based friend Nate. About Jonas, he is a German, so his favorite activity is to ask me to join him for a beer at 10:30 at night, right before he goes to sleep. He's really strange and hilarious, and has an experimental music band with his friend (he really, really likes Tom Waitts). I got the first copy of his CD EVER. Not only is he doing that kind of music, but he's really into gritty blues music and is a drummer for a blues band back home. When I got sick recently he told me that when Germans feel a fever coming on, they heat up a liter of beer, chug it, throw on a ton of clothes, and pass out, sweating the fever out before it comes. Crazy, no?
      Here's one of Nate and Felice and another of Christina, Alexis, and my Swedish pal Julia (pronounced Yulia). Some one-sentence summaries of these people: Nate - quite funny classical composer; Felice - along with our British classmate Kirsty, misses about 35% of class and also really enjoys fried rice balls; Christina - Californian who knows a lot of kanji but says her Japanese "r"s like they're actually "r"s; Alexis - a fellow handheld gamer that is interested in karaoke and my progress in Monster Hunter 2nd G, of which I have none right now; Julia - aside from Jonas, my best class friend who is really fun and loves Star Wars... not to mention all of my Japanese friends thinks she's cute and want to betroth her.
      After dinner we went to a karaoke place... one with the epic name of "My Pleasure", which is suitable if you love singing and ice cream tabehoudais. Our teacher's first song, to my pleasure (baaaahhaaha), was "Wild, Wild Life" by the Talking Heads, which I joined him for. Mine was, of course, my signature song "Dream Weaver". Oooooh yeah!

      Okay, I've been at this long enough and am really hungry. Here are some videos and then that'll be it until next time (... I'm going to have to say that again later, aren't I... pshh... what has my English become since being here!?!?):



Nemoto's Submarine Pitch


Submarine Pitch II


Every time after we field, there's a small talk given by the team leader.


Hit!



Kobayashi-sensei and me singing Beck's "Sexx Laws"!


      Well, there you have it! I have tons more to talk about and whatnot about the month and a half between then and now, so uhhh... look forward to it!!!


Until next time...!!!