Baseball

I went and watched a couple of baseball games today. It's a free day for the trip schedule, so I took a trip out of Shinagawa to a big sports complex. I can't remember the name of the area, but it was next to the 1964 Olympic stadium. Yes, I have video of the stadium, too.

Originally, I had planned to meet some representatives at Waseda University. The downside of that is that we had to cancel the meeting. Waseda was involved in some very big front-page news this morning and is very busy trying to avoid the massively negative PR. Their representative still met us at the hotel as promised, but we could quickly tell he only came to save face for Waseda.

Greg quickly spun together an offer to cancel the meeting and the Waseda rep was incredibly thankful. I felt sorry for him and the situation he was in, but I was also impressed that he still made the original meeting. Ironically, the only reason we didn't cancel the meeting earlier was to save face on our part. After we got here, we realized Waseda didn't even use the equipment DeMarini makes and that all the equipment we had was for a different form of baseball altogether. We wanted to cancel the meeting on that part, but held it to maintain the relationship between Waseda and Portland State. Now I guess it's the best for both because there was no way we'd have gotten any information today. One of the coaches is in Okinawa and the others are all so busy trying to figure out what's going on that we could only have met with the student managers in the first place.

So instead we made our way to the fields and then ventured to the batting center (batting cages) nearby to interview some people. Luckily for us, there were some English-speakers there practicing rubberball. They're all in the rec league and set us up with some information about their team. They even tested our bat for us and were willing to go out and buy it because they liked the feel and performance so much. Score one for us! One of the guys does the voice of the announcer on Iron Chef, by the way. He was a very interesting character and tried to impress us by shouting catch lines from the show that, ironically, none of us have ever seen.

Right now I'm on my way back up to my room to start packing because we leave tomorrow and I want to be ready. I'm going to try to go out with some people later tonight and will try to keep you up to date on what happens there.

Keep in mind that I might not have frequent access to internet next week. Forgive me in advance for infrequent updates. すみません.

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Finally with time

It's about 10:45 PM and I finally have a few minutes to sit down and write a real post for everyone. Because I only have a few minutes, I'll just give you a quick summary of my week. Everything from plane sickness to washing my clothes in the sink.

The plane flight was fine. It was a little long, but all-in-all a great ride up until the last hour or so. We had so much turbulence that I got myself really sick. That, and I was hungry and tired from the 9 hour flight and had a headache from watching movies on the tiny little screen on the back of the seat in front of me. I managed to hold it together, though, and didn't throw up. You'd all be proud of me.

I decided not to stay up too late that night and just toured around the hotel for a bit before going to bed at 10 or so that night (to do a time conversion to PDX time, add 7 hours and drop a day. 10PM Monday night would be 5AM Monday morning in Portland).

Lectures were pretty good the following day. The first was conducted entirely through interpretors, but I thought it was the best we've had thus far. I ate lunch at McDonalds just for the experience (and Dad, the menu is pretty much the same, but they have a shrimp filet here). After the second lecture I got to explore the Tokyo commuter rail line and the subway to find my way over to Shinjuku for a meeting with the marketing manager of Wilson Team Sports. For those of you who want to look at a map, I'm staying at the Takanawa Prince Hotel in Shinagawa (which is in Tokyo).

We went out to a fancy restaurant after that and, like the rest of this week, I avoided pretty much all the fish and stuck with the rice and vegetables. I'm already losing weight because I don't eat pretty much anything that's served here in Japan. I think it will be the same way in China.

On Wednesday we had a presentation by a Nike representative. I was somewhat less than impressed, but won't go into why here. If you're really interested, find me later and ask.

Then I went to the area around the Tokyo dome to look at sporting goods shops for my exit project (For DeMarini, the Wilson subsidiary that makes the really high-quality bats). We looked at a couple of pro shops, then saw a neat looking roller coaster. It cost ￥１０００ to ride, but the 40-story drop was worth it.

Thursday took us to the Asahi brewery for a pre-packaged plant tour. It was OK and was followed by free samples for everyone. I wouldn't recommend their "super-dry" beer, but the stout was pretty good.

After that we took another trip through town for the exit project. This time was a trip to a batting cage only a few train stations away from the hotel. We hit a lot (the DeMarini bats are incredible, by the way) and got 3 good interviews in with Japanese hitters.

Today was a tour of the Nissan factory. Unfortunately, there were no free samples. The tour itself was nice. It was great to see a different factory than the one for Freightliner that we toured a while ago. Japanese manufacturing is very different than American manufacturing.

I went shopping in Harajuku after that, trying to look for small gifts for everyone at home. Sorry guys; I didn't find anything useful. Even the rip-off plastic jewelry was about $10 a piece.

I came back to the hotel and ate some more rice (look at me, I'm healthy!) before doing my laundry in the bathroom sink. I know that sounds kind of gross, but it costs $3 to wash 1 shirt at the hotel and there are no laundromats near here. I'd rather wash my socks in the sink than pay what my roommate did to do his laundry: 3 t-shirts, 3 pairs underwear, 4 pairs socks = $30. Still think I'm crazy?

Tomorrow I have a meeting at Waseda University. I get to talk to the baseball teams before they start their practice/games later that day. I hope to get a lot of information before heading to more pro shops and possible the sports museum afterwards. Then I need to pack and get ready to go.

We have an 8am meeting on Sunday with one of the adult rec baseball leagues before they start a tournament at 9. We plan to stay for the first hour to chat with players and coaches before taking the hour and a half train ride back here. Downside is, we have to check out of our room by noon and catch our bus to the airport at 2:30. It should be a very difficult but fun morning to plan through all the logistics. With me luck!

じゃね！

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日産

Today was our tour of the Nissan plant. It was great, but unlike the Asahi brewery there were no free samples waiting when we finished. Sad times for us.

My schedule's been pretty busy thus far in Tokyo, so I haven't had the time to give you a real update on the week. I've been getting up at around 7 every day and hitting bed at around 12. Tomorrow is a free day, so I will try to get in a nice long summary of my past week.

Thanks to all who are staying tuned to hear about my trip in Asia!

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Difficulties

Since I`m in Japane, Blogger is entirely in Japanese. I don`t read Kanji, so I accidentally deleted everyone`s comments rather than posting them. Can anyone who commented please do so again? I`ll try to figure out the language thing when I get a few free minutes...

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Nihon

I`m here! I made it!

... more to come later when I have a computer with an American and not a Japanese keyboard ...

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