baseball, Japan, more baseball and the area

Since my school can't get anything right at the moment, I had all of last week off. I was supposed to start on Tuesday, but instead will start tomorrow (Monday).

On Tuesday I went to another baseball game, this time sitting in the "exciting zone!!!" It is just the bottom few rows along the 1st and 3rd base lines, but it was nice to be so close. The right fielder is from Mexico and after a foul ball ricocheted off the wall near me he tossed me the ball. As per custom here, one is supposed to give the ball to a kid or else the entire stadium will chant "give it to a baby", though they do it in Korean. Since I was sitting in the "exciting zone" there were no kids around (too dangerous) so I had to throw it over a 20ft net to an eager looking kid. Unfortunately my throwing are isn't what it used to be and my toss hit the net and the ball bounced into the bull pen. The crowd wasn't too pleased with my attempt, but after a few others tried and failed to get it over the net, I didn't feel so bad (and the kid did get the ball in the end).


On Wednesday night I got a call from school saying that I had to go to Japan the next morning to get my work visa and then return to Busan that afternoon. I was to take the hydrofoil "Beetle" which takes about 6 hours round trip.

Last time I did the visa run in 2006 it took 2 days to get the visa completed. I told this to my school but they assured me that it would all be done in the afternoon with plenty of time left for me to catch the 3:30 Beetle back to Busan.

As soon as I got to the Embassy in Fukuoka I saw a sign saying that all visas will be ready the following day. I was livid. I am not sure why the school refuses to listen to me (I also told them to hurry up with the visa processing as it takes at least a week, and other very important information that they just ignored) but it is beginning to piss me off.

Now I am in Fukuoka with no hotel, not much money (Korean banks don't give international ATM cards to most foreigners) and only the clothes on my back. I was finally able to find a hotel after wondering around the city sweating and making my clothes stink. After taking a much needed shower I remembered that I didn't bring any deodorant, something that isn't always easy to find in Japan. Now I get to be the stinky foreigner.


Lucky me, with little money in my pocket but needing to get out, I found that the local baseball team was having a discount ticket night that evening. I went and saw the Softbank Hawks play some other team at the Yahoo Dome. Yahoo is much more popular than Google in Japan. The game and fans were great.

everyone had these plastic things to whack together to make annoying sounds

Fukuoka Baseball from Scott Smith on Vimeo.

Oh, and Japan, everyone already thinks you're a bit perverted, handing these (picture below) out to the fans when they entered the stadium doesn't help.