Yokohama, the Landmark Tower and the Bay Stars Baseball Stadium

The Tallest Building and the TS Group Athletes

Hello again!

Sorry I haven't written in a while; last weekend I basically did nothing of interest to the rest of you; most likely. I decided not to skip out on another Saturday Tennis practice and went to that; then spent the rest of the day filling out paperwork for my spring semester program. Then Sunday I spent with a friend from the Tennis Club; Kana, as well as her two friends from high school. The four of us found an Italian restaurant in Kichijoji and spent the afternoon practicing English conversation for the benefit of one of Kana's friends; a Tokyo University student who is planning to study abroad in Florida and wanted to practice English. It was fun and a nice relaxing way to spend my weekend for once.

Then I spent the week trying to figure out my final project for my required course. All I knew is that I wanted to try my hand at some type of photo project; and eventually I decided on a project involving taking old photographs of the student protests here in Tokyo in the 1960's, and comparing them to modern day photos of protests in Japan; as well as photos taken by me in these same famous locations in Tokyo where the protests took place. And my project was approved! But now this means I actually have to start doing the research and that's not so much fun....wow I need to work on that this weekend....

Then the week was spent with the usual class and club practice. On Friday we had an extra dancing practice in the evening since the school festival at which we're supposed to perform is only about 12 days away now. And after practice some of the others pied Ayako in the face since it was her birthday. And then just for fun we pied Rei...and so, on and so on. And by the end of the night we were all covered in pie cream. And then went out for dinner. It was awesome....

Okay so before I get to Yokohama this past weekend; I need to show you all one of the random things we studied in lecture the other day. There is this type of performance here in Japan known as Takarazuka. Basically Japan has a very old theatre tradition of Noh and Kabuki theatre, which did not allow women to play any roles. So often women did not play much of a role in theatre. But then this man named Takarazuka created his own type of theatre early on in the 1910's in order to draw tourists to his resort around the Takarazuka train station. He created an all female theatre where the females played both male and female roles. Yet what has resulted is far from modern Kabuki theatre, though there are influences. Takarazuka girls perform a wide variety of plays...but they seem to prefer Western musicals most of all. And what results......I can't even describe it. It was one of the most unique and strange things I've seen so far and I had no idea it existed in Japan until now. I can't explain it...its like the most flamboyant form of Opera you could have ever imagined...with Japanese girls dressed as men. Anyway I won't say more but if you're at all curious find them on youtube. Here's a link to one of their most famous plays (and yes, those are ALL girls in there):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-cryY2XNmM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_Csy_KPs8A&feature=related


Anyway that was a total sidetrack. Sorry. But I figure if its interesting why not put it up. Okay, so...

Yokohama!

I went this past Saturday to meet with a friend who lives there, Mariko. I went mainly expecting just to have lunch with her, hang out a bit, and probably leave by mid-afternoon. But what ended up was way more than I expected.

Okay but first, Yokohama is the second largest city in Japan and is also one of the newest cities; as its had to be rebuilt twice (once after a huge earthquake in the 1920's, and once after the fire bombings during WWII). Its a huge, famous port city with a lot of amusement parks; tourist attractions, and an all-around fun city to hang out in. It also usually has the largest foreigner population because of its place as a port town; and has the largest Chinatown in Japan.

So anyways I got there way early on Saturday before I had to meet up with Mariko, so I went ahead and went to the Landmark Tower on my own. Landmark Tower, as its name kind of gives away, is the largest building in Japan and has one of the fastest elevators on the planet. I was taken up to the 69th floor observatory in about 10 seconds. It made my ears pop quite unpleasantly...but the view was absolutely amazing. Anyway you can look at the pictures to see that. And for some reason the Landmark Tower staff were all dressed in Halloween costumes. Which was cute; but I'm not quite sure what Halloween had to do with the tallest building in Japan...but whatever.

I met with Mariko at around noon at her station and we headed on towards the Nihon Odori Station to go and see the Yokohama Bay Stars Baseball Stadium, which I had wanted to see, while we went looking for a restaurant. Baseball season is over, so we fully expected the stadium to be closed and to just be able to look from the outside, but instead there were people filing into the stadium. We went to the ticket gate to ask the ticket man something, but somehow he let us in and suddenly we were in the stadium with a very large group of middle-aged Japanese company employees and their families. Turns out the TS Group (I still have never heard of this company...but they must do quite a lot because they had employees there from all over Japan) had rented out the stadium for their annual Company Athletics Festival. They do things like this quite often in Japan; athletics festivals are a large part of Japanese school life and companies often host them here as well. So we had happened upon one accidently.

Well then we figured we mine as well go and get some pictures of the inside of the stadium while we were there and then leave; so we went in and took some pictures and everything; and then realized we could go down onto the field of the stadium, which of course we wanted to do, and then we took even more pictures. Then we found out that the Mukade Competition was next (the closest thing I can compare it to would be a three-legged race....five people put their feet in these ski-like wooden blocks and have to move them all together at once across a field. Look at the picture....) and we wanted to stay and look at that. Then we wanted food and there just happened to be Yaki Soba (my favorite Japanese fried noodles!) there so we got some of that...then there was an obstacle course and some activities.....you get the picture. We never left. We spent all afternoon at a random company athletics festival that we didn't even belong in. It was the most random thing I've done in Japan so far but it was actually so much fun....

There was one activity where you could throw a ball from the pitchers mound and see how fast it went (mine went 52 km/s...which is really slow. But no surprise there); then me and Mariko found out that you could sit in the players box and that the baseball teams' locker room was open; so we went there and took more pictures of course. We spent the rest of the day watching the sports and playing with some kids nearby; and I kept trying out my hand at photography with my pictures of the competitors themselves. I really do find myself liking photography more and more while I'm here and I think I really want to study it more and get better at it. I love being able to take a picture of someone in a perfect moment. So here are only a few of the pictures I took but let me know what you think of them as I need some feedback; especially anyone out there who knows anything about photography...

And just as a side note I must have been the only foreigner there. Not only that; but I have blonde hair. Which means that not only did I not belong to any company, but I stuck out like crazy and yet me and Mariko were still able to do just about anything we wanted. It was so lucky....and I know I stuck out because me and Mariko were caught by the camera-men and put up on the big stadium's scoreboard like three times that day (you know how they do it in baseball games where they film the audience randomly and put them up on the big screen...yeah same thing here).

Anyway we left the stadium at around 4pm before the closing ceremonies (since we had no company group to belong to) and found a baseball goods store and then on to the famous Yokohama Chinatown where we ate at a Chinese Tabehoudai (All You Can Eat Buffet) Restaurant that was sooo amazing. And that was my day in Yokohama. One of the most random and yet most fun days so far. Thank you Mariko for having that day with me!

And Sunday was spent sleeping; and doing homework, and paperwork, and cleaning my dirty apartment, and doing laundry, etc. So not much there. This week I need to work on my final project and this new application I've just started for a Student International Correspondent Program with National Geographic Magazine. Wish me luck!!

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