So one of the funnier stories from Ray and Judy's visit involves baseball. Some of you know that I am a baseball fan (more of a formula 1 and football fan, but baseball is right up there too). Anyway, when I checked the schedules in an attempt to figure out where we'd be in relation to each city's baseball team I was a little disappointed to find out that while we would be in Hiroshima, the Carp (their pro team) would not. But that was ok as I then learned that we could get over to Tokyo for a Giants game, which did end up working out, by the way.
But back to Hiroshima...We arrived there on a Thursday and had a nice half-day and evening walking around and eating and drinking. Then, at the end of the second day there and after we'd been on our feet all day, much of the time in the rain, we decided to just have a laid back evening in the hotel room playing cards, eating snacks, drinking a few, and seeing if we could locate a ball game on tv.
Now, upon our arrival at the hotel it turned out that we had neighboring rooms on the 27th floor and that we had a damn nice view of the city. The peace park, the atomic bomb museum, the dome that has been left as is since the explosion, much of the city and a few of the islands south of Hiroshima were visible. But there was something else.
As the two young ladies that had shown us to our rooms were in Ray and Judy's room explaining things, Amy and I looked around and took in the view. It was soon after looking outside that I noticed that to the right and nearly straight down was a baseball stadium. It looked much too big to be a high school or city league park and I thought, "That's gotta be where the Carp play."
Then, after a few minutes the ladies came over to our room to give us the small tour and any instructions we might need (they spoke very good English) and after they finished one of them asked if there were any questions. "Yeah," I said, "That ball park there. Is that where the Carp play?" At this Amy laughed and called me a dork and the ladies laughed and told me that it was, in fact, where the Carp play. "Are you a fan of the Carp?" she asked. "Not really," I said, "I just like baseball."
So now fast forward back to the second night there. We got supplies from a foreign foods market we found in an underground mall type area and headed up to the room. As Ray and I were dragging chairs around the table and turning on the tv to locate a game, I looked out the window. "Hey," I said, "Sure looks like they are preparing for a game down there." I noticed players doing short sprints up and down the foul lines, other guys tossing balls around, and a few people in the seats. "Hmmm," I thought, "Wonder if I misread the schedule."
Judy and Amy were still getting settled and Ray flipped through a few channels while I looked from the field to the tv and back. Then he hit on a game just about to get underway and I stopped him, "Hey, that's the Carp right there." So I looked out the window and Ray told me what was on the screen.
"The pitcher just caught the ball from the catcher," Ray said.
"Yup," I answered.
"Ok, now he winding up and the hitter hits it to short," he went on.
"Uh-huh," I agreed.
Then speeding up the tempo, "Ok, shortstop throws it first...close play...he's out."
"Ok, that does it," I said, "The Carp are, in fact, in town, and that's the game."
Sure, I was a little disappointed that we didn't have tickets, although in all honesty we probably could have run down and gotten in as the place was not packed at all, but it was raining off and on and we ended up having a great evening of booze, cards, and watching the game both on tv and from the window. Whenever a big play would happen we'd all get up and run over to the window so that we could see it with our own eyes. And the great thing was that unless they did it on the sly, the hotel didn't charge us extra.