Anyway, Friday we decided to check out a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome. The stadium is very central which is surprising considering the density of the area. Even more surprising however was that there were a few amusement park rides in the area. How does one fit a rollercoaster into this dense urban setting? Simple, have it go OVER buildings. Here are some pictures I stole off the internet of the Dolphin Thunder, a rollercoaster that literally has parts of it attached to a building, which the ride ends up going over and around twice.
This ride was sweet. The first drop ended up being almost vertical, the view from the top was amazing and riding a rollercoaster up and around a building is quite the experience. Highly recommended.
The baseball game itself was also a lot of fun. It was a sold-out match and had the feel of a soccer game more than a baseball game in that there was a section for the away team fans, and everyone in the stadium was constantly chanting for their team. The away team fans also had a bit of a brass band and hilariously enough one of the players on their team was Canadian. Every time he came up to bat, the away team band played about a quarter of the Canadian national anthem!! Awesome.
The field seems a little smaller than the MLB fields, however the level of play was very high. Lots of great fielding, several home runs, some exciting double plays and even a couple of close calls between runners coming home and the catcher. Good stuff. My favourite part of this evening however were the beer sellers in the stands. They were all cute girls in ugly neon outfits with insulated mini-kegs on their backs. All you have to do is flag one down, shell out the required 800 yen, and she'll unhook the tap from her belt and pour you a fresh pint straight from the keg! Genius!
Saturday I decided to stroll around some of my favourite areas in the city and in one of the extremely crowded streets, I heard someone call out: "Paul?!" Turns out my Toronto roommate Pat's friend Danny was in the city for a month as well...and we ran into each other completely randomly on the street!! What are the odds?!?!?! It was really mind-blowing to have someone completely unexpected call out my name in the middle of a crowded Tokyo street. Hard to describe it really. Anyway, we ended up going to a maid cafe in the area where all the servers are dressed up in maid costumes. It was pretty weird, really expensive, and somehow the girls were all butt ugly. Didn't stay long there, but at least we can say we did it! Next we went to the part of the city where Danny was staying to check out a bit of a street festival. Here there was a central platform blasting music with a live drummer raised up high, and in the circular street that surrounded this platform people were doing coordinated dances as they slowly circled the center. And these weren't professional dancers, they were all locals joining in! It was really strange to see, kind of like a weird Japanese Michael Jackson video or something. Whatever, good and completely unexpected times!
Finally, I got a haircut today. You'd think I'd have nothing exciting to say about that, right? Wrong! They vacuumed my head at the end!
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