Kicking the bucket...list: Days 26 and 27 - Swinging with two strikes

 

やった！

You don't have to be a baseball fan to understand the meaning behind "three strikes and you're out!", but in my case it was certainly relevant. I've been to many professional baseball games in Japan ranging from Sendai 仙台 to Hiroshima 広島 but the holy grail of Japanese ballparks, Kōshien Stadium 阪神甲子園球場 (home ground of the Hanshin Tigers 阪神タイガース, akin in aura to Fenway Park or Wrigley Field, and site of the spring and summer high school baseball tournaments), had proved to be elusive. My first crack at attending a game there was supposed to have been in the summer of 2020 but I think we all remember what happened at that time. Strike two occurred in the summer of 2023, when I had tickets for my daughter and me to see a game at Koshien, but the weather had other ideas (even though the anticipated heavy rain never progressed beyond a light drizzle). One more chance remained on the penultimate day of this particular Japan trip but first I would have to get to Nishinomiya 西宮 from Kinosaki Onsen 城崎温泉, where I had spent my next-to-last night in the country. 

Breakfast in my room at Sinonomesou しののめ荘:

As noted in my previous post there are seven public hot spring bathhouses in Kinosaki Onsen and dedicated onsen lovers will make an effort to have a soak in all of them during their stay. Not having the same level of otaku commitment I was content with relaxing in the bath at my inn. However, as my hotel gave each guest a pass to use at three of the 外湯, I concluded it would be a damn shame not to check out at least one of them, so following breakfast, clad in a yukata, I walked to Ichi-no-yu 一の湯, the closest of the seven to Sinonomesou, where I partook of the two main baths there, including an outdoor one created to resemble a cave.

After bathing I cooled down with a complimentary bottle of fresh milk, and reminded myself that life can indeed be quite good at times:

Outside the Ichi-no-yu Onsen, recharged and ready to face the day. If only I could do this every morning before heading to the office:

There wasn't much left to do in Kinosaki Onsen except to kill time by walking the streets again. It was another unseasonably hot morning during what was supposed to be the early stages of the rainy season, so at one point I tried to escape the heat with an iced caramel latte:

Eventually it was time to leave Kinosaki Onsen and return to Ōsaka 大阪, where my journey would end twenty-seven days after it had begun there. I had enjoyed my overnight in the hot springs town, but to be honest onsens are even more enjoybable when traveling with a partner, family or group of friends. That said, I still plan on visiting hot springs on future trips even if I'm traveling solo, and that shouldn't stop you, either:

. 

My lunch on the Kounotori こうのとり limited express train consisted of a Tajima beef yakiniku ekiben, plus a local craft beer...:

...plus some manjū 饅頭 for dessert, washed down with another 地ビール. And this, kids, is how one should travel in Japan:

The weather was hot but the sky was clear, auguring well for a game as I checked into the Hotel Hewitt Koshien ホテルヒューイット甲子園 (located just a few minutes on foot from Koshien Stadium) at around 15:00. But, facing two strikes, Fate threw a curveball. I had purchased my ticket from StubHub and arranged to have it delivered to the hotel in the days before my arrival (I even notified the hotel to expect the delivery). But the staff couldn't find it even though the tracking indicated it had arrived around the end of May. I called Stub Hub's English line and confirmed the ducat had been delivered back on May 30. Perhaps because of all the temples I had visited on my drive around Shikoku 四国 I told myself it was only a material item that would prove meaningless in the grander scheme, but eventually the ticket was found and brought to my room. Game on!: 

My seat at Koshien Stadium, with a Shōta Morishita 森下翔太 fan in front:

Pregame cheerleading:

This person added some personal touches to their Yūsuke Ōyama 大山悠輔 jersey:

The first pitch of the game:

The Tigers opponet for this game was the Chiba Lotte Marines 千葉ロッテマリーンズ. The Marines had a small but enthusiastic ōendan 応援団 cheering section present, soundking much like the fans attending a Premier League soccer game:

The Sun begins to set over Nishinomiya:

The Tigers oendan. It's these cheering sections, with their orchestrated chants, blaring horns and beating drums that more than anything else set the Japanese game of yakyū 野球 apart from its American counterpart: 

Too many ballparks in Japan are covered by domed roofs, lurking above artifical turf surfaces. Koshien stubbornly clings to natural grass played in the open air, the way the kami 神 intended the sport of ベースボール to be:

The only drawback for me was the lack of a chair back on my seat, which meant my oshiri お尻 was feeling pretty uncomfortable from around the sixth inning on:

One of the many beer girls patrolling the stands. I desperately wanted a photo of one of these women in action but at the same time didn't want to come off as a スケベ外人 while going about doing so. I suppose I could've just called one over to order another drink and then ask for consent, but I didn't want to have to get up and find a bathroom after downing yet another brew:

An end of game selfie:

The final score was Hanshin 2 - Chiba Lotte 0. Here is a strangely translated game report (with the wrong date) written from the perspective of a Lotte fan, plus a link to the box score: 

Leaving the ballpark after the contest:

So unlike Mighty Casey* I didn't strike out. Koshien doesn't have quite the retro charm of a Fenway or a Wrigley, but on the other hand there's an almost spiritual aura to the ballpark, thanks to a combinaton of the epic sagas of the high school championships played there, and the seemingly endless futile struggles of the hometown Tigers. Much like the Cubs and the Red Sox, Hanshin has been seemingly cursed for the most of its history, losing out time and time again to the hated Yomiuri Giants 読売ジャイアンツ (Japan's answer to the Evil Empire, aka the New York Yankees), with only a single Japan Series championship in 1985. But fate has been kind to the Tigers in recent years - they won their second championship in 2023 (beating their crosstown Osaka rivals the Orix Buffaloes オリックス・バファローズ in the proces), and lost in six games to the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks 福岡ソフトバンクホークス last year. And as I write this, the Hanshin Tigers have repeated as Central League セ・リーグ champions. Here's wishing them well in the upcoming playoffs.

On my final morning in country I had some time to kill before I needed to get to Kansai International Airport 関西国際空港 so I went for a walk around the neighborhood. Here's the local Lawson ローソン:

Gene Bacque, who in 1964 became the first foreign player to win the Eiji Sawamura Award 沢村栄治賞, Japan's version of the Cy Young Award: 

Randy Bass, hero of the Tigers' 1985 championship run, though his playing career with Hanshin ended prematurely amid some unpleasant circumstances: 

I was pleasantly surprised to come across the baseball-related Koshien Susano'o Jinja 甲子園素盞雄神社 just outside the stadium: 

A plaque honoring Tigers legend Tomoaki Kanemoto 金本知憲:

And a plaque commemorating another legend, Babe Ruth. The Babe created quite a stir in 1934 when he visited Japan as part of a touring team of Major League all-stars, a trip that did much to foster goodwill between the U.S. and Japan (at least temporarily), and helped to cement baseball's popularity in the latter:

All good things must come to an end, and so it was time to travel to the airport for the flight back to Beijing 北京:

And there you have it - 27 days spent exploring new areas in a land that has meant so much to me over a span going back to my college days in the mid-late 1980s. During that nearly month-long exursion, I visited two prefecutres (Tokushima-ken 徳島県 and Kōchi-ken 高知県) for the first time, placing me tantalizingly close to stepping foot in all 47 prefectures. But there was more to this trip than just checking off bucket-list destinations. I'm not a religious person, and I'm not going to declare myself to be "spiritual" either. But as I approach the mandatory retirement age, with a host of maladies that have unfortunately made their presences felt in recent years, there was more to the visits I made at a significant handful of the 88 temples along the Shikoku pilgrimage 四国八十八箇所 than just the standard photos and souvenir purchases. At each of the fourteen temples I visited I made time to repeat a simple mantra, one in which I asked for nothing from the kami, but instead expressed my gratitude for what I do have, along with a promise to try and better myself as a person. Traveling around Shikoku I felt better both mentally and physically in ways I haven't in quite some time, though unfortunately many of the same issues returned once back in China. 

Most of all this trip demonstrated I possessed the confidence needed to undertake a solo journey such as this. Japan occupies a unique place in my psyche - still foreign enough to remind me I am and will always be an outsider, but at the same time familiar enough that for virtually the entire time I was there I didn't feel I was "abroad". It's extremely unlikely that I will ever return to live in Japan, but there are still itineraries I plan on completing before I eventually go forth into the great void. After all, Ibaraki-ken 茨城県 still awaits!

Thank you for coming along on this series! 

ビールの売り子:

*If you need some brushing up on your Americana:

This year's summer Koshien high school baseball championship, won by Okinawa Shōgaku High School 沖縄尚学高等学校・附属中学校: