Sports Extravaganza

Hello from the bullet train - somewhere between Tokyo and Kyoto!

I've been a little lazy about writing over the last week or so, but it was our last week in Sapporo so in addition to trying to squeeze in every last thing we could from our bucket list, I also had to pack - one of my least favorite things to do. The good news is we'll be returning one bag lighter than when we arrived, so I call that a win!

Thursday we dropped our two huge suitcases at Yamato - basically the equivalent of UPS or FedEx in the US - where they ship your luggage to the airport ahead of you so you don't have to lug it around from one train to the next. So, we'll live out our backpacks for the next 10 days as we travel between Tokyo, Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Kamikochi. Then, when we arrive at the Tokyo airport to fly home, we'll swing by the Yamato desk to grab our suitcases before checking them on to Boston. And they do this for $23/suitcase! Yes, please!!

So, I now have lots of train time to write, but more adventures are about to begin so I need to get caught up on the last week. There were very few reserved seats left on our train for this morning so Fiona is actually sitting a few rows ahead of me and I'm finding the "out of sight, out of mind" concept to be very true in this instance. I think she'll be relatively self sufficient for the next few hours leaving me to write in peace!

I'll start with last weekend which was really fun because we got a chance to check out not one, but two local summer sporting events - one very popular, the other slightly more obscure.

Last month I wrote about our visit to the Okurayama Ski Jump Stadium - a venue for the 1972 Winter Olymics that is still in use today. During our visit to the onsite museum, we read about how the stadium has been specially outfitted to allow for summer ski jumping, but we couldn't quite invision how that would work. Well, you can imagine how excited Fiona was to spot a flyer in the subway station a few weeks later advertising an upcoming summer ski jump completion! Saturday morning we headed over to the stadium to see the action.

Jason wasn't with us when we visited the first time, so he was impressed with the site of the stadium itself when we stepped off the bus, but then Fiona started yelling, "LOOK, LOOK! I see one!!" and we all looked up to see a tiny speck of a person flying through the air. It was really amazing.

If you look closely, you can see the jumper flying just above the work OKURA on the slope, then continuing over the white horizontal lines, before landing in the blue area.

How these brave souls get up the guts to do this is beyond me!

The atmosphere was like being at a track meet. Lots of cheering and horn blowing for teammates, picnic blankets spread out and concessions of food, ice cream, and local beers on offer. It's so funny to imagein how very different the scene must be in the dead of winter.

The next day, we had tickets provided by the university to go watch the Nippon Ham Fighters - the local baseball team. I kind of feel like we might be failing miserably as Americans given that the first baseball game we ever took our daughter to was in Japan!

The team plays in the massive spaceship-like Sapporo Dome. It's one of the most recognizable features of the city from almost any lookout.

We had no idea who this sign was indicating the opponents were, but after some searching when we got home we discovered that it was the Orix Buffaloes - never would have figured that one out on my own!

Do you remember me mentioning "the X"? It really is everywhere:

Only all-American food for an sport as American as baseball...KFC! (FYI: It's just as vile here as it is at home.)

Fiona was SO into the game. She wanted to know all the rules and what each players job was. It was a nonstop explaination session for Jason:

Not surprisingly, the baseball stadium looked just like you'd expect:

Looks like we have a trip to Fenway in our future! Truth be told, Jason and I have only ever been there for concerts, so we're probably all overdue for taking in a game!