All-Japan Olympic Baseball Camp

Today, Rie, her friend Hana-chan, and I all went out to YomiuriLand's baseball park, "Giants' Kyujo", to watch the Japan National team practice before the Olympics. It was sooo HOT, I couldn't believe it. I was going to bring a hat and maybe even a parasol, but I forgot my hat and chickened out about the parasol. Boy, did I pay for it! Anyway, on to the field!

Here is the view from our seats just first-base side of homeplate. It really was a beautiful day, lots of trees that you could hear blowing in the (hot) wind, and a really gorgeous castle-like roller coaster in the background there.

Here's Tosh! In the first-base side dugout. He's the one on the right in profile.

Here's a picture full of many of Japan's hot-shots. Number 77 is Coach Hoshino, 52 is shortstop Kawasaki "Munerin" Munehiro, 88 is batting coach Tabuchi (he was a real character), the navy blue shirt is #7 Nishioka--the second-base player heartthrob from Lotte Marines, and #6 is team captain Miyamoto.

Here's one of my favorite players, Inaba, right-fielder from the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.

And Munerin doing some batting practice. He always reminds me of Mamiya-san from kendo!

One last shot of batting practice.

Boy, did I regret not bringing the hat or parasol. On top of it being volcano hot, sitting there in the sun, I wore a loose-fitting, square-neck and -back shirt that made a nice square-shaped sunburn from my shoulder blades to the nape of my neck! The sad thing is, there's a smear of less cherry red where I did manage to put on some sunscreen. Man, that's going to leave an ugly tan line!

(postdated 9/16/2008)