Hawks vs. Marines, Part 1 (Updated)

Last Saturday, September 6th, Courtney and I went to Fukuoka with the other English teachers at my school, and their families, to see our very first professional baseball game in Japan, featuring the SoftBank Hawks and the visiting Chiba Lotte Marines.

(In case you're wondering, SoftBank is the name of one of the major cell phone providers in Japan, Chiba is southeast of Tokyo, and Lotte is apparently the name of a huge Japanese/South Korean company.)

The game was scheduled to start at 6 p.m., but Courtney and I arrived at the park just after they opened the gates at 4 p.m., since I wanted to watch batting practice and try to get a ball or two. (Everyone in our group made their own way up to Fukuoka.)

But just getting into the dome was more difficult that I could have imagined.

The first problem we encountered was that there were no entrances on street level. So we had to find a staircase to go up. When we finally did get to the upper level, we weren't allowed in at the first entrance we tried. Apparently, it was the entrance reserved exclusively for some sort of "club" members, which I think means that that must have been the entrance to the bleacher seats, which is home to the massive cheering squads.

So we hurried over to the next-closest entrance and got in line. We only had to wait a few seconds to finally get in the stadium, but what struck me as quite odd, or rather, unbelievable, was the fact that the ticket takers were actually tearing off everyone's ticket stubs!

I was expecting the same high-tech treatment you get at stadiums in the U.S. nowadays, where you just pass your ticket under a bar-code reader and in you go. But, no, here in Japan they do things the old-fashioned way! Go figure! And to think that one of the first things I said to my supervisor when I got my ticket a couple weeks before the game was, "Boy, these tickets sure do look easy to forge." How right I was!

After we were finally inside the Dome, I was anxious to get down to the field so I could start trying to get balls. But that's where we met our next hurdle.

You see, at the entrance to every section of the stadium, there is a gate and a "gate-girl" manning it. In order to pass, you have to have a ticket for that particular section. So even though we were somewhere near the left-field bleachers, which was exactly where I wanted to be, we had to march all the way over to our section near third base before we could even see the field! How did I find that out? The hard way!

I walked right up to the first entrance I saw, showed the gate-girl my ticket, and got nowhere. I put up some resistance and gave the girl this look like, "Are you kidding?" But she wouldn't bend. She politely pointed me to my left and said something in Japanese like, "Just a little bit further."

So I tried at the next gate. Rejected again! And at another gate. Rejection! Nothing but rejection.

I was flabbergasted. The thoughts that passed through my brain at that moment were things like: "Don't tell me that when we get down to the seating area, we're going to have to stay in our section. That would be ridiculous! What are these people thinking? That better not be the case. But why else would they not let us in anywhere we wanted? I don't get it."

So I tried yet again at another gate. And guess what? Yes, rejected again!

But I was in a hurry to finally get down to the bleacher seats and try my luck at getting a ball, so I made my next half-hearted attempt to get past the gate-girl at the next section I came upon. Still no luck. The gate-girl pointed at my ticket, showed me that it was marked "Section 18," and politely pointed me in the right direction. Then I said, in Japanese, "Only?" while giving her this incredulous "You've got to be kidding me" look. But she didn't care and again pointed me to my left. Ugh!

It was only then that I realized we were only at Section 8 (Ha! Ha! Section 8! How appropriate!) or something like that and still had to go past ten sections. Ahhhhhh! I'll let you imagine for yourself what fabulous thoughts were then in my brain!

So when we finally did get to pass the gate-girl, guess what? Yup, just as I suspected: We were free to walk around wherever we wanted to. In other words, the gate-girls served no purpose whatsoever. Except to drive me crazy, that is!

Note to you Japanese: Enough with your orderliness!

Besides, the next time I go to a Hawks game, I'm going to beat the system. How? Well, I'm just going to pretend that I was already at my seat and that I left my ticket with a friend or whatever. That is apparently what happened to a lady that I saw on her way in at one of the gates. At first it seemed like the gate-girl wasn't going to let her back in, but in she went. So I'm going to steal her idea. And my backup plan will be in my back pocket, if you get my drift! Hah! Take that!

(Heck, come to think of it, why did they even let us in at Gate 1 when our seats were closer to Gate 5?)