A couple of great firsts happened today: I went to my first Japanese mass and to my first Japanese baseball game. The church I found is wonderful, in fact vastly better than almost any other church I've ever been to. I didn't understand a word of the homily or most of the readings, but at least I managed to figure out the gospel reading (but only because it was that really recognizable part about cutting off offending appendages). Full comprehension is going to be somewhat slow going, methinks.
It's obviously a pretty small community, so everyone knows everyone else, and that combined with my being the lone foreigner made me stick out like a sore thumb. Nonetheless, they were extremely welcoming and friendly; a little too friendly, in point of fact, as they made me get up in front of the church and introduce myself after mass was over. I confused Yokohama (by Tokyo) with Yokogawa (where I live in Hiroshima) like an idiot, but they all laughed, so I guess it was worth it. The priest and two of the parishioners invited me out drinking with them, which was hilarious. They seem pretty level-headed, so I think they mean 'a drink', not 'drink until blotto'. Unfortunately, the phrase that everyone uses to suggest the intake of alcohol could mean anything from taking a sip to breaking the frat record for longest keg stand while wearing nothing but a brassiere and a top hat. Presumably they mean the former; after all, they're just Catholics, not Irish Catholics.
Baseball games in Japan kick the pants off of American games. I've seen one pro game, one pro game in the training season and numerous AAA games, and none of them were able to hold my interest much past the first inning, and sometimes after the first pitch. I just watched the Hiroshima Carps play the Tokyo Giants, and it was so exciting that I didn't even feel a touch of boredom until the fifth inning. The fifth through the eighth innings were still boring because it's baseball and no amount of energy and excitement can make those innings interesting, but the ninth pulled off an amazing recovery and actually made me care about which team won, which is a remarkable achievement that I would previously have thought impossible. The major difference is that the fans are incredibly active and organized the entire game, very much like the English with soccer, only with the vitriol and profanity removed. All the fans perform complicated series of hand gestures and claps while chanting various slogans, usually adapted to whomever is at bat. We're talking stuff so serious that there are crowd coordinators (cheerleaders) all over the bleachers, leading everyone in actions. There are other awesome quirks as well: each team has a jolly and long musical-comedy-style theme song, each PLAYER has a theme song (instumental only), they wave giant flags to celebrate a run and all shout 'Banzai!' when something really good happens. The last of these I could watch for hours, as it is simply hilarious.
Incidentally, I wouldn't recommend buying the Japan-only Cardigans album (The Other Side of the Moon). I am a total Cardigans nut and I only thought it was okay. It does have a 15-minute-long lounge piano song at the end called "Cocktail Party Bloody Cocktail Party", which is pretty dang funny, but it is awfully hard to listen to that much lounge piano in one go.
