Baseball batting cages and Bowling!

Rained non-stop the whole night till morning. Nice and cool. Slept in till 12 noon. Wanted to take the train to Nagaoka, this city 40 mins away from my town. When I got to the train station, I found out that the trains were not in operation due to floods. Faced with the bleak prospect of a boring day at home, I decided to get some ice-cream from Yummy instead. Boy, Yummy was crowded! There were all these cars parked outside and there was virtually no standing room in the small shop! I talked to a Filipino lady who married a Japanese man and has been living in Shiozawa (a town 30 mins away by car) for 26 years. She and her husband actually drove 30 mins just for the ice-cream! Unbelievable! Or it just goes to show that there is no good Italian gelato in this area. Was given a membership card. After collecting 30 stamps, I will receive a 500-yen ice-cream voucher! Yay…I know where I'll be most of the time now…pity they close at 6pm though.

Went home and did some chores. Then, *KNOCK KNOCK* I opened the door and surprise surprise! It was Kate from Muikamachi! Kate, Katie and Dean (from Muikamachi), Kathryn (from Shiozawa) and Martin (from Tokamachi) had actually driven down to get Patrick and I to go to the batting cages with them because the trains were down. It was awfully sweet of them I thought. I'm glad to be placed in a place with great fellow JETs. =)

So instead of spending a boring afternoon at home, I had an active day at the baseball batting cages (something like a driving range for golf except this one’s for practicing hitting baseballs, so you put 200-yen in for 24 balls to come flying at you and you try to hit them back. There are different stations for different ball speeds.). Here's how the batting cages look like. Batters are on the left side of the photo and the balls come flying out of machines on the right:

I was a disaster! No ball sense whatsoever. I could have persevered to get a better idea of where to hit the ball and stuff, but I figured that would come up to quite a bit of money, so I bought a drink and watched the rest instead. There was this Japanese family that brought their own bats so obviously they came to play but they kept letting us go first (probably so that they could have a good laugh at us). The Japanese love baseball. There is baseball on TV every night and there are many of such batting cages in the country. Katie and Patrick were completely hooked when we left.

Then we went bowling. Nothing new here. Japanese bowling alleys look almost the same as the ones we have in Singapore except they are smaller (or maybe just the one I went to). The difference is their shoe-renting station. Instead of being manned, the Japanese system is automated (as with most things in Japan). Its like a vending machine – you put your money in and select your shoe size and the shoes get pushed out. When you’re done, there’s a bin for you to drop the shoes back in.

From left: Dean (sitting), Kathryn, Patrick (sitting), Katie and Kate (in green t-shirt). Yes, I know, I'll get a picture of everyone's faces next time...