Exhuberant Hanshin Tigers fans in actionSometimes there are little mistakes; sometimes there are fatal ones. Bernie nearly made a fatal one years ago when we were living in Saga. Our bathroom was in the back part of a building we didn’t live in. To access it, we had to cross a covered breezeway and enter what had once been the back door of a house—an old, wooden, drafty Japanese house. Needless to say, it could be a shockingly cold adventure to take a bath or use the toilet in the wintertime. (By the way, to add insult to injury, our toilet was the pit variety. Winter was frigid, but the smells of summertime were even worse.)
One morning, when Bernie went to shower and shave, he discovered that water had frozen inside the instant hot water heater above the sink. So he turned on the gas burner for a few seconds and then turned it off again before repeating the procedure several times. His hope was that the freeze would gradually thaw, clearing the pipe and allowing hot water to emerge. It was perhaps a nice idea, but it didn’t work. Without warning, an explosion shook our small apartment across the breezeway. Momentarily, a visibly stunned Bernie stumbled into our entryway. The build-up of steam had blown the pipe off the bottom of the heater. A fatal accident was averted when the flying projectile narrowly missed striking Bernie’s head. Nevertheless, the force of the explosion blew Bernie out of the bathroom, leaving him deafened for several minutes. Even today, when I think about it, I shudder at how easily I could have been widowed that day.
Actually, Bernie made another one other near-fatal mistake during our Saga days. While fatalities are a common outcome of explosions, we were totally unprepared to discover that something as simple as wearing the wrong baseball cap might be fatal.
It was perhaps our first visit to the Kansai district of central Japan from the southern island of Kyushu, where Saga is located. My hat-of-all-kinds-loving husband was wearing a Tokyo Giants black cap decorated with distinctive orange-colored lettering and logo. He’d purchased it shortly after we arrived in Japan, perhaps hoping for some point of connection with a culture that had been, up to then, entirely foreign to him. But he loved hats and he loved baseball. This was a good combination for making relationships in a new country where, we were to learn, baseball may be more popular than sumo, the traditional national sport of Japan. But he didn’t know that you take your life into your hands when you wear a Tokyo Giants cap in Hanshin Tigers country: the Kansai.
“You should take off that cap,” a woman helping host our visit in the area said to him bluntly, almost skipping over the mandatory and generally protracted greetings for which Japanese are famous.
Bernie thought she was joking and returned a joke in kind. The only thing was that this woman was serious—dead serious, as in Bernie was going to be dead if he didn’t take her advice seriously! We were brand new to Japan and knew little of the language other than some words of greeting. Perhaps she forgave him for not understanding her order and, consequently, for not obeying. But for whatever reason, Bernie managed to keep both his cap and his life. Nevertheless, when we moved to the Kansai six years later, he stored the Tokyo Giants cap. In the meantime, he’d learned of the rabid nature of Hanshin Tigers fans and that this woman, as unusual as she was, really couldn’t be counted as being among the most lunatic of Hanshin supporters in the area—and there are many.
Still, were she alive today, I believe that Maetani-san would be among a passionate group of loyalists in Osaka that is determined to wipe out the “Curse of Colonel Sanders.” According to the newspaper, two sections of a life-sized plastic statue of the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken were salvaged from the bottom of the Dotonbori River earlier this week. Twenty-four years ago, overly exuberant Hanshin fans kidnapped the statue from a local Kentucky Fried Chicken establishment and threw it into the river as they celebrated the Tigers’ Central League pennant victory in 1985. Much to their delight, their beloved team went on to capture the Japan Series that year (equivalent to winning America’s World Series). Apparently Colonel Sanders was not amused, however. The fact that the Tigers have failed to win the Japan Series since then has given rise to “the curse” theory. Now that the Colonel is back in his rightful place, Hanshin Tigers fans—eternally hopeful anyway—believe that this year may be/will be/must be their year.
I’m not really a baseball fan, but as Japan’s baseball season opens shortly, I’m going to keep one eye on the Tigers and one eye on Bernie. Though he doesn’t have a history of making near-fatal mistakes, I’m not eager for him to start any new habits in 2009.
One morning, when Bernie went to shower and shave, he discovered that water had frozen inside the instant hot water heater above the sink. So he turned on the gas burner for a few seconds and then turned it off again before repeating the procedure several times. His hope was that the freeze would gradually thaw, clearing the pipe and allowing hot water to emerge. It was perhaps a nice idea, but it didn’t work. Without warning, an explosion shook our small apartment across the breezeway. Momentarily, a visibly stunned Bernie stumbled into our entryway. The build-up of steam had blown the pipe off the bottom of the heater. A fatal accident was averted when the flying projectile narrowly missed striking Bernie’s head. Nevertheless, the force of the explosion blew Bernie out of the bathroom, leaving him deafened for several minutes. Even today, when I think about it, I shudder at how easily I could have been widowed that day.
Actually, Bernie made another one other near-fatal mistake during our Saga days. While fatalities are a common outcome of explosions, we were totally unprepared to discover that something as simple as wearing the wrong baseball cap might be fatal.
It was perhaps our first visit to the Kansai district of central Japan from the southern island of Kyushu, where Saga is located. My hat-of-all-kinds-loving husband was wearing a Tokyo Giants black cap decorated with distinctive orange-colored lettering and logo. He’d purchased it shortly after we arrived in Japan, perhaps hoping for some point of connection with a culture that had been, up to then, entirely foreign to him. But he loved hats and he loved baseball. This was a good combination for making relationships in a new country where, we were to learn, baseball may be more popular than sumo, the traditional national sport of Japan. But he didn’t know that you take your life into your hands when you wear a Tokyo Giants cap in Hanshin Tigers country: the Kansai.
“You should take off that cap,” a woman helping host our visit in the area said to him bluntly, almost skipping over the mandatory and generally protracted greetings for which Japanese are famous.
Bernie thought she was joking and returned a joke in kind. The only thing was that this woman was serious—dead serious, as in Bernie was going to be dead if he didn’t take her advice seriously! We were brand new to Japan and knew little of the language other than some words of greeting. Perhaps she forgave him for not understanding her order and, consequently, for not obeying. But for whatever reason, Bernie managed to keep both his cap and his life. Nevertheless, when we moved to the Kansai six years later, he stored the Tokyo Giants cap. In the meantime, he’d learned of the rabid nature of Hanshin Tigers fans and that this woman, as unusual as she was, really couldn’t be counted as being among the most lunatic of Hanshin supporters in the area—and there are many.
Still, were she alive today, I believe that Maetani-san would be among a passionate group of loyalists in Osaka that is determined to wipe out the “Curse of Colonel Sanders.” According to the newspaper, two sections of a life-sized plastic statue of the founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken were salvaged from the bottom of the Dotonbori River earlier this week. Twenty-four years ago, overly exuberant Hanshin fans kidnapped the statue from a local Kentucky Fried Chicken establishment and threw it into the river as they celebrated the Tigers’ Central League pennant victory in 1985. Much to their delight, their beloved team went on to capture the Japan Series that year (equivalent to winning America’s World Series). Apparently Colonel Sanders was not amused, however. The fact that the Tigers have failed to win the Japan Series since then has given rise to “the curse” theory. Now that the Colonel is back in his rightful place, Hanshin Tigers fans—eternally hopeful anyway—believe that this year may be/will be/must be their year.
I’m not really a baseball fan, but as Japan’s baseball season opens shortly, I’m going to keep one eye on the Tigers and one eye on Bernie. Though he doesn’t have a history of making near-fatal mistakes, I’m not eager for him to start any new habits in 2009.
