A New Jingu for a New Season

Now that preseason play has begun, you’re probably either spending your afternoons at Jingu or you’re wondering how the squad is shaping up. Newcomer Takahiro Araki, 23, has been the regular at short and looks pretty good in the field, although he seems to be swinging for the fences a bit much; Eulogio de la Cruz had a rough start against Saitama yesterday; Aaron Guiel is hitting hard – he cracked one out to right today; Yuichi has been getting some time in right field, but I can’t say why, and Yasushi Iihara has been settling in at DH – now if only there were a DH for more than a dozen games in the season.

Baseball is not what this is about per se, though. No, this post is here to deliver some important news about baseball-watching.

First of all: Boycott Mini-Stop. In their wisdom, the management of the Mini-Stop next to JR Shinanomachi Station, right in our own ‘hood, have decided to shrink their section of Swallows merchandise to one shelf – a shelf it shares with a few Yokohama items and a few Hanshin items – whilst filling the three shelves beneath it with Hanshin Tigers crap.

Yes, that’s right, our local Mini-Stop thinks the coin it gets from hawking plastic tat to visiting tat-fiends is the main consideration. Therefore we say not one yen for any Mini-Stop anywhere. We’ll grant a dispensation if the only konbini where you live happens to be a Mini-Stop, but if you set foot in the Shinanomachi branch, we’re not your friends anymore – go be a Yomiuri fan if you care mostly about what’s easy. There’s a Newdays in the station, where you can get drinks and snacks.

We will not be awkward guests in our own home.

On the plus side, throwing slobbery plastic trash on the field at Jingu continues to be banned (no jet fusen.) If you get off on this obnoxious practice and you’re a Carp fan, so be it. If you’re supporting any other team, just knock it off already. Hiroshimans suffer enough between their muggy summers and their lackluster team – let them keep their own traditions.

Almost as big a plus is the raft of renovations made to the outfield concourse at Jingu. From the pedestrian bridge over Gaien-Higashi-dori (in front of Shinanomachi Station) to the ramp leading up the bleachers, you’ll see new slip-resistant floor coverings. The ramp has also been slightly elongated – presumably in order to make rainy evenings less slippery. At the base of that ramp, you’ll find a new Baskin-Robbins outlet, a concession stand twice as wide as it used to be (shorter lines, one hopes), better stadium maps showing what tasty tidbits are available where, and completely redone toilets. Not only are there more urinals and more sinks, they’re laid out better, making the bathroom 437 times better than it was last year. Why 437? When you’ve been to as many stadium toilets as I have, or have been the outfield men’s room at Jingu as often as I have, you just know. Some of you might say I’m exaggerating, that the toilets are merely 396 times better. I can see that argument.)

The new food items taste about the way you’d expect them to. We continue to recommend waiting until the fifth inning to purchase most edible items, as that is when they are most likely to be hot and less-nasty.

On the potable front, not only has our good friend, the Beer Prince, moved on to better pastures (he graduated from college and got a real job), beer prices have gone up 50 yen across the board, making it now 750 for a draft and 500 for a can or bottle. All the more reason to stop by Newdays (not Mini-Stop!) and BYOB – just keep it hidden.

Of course, everything looks newer and cleaner and is better-marked. The only downside is that the concourse is narrower.There are now some “Eat-in# stalls across from some of the concession stands, but if anyone decides to lay out tarps on the concourse to entertain little kids or get out of the rain, as people have always done, the concourse may well become impassible. My fear, of course, is that these renovations may yet turn out to be another in the long list of examples of Jingu spending a fair bit of money to make things better without bothering to observe the behaviors and patterns of the fans, much less asking what fans would like to see.

Any Tokyo Yakult Swallows decor showing that, in fact, the Swallows have been, for almost 47 years, the stadium’s main tenant? Don’t be silly. Have the old infield fences, with their wide view-obstructing posts, been replaced with more modern ones that protect people’s unsuspecting faces from line-drive fouls while also allowing people to see things without dead spots in their field of vision? Of course not. As I said, Jingu updates things, but refuses to talk to its patrons. Shas it always been, so shall it long be.

All of this said, turnout at preseason games has been better than in previous years, the scoreboard at Jingu says the first two home series of the regular season are already sold out, and you’ll probably be able to relieve yourself and make it back into the stands within an inning, so all is well with the world.