Yong-nam, Arata and Junko at the dinner table. Good food and way too much to drink for everyone involved. It's nice having an apartment big enough to have people over every once in a while.

My cricket partner, Yong-nam, watching from the kitchen. 

How is it possible that we're losing? 

Arata tossing a spear.

5 minute break. Too much sam-gyeop-sal, kim-bap, kimchi, soju and beer to deal with at one time!

Junko and Arata during the darts game in the living room.

Hiroshima 6--Yakult 3

The Swallows have been playing quite well as of late, but the result of this afternoon's game just shows you how even the teams in the Central league are this year. Chunichi is in first, but they haven't exactly been drilling everyone into the ground this season. They've just been slightly more consistent than the rest of the division.

Hiroshima and Yokohama, the two teams bringing up the rear this season, can take any of the other teams in the division down on any given night (as is evidenced by the fact that the Baystars are currently up 12 to 6 against the Giants at the ugly egg next to Suidobashi station.)

Hiroshima undid Yakult's momentum by holding the first three batters in our order hitless. It was a bit of a disappointment, it reduced us to 8 wins and 2 losses in our last 10 games, but hopefully we'll have our bats working again tomorrow evening. As long as the Giants don't wake up from the beating that they're currently enduring, we'll be able to hold on to sole possession of second place.

...............

Furuta sent one yard, his first in a while, and many probably saw it as a bit of a celebratory blast. He finally got a couple more concessions from the owners as the voluntary leader of the players union, and the strike's damage has been limited to only one weekend of games. The Kintetsu-Orix merger will go ahead as planned, and a new team will be allowed to enter the league in order to bump the number of teams in the Pacific division back up to six. The new team will reportedly have first dibs on the players given up by the two teams that are being merged.

On a separate note: Furuta definitely deserves the league MVP honors this year! He's 39, has hit well above .320 all season, is a CATCHER!!, and marshalled a common voice from the players in order to pressure the owners into some concessions. As I said before, he volunteers as the spokesman for the player's union, and I've never seen a player get so much love from opposing fans every time he steps on the field.

Hiroshima 6--Yakult 3

Yakult 4, Hanshin 3

Shaky pitching (as usual) but we got the runs when we needed them. Iwamura is back in the starting lineup, but it's obvious that he's not able to get up to full speed. I think his leg is hurt. He hit a two run homer tonight--number 41 for him this year. Miyamoto also parked one in the bleachers in the bottom of the first.

I was informed by Tetsuya (and everyone else in section D) that the interview from last week was on TV yesterday. They said it was 30 or 40 seconds long. They must not have had very much else to go on if they didn't feel the need to whitle my interview down to about a 5 second clip. They probably had to put Japanese subtitles at the bottom of the page. This is what he's trying to say...

I've seen the Swallows win 5 games in a row. That's is far and away a record for me! Oops, I probably just jinxed the team by writing that.

Yakult 4, Hanshin 3