From T-Ray’s Monthly Daily Sports Column トレバーの虎場
February 1 is one of the most anticipated days of the year for Hanshin fans. No one likes those winter months when baseball goes on pause and sportswriters throughout Kansai scrape the bottom of the barrel for some kind of headline that strings fans along until camp begins.
Well, Hanshin’s second-and-third-year imports arrived in Japan in mid-January and will have completed their quarantine period in time to take part in most of the month of workouts and practice games down in Okinawa.
That being said, one of the hardest things for import players to adjust to is this month of boot camp, which differs so much from what they did in North America. Practices are long and filled with drills that leave the foreigners shaking their heads. “I thought this was supposed to be baseball,” they might find themselves lamenting.
I’m no baseball player, but I have been in Japan long enough to have experienced my share of puzzling systems. In fact, just recently, I had to change the address on my car inspection certificate. Should be fairly simple, right? Show my driver’s license address, they enter it on the certificate, reprint, send it to me, and voila! Right?
Ha.
I had to Google the rules, and the website (that I presume is official) looks like it was made with a Geocities template. It was, in fact, outdated, because when I went down to the department of motorized vehicles with what I thought were the correct documentation (proof of citizenship certificate with my old and new addresses on it!), they told me that I was missing a “proof of parking space” certificate. No worries! I’ve got that one, it’s right here! I pull it out. “Oh, this was issued nearly two years ago.” Right, and I have been living there ever since. I still park my car in the same garage as when this was given to me. What seems to be the problem? “You need one that has been issued within the past 40 days.” HUH?
So that process involves going to the police station, filling out some forms, buying some income stamps that can be stuck to the applications, and then waiting 5 days to get the new parking certificate. And they won’t send it to you, you gotta go back and pick it up. Then back to the DMV to stand in line again. Fill out a form, wait some more, go buy an income stamp, wait in line some more, then some more, and finally, the process is done. Your address has been changed on that piece of paper, which they kindly printed out with a dot matrix printer. How many HOURS did I waste???
You think I’m just whining about my bad day, right? No! I’m whining about my bad SIX days! (Don’t forget about the wait in between!) Actually, though, there is a common thread to both of these stories. The players do not understand why there are so many drills that do not seem to have anything to do with baseball. I do not understand why there is so much paperwork and money involved in something as simple as an address change. We are all strangers in a strange land. But guess what?
The system works. Somehow, despite the madness of February drills, baseball is still played at a very high level in Japan. The foreign players might not like it now, but come November, they are almost always very proud of their experience in Japan.
The world of automobiles and traffic is also quite impressive and neatly organized and safe. I may not like how much time every little procedure takes (or the number of traffic lights, or the ridiculously low speed limits), but I am pretty sure traffic flows and people are able to get from A to B in their cars, just like they do back home.
The Japanese way works in Japan. It would NEVER work overseas, but no one is asking it to, except perhaps the import players and me and the rest of the foreigners in Japan. But let’s give this country some credit. It’s a pretty awesome place to live.
Just don’t change your address too often.