Gotta be slow as hell, I imagine

I still can’t figure out why y’all care if a player is overpaid or not.  It’s not like that money comes out of your pocket, and if the team has that money available they’ll spend it on someone who performs better.  All teams are making tons of money regardless. 

To-go isn’t typically done in Japan for leftovers and is never done for ramen.  Leaving the portion you didn’t finish is fine, no need to clean your bowl completely.  At some places like Jiro Ramen, you’d be hard pressed to finish it anyway.

Yeah, I meant the whole area when I said Osaka :)

It’s only a “proven strategy” when half the league isn’t doing it, but they are now.

Not sure, it’s always a strange jolt when I take the shinkansen down there and immediately screw up by standing on the wrong side in the station despite doing it a hundred times before :)  

A note on the escalator thing - Osaka is completely the opposite. You stand on the right and people climb on the left. Confusing, right?

One of the many things I love about Japanese baseball is every stadium explicitly welcomes opposing fans, even dedicating a separate section for them where they can sing and cheer.  Of course there’s rarely much violence in Japan in the first place, but I’ve never seen any fan on fan violence and never felt threatened…

Nathan Meowvaldi

I’m glad this madness hasn’t yet affected the Japanese leagues. I live in Japan and go to ~80 or so live games a year, I usually pay under $20 a ticket (under $10 for off peak games in the outfield). I can take public transportation to any of the stadiums in Japan, bring my bag into all of them, and concessions even…

I’m much the same way. I shared a bed with a woman while on a trip many years ago, we had two double beds in the room and in the other was a married couple friends of mine. I didn’t do anything but make out a bit and cuddle with the girl I was with. In the morning, the woman in the married couple asked me why we…

A lot of shitty action movies are, like old Van Damme movies and such.  At least I hear people I know call those guilty pleasures.

I’m going tomorrow - because everybody expects this will be his retirement game, tickets are very very difficult to come by.  Hoping he will end his playing career on a good note!

Speaking from my own experience, life is quite a bit more easy-going in Japan than in the US.  There are some bad points but overall it’s a wonderful place to live.

He failed a drug test.  Same with people going overseas - you can of course smoke pot legally in a lot of the US, but you can still be drug tested and get in trouble for that overseas use in Japan.

What is regressive about it?  You think Japan doesn’t see what’s going on with opoids in the US as reason #1 to not relax drug laws?  

Yeah, I get that it doesn’t provide a stimulant effect for you, but it’s still a stimulant.

Nah, I wish people wouldn’t trot that out so much, it’s really not the case very often.  In this case, companies and brands don’t want to be associated with criminals (which fair or not, drug use is viewed extremely poorly here).

Ritalin is a stimulant, stimulants are illegal in Japan. There are a lot of over-the-counter medicines in the US and elsewhere that are not allowed in Japan. It’s not so different in the US, where tylenol with codeine is prescription only but it is OTC in many other countries.

I live in Tokyo, hands down the worst tourist trap is Gonpachi. People want to go there because of Kill Bill, there’s not a single Japanese person there (including the staff) and the food is below the bottom of the barrel. You’ll get a better Japanese meal at Denny’s in Tokyo.