Go Tigers! and back to Tokyo.

I don’t know how to play baseball, I’ve never watched a baseball game, I never held a baseball hat… But I’ve read enough baseball mangas to get a feel of the game. Hanshin Tigers and the Koshien stadium where no strangers to me, ever since I was a teenager, so being able to sit there and watch this game was incredible. It was definitely one of the high points of our trip. We had great fun , we suffered until the very end, and we won, the very last minute. Just like in a manga!
We have to thank Atsuko once again, because she was the one who bought us tickets and took us to the stadium. We had a terrific time!

After our adventure at the Koshien, it was time to go back to Tokyo and head to Ginza. We stayed at the same hotel we did last year, and we made the most of our last days in Japan.

And with this, we said goodbye to Tokyo.
This trip was something like a missing puzzle part, that fitted perfectly with last year. Last year, even though we thoroughly enjoyed every second, we had 19daysinjapan.com to think of. Often, we would wrap our days early because we had posts to write, photos to edit…and even if we wouldn’t have done it any other way, this time, we were free, in a way.
For me, it was much harder to leave Japan this time around. I feel, not that I belong to that place (because only true Japanese belong to japan), but that it belongs to me. I know it sounds selfish and stupid… But it’s not in a way that I want the country just for myself. It’s hard to explain, really. I feel perfectly content with just sitting in a station somewhere and look at the people, how they behave, how everything works… All of it is, somehow, part of me, of who I am. When western people watch anime or read manga, they have no idea that it translates that country, that culture, that people, in a perfect and exact way. And only after I saw it with my own eyes, I could understand that.

That’s why I know that I’ll never truly belong there…but it does belong to me.

We’ve been back for two days now and I’m still recovering from jet lag, but very happy. I hope you enjoyed the pictures from the iPhone, and I will start editing the camera’s pics soon.

Have a great day!