It really cannot be overstated how excited the Japanese media is to cover the Opening Series. The photogs travel in a 20-man amoeba, blobbing from one shot location to the next in constant motion. There’s definitely jostling for prime position, but it’s extremely polite Japanese jostling. While an Ichiro appearance is the obvious headliner, even the most mundane of baseball activities can create a buzz:

Textbook form on that power video stance.

Step 1: Point camera at stretching A’s players. Step 2: Read book.

Feel the excitement.

Does the US even have this many TV networks?

TOKYO DOME — Saturday was a workout day for both the A’s and the Mariners — a chance to get acquainted with the Tokyo Dome and make sure they didn’t forget how to swing and throw on the flight over.

What actually goes down at a workout day?

First, there’s the hang out. Players get dressed in the clubhouse, then trickle into the dugout where they stand around waiting for something to happen. Also, everyone goes through elaborate greetings like they haven’t seen each other since last September. Note: These guys spent 12 hours together on a plane yesterday.

Once everyone is uniformed and reacquainted, it’s time for stretching. The key to a good stretch is to actually get loose while appearing to expend the smallest possible amount of energy. There’s plenty of grunting, groaning, arm flailing and backwards jogging.

After warming up comes the actual baseball part. Pitchers throw long toss and work on mechanics in the outfield. Infielders take ground balls from coaches. Outfielders shag flies. Everyone rotates into the batting cage.

The whole exercise is choreographed chaos. Between players, coaches and staff, there are upwards of 35 people on the field and probably five balls in the air at any given moment. I kept waiting for someone to get beaned by a liner or a relay throw. Turns out, these guys know what they’re doing.

Highlight of the day: Mike Carp pulling a BP homer off Shigeo Nagashima’s retired No. 3 in right-center field. See the SECOM billboard in the photo below? He hit the pillar below that. My professional scouting background indicates that’s significant power.

Each team also had a press conference today at the Tokyo Dome Hotel. Apparently, anyone in Asia who owns a camera — still or video — was invited. All questions and answers were translated into both English and Japanese, meaning that Hisashi Iwakuma was probably just cracking dirty jokes then having the Yomiuri PR guy translate nice things to the English-speaking media. I think Felix was in on it too:

All in all, team workouts were pretty much what you’d expect. Anyone who played Little League ball would recognize some of the big leaguers’ infield drills — although these guys can actually turn an around-the-horn DP. Tomorrow, the games begin …

With the hotel restaurant not a viable food option on my yen-conscious budget, I set out Saturday morning in search of something to eat.

There’s a weird vibe to leaving the hotel in a foreign country where you don’t know your way around, don’t speak the language and don’t have a cell phone with non-WiFi internet. It’s a combination of “I really want to see EVERYTHING in Toyko” and “I really, really don’t want to get lost in this maze of back streets.” I’m sure astronauts feel something similar when they step out of the lunar lander.

Limiting myself to only a few turns, I walked for about 20 minutes on a narrow, one-lane road populated mostly with restaurants and bars. Once I’d passed a McDonalds, a Subway and a 7-Eleven, I knew this was the path to sustenance.

Noodles seemed like a relatively safe option, so I ducked into a soup bar located below the Bear Hug massage parlor. Just walking in the door, I’d already made my first mistake. Not in selecting the place — the food turned out to be cheap and delicious — but by entering before ordering.

The old man behind the counter led me back outside to a machine built into the wall of the restaurant where customers select which dish they want. Since there was no English anywhere, I led him to the sample display on an adjacent wall and pointed to a bowl of dark broth with thin brown noodles, an unidentified sliced meat and a poached egg.

Three minutes later, the bowl was in front of me. Taking a cue from the other diners — three Japanese men around my age and an older woman — I brought the bowl close to my face, slurped loudly and shoveled with chopsticks.

If returning a plate with uneaten food is a sign of disrespect to the chef in Japan, well, I definitely respected those noodles.

A crisp Ben Franklin bought me this 7,674 yen at the hotel front desk. Pretty sure that’s a terrible exchange rate, but isn’t getting ripped off part of the whole international experience? Maybe not — I don’t feel any more worldly.

The “traditional Japanese breakfast” at the hotel restaurant costs ¥2,200, so I think it’s time to venture out in search of food.

Mariners and A’s each have a workout this afternoon. More from the Tokyo Dome later.

PHOENIX/30,000 FT. OVER THE NORTH PACIFIC/TOKYO — I began my 36-hour journey from New York to Tokyo early Wednesday afternoon, grabbing a cab from MLB.com’s Manhattan office to JFK. With a four-hour hop on tap before Thursday’s half-day jump across the Pacific, winning the seat-next-to-the-only-unoccupied-seat-on-a-full-plane lottery seemed like a strong omen.

Touching down at Sky Harbor around 6:30 local time, I looked forward to an hour or two of desert sun before learning that the state of Arizona doesn’t believe in Daylight Savings. Makes sense, who doesn’t want more darkness? I settled for dinner at Chinese restaurant within walking distance — prepping my palate for the Far East — and fully recommend it if you’re in Phoenix and craving mediocre chicken with broccoli.

Thursday’s wakeup call came at 7:30 AM. An hour later, after a mix-up in which the hotel bellman “forgot” to schedule me a cab but “knew a car service in the area that would take me for the same price,” I rolled up to Phoenix Municipal Stadium in an enormous black Escalade. That might have turned a few heads if this wasn’t the meet-up spot for 25 professional athletes.

Phoenix Muni, spring home of the A’s, features a façade of mountain buttes beyond the left-field wall along with frequent howling, cawing, barking and possibly mooing from the adjacent Phoenix Zoo. Walking through the gates, it didn’t take long to realize Major Leaguers don’t travel like the rest of us.

Baggage check for Oakland’s team charter consisted of taping a luggage tag on your roll-away and tossing it onto a semi truck. No check-in line, no weight limit, no maze of sky elite/sky super elite/sky super-uber elite elasti-fences.

A’s players — most with a significant other in tow — mingled on the bleachers in sweatpants and sunglasses while front-office types and league personnel assembled on the stadium concourse. Many a portion of cheesy eggs was consumed.

At 10 AM, four busses arrived and security screening began. Again, this was a far cry from Laguardia at rush hour. No X-ray body scanners, no fumbling to remove belts or shoes and no vigorous upper-thigh pat-downs. Just a quick swipe with the metal detector wand and a glance in your carry-on. I think I even saw one of the TSA officers crack a joke. Couldn’t get my camera out fast enough to snap proof, but I swear it happened.

We loaded up — players in Bus 1, on-field staff in Bus 2, front office in Bus 3, media and MLB folks in Bus 4 — and convoyed 15 minutes directly onto the tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor airport.

Our home for the next 12 hours, an Atlas Air 747, was one big bird. Two levels with three cabins in each, the plane was nearly all business class with a roomy 2-3-2 seating arrangement. Guess who rode steerage in a slightly less roomy 2-4-2 behind the wing? Even so, this was luxury air travel. Each seat had a pillow, blanket and bag of trail mix waiting. And not the off-brand stuff — big leaguers get dried banana slices. Hot towels and mini toiletry kits arrived shortly after takeoff. Lunch and dinner were each four courses — if you count separate plates on the same tray as different courses. Mints followed meals and beverages were hand-delivered by flight attendants throughout. The A’s had essentially reserved a four-star hotel in the sky.

Most players used the flight to catch up on some sleep before a busy week of touring and games. A few watched the in-flight movies (Crazy Stupid Love looked popular) or played video golf on their seatback TVs. The only real unexpected turbulence came when Tommy Milone had to change his shirt after a flight attendant accidentally spilled two full cups of ice water on him. Rookie hazing? Possibly.

We touched down at Narita around 5 PM Friday local time, made our way through customs and a hoard of waiting Japanese media and bussed about an hour into Toyko. Roughly 25 hours after the day began at Phoenix Municipal — a day and a half including the time difference — the A’s had arrived. Tomorrow, Opening Series week officially begins.

 

Konnichiwa, I’m Ian. I work in content for MLB.com, mostly on Fantasyand The Wall. On Thursday, I’ll take off for Tokyo to cover the 2012 Opening Series between the A’s and the Mariners.

Armed with only a Flip Cam, 10.0 megapixels of point-and-shoot and four days of Rosetta Stone Japanese, my goal is to bring you all the sights, sounds and smells of MLB’s international road trip. We’re talking about players 5,000 miles outside of their comfort zones and Japanese fans who make the Bleacher Creatures sound like the 18th green at Augusta. Funny things are going to happen. I’ll be there to document them.

If you followed The Wall during the 2011 postseason, this blog will be kinda like that — except with more raw fish and fewer runaway squirrels. The idea is No Reservations-meets-The Franchise. Either that, or I’ll meet a lonely Bill Murray in the hotel bar and we’ll spend the week doing karaoke with a dude named Charlie Brown. Only one thing is for sure: That won’t be the last Lost in Translation reference.

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