Summer in the City of To-morrow

Olympic handball's fun to watch if it's your first time, but is ultimately not a great sport, with apologies to the athletes and their fans. The pros: occasionally exciting passing plays; superb sportsmanship and camaraderie between players on opposing teams, and this despite a very physical style of play; and not least, rabid European-style fandom. And the cons: silly rules and penalties, reminiscent of the kind of improvised indoor sports one plays in gym class on a rainy day; defensive plays as uninteresting as the primary scoring mechanic, which FYI is throwing a small ball into a ridiculously large goal; extreme ease of scoring; the fact that the goalies really seem upset when people score on them, even though it happens about nine times out of every ten legitimate shot attempts they face; and a prioritizing of offense over defense that seems absurdly out of balance—imagine playing a game of chess in which all the pawns have been replaced with queens, and you will get something that approximates handball's awkward skew. Oh and let's not forget the presence of an arena announcer straight out of the Busch League, whose interjections over the PA about how Exciting the game is—"What an exciting game we've got!", "This game's gonna go down to the wire!", etc. etc.—are suspiciously reassuring and seem almost compensatory, as if they're a coded admission that the game's actual content isn't really all that exciting to begin with.

福娃 (fuwa, or "Friendlies"), the official cartoon mascots of the Beijing Games, have been so thoroughly lampooned that I feel kind of dirty even contemplating the attempt. But I will say this much: when rendered in human-sized, human-proportioned form, the 福娃 become utterly terrifying. As with clowns of standard-issue circus lore, the 福娃 possess a malevolent, unchanging smile that suggests monstrosity rather than joy, and the placement of their eyes and mouth at the same facial latitude is the definition of real horror.

Thanks to a fortuitous, last-minute ticket purchase conducted in a cafe near my apartment, I was able to attend the bronze medal baseball game between the US and Japan, which matchup was thoroughly compelling not only for the two nations' distinct but equally mature baseball traditions, and but also for the rich possibilities for distasteful Pacific Theater jokes it tempted. As is appropriate for a textbook baseball game, the game was observed under clear skies and scorching sun, with much nerdy analysis and amateur play-by-play supplied by a cadre of English-speaking diehards in the immediate vicinity of my seat.

Despite my having lived in Japan for about a year, this was the first time I'd been to a Japanese or semi-Japanese ball game, and my first opportunity to witness in person the relentlessly sophisticated crowd cheers for which Japanese baseball is famous. It's reasonably safe to say that the Japanese crowd, with its contraband whistles and enormous flags and melodic 24-bar shoutalongs, kicked the shit out of anything the decidedly yuppieish US crowd had, which basically maxed out at "U-S-A! U-S-A!"

The lone exception to this was the fellow pictured above, a chip off the ol' block of belligerently friendly USA sports hooliganism. "The only thing worse than the Yankees," he told a guy wearing a Yankees hat, "is Yankees fans." He took special pains to shout CHARGE! at the end of every instance of the Baseball Charge organ theme, and would go on to address with well-meaning patriotic taunts the small contingent of Japanese fans who snuck into the seats directly behind me. They either loved the guy or were terrified of him or both.

It's worth noting that said Japanese Fan Contingent seemed to be composed of at least a few Japanese Olympians, the most notable of which was none other than Fukuhara Ai, about whom I wrote in the previous entry. Despite her celebrity, she seemed to be relatively free of primadonna traits. During inning breaks, Fukuhara was accosted more or less constantly by autograph- and photo-op-seekers, and to her credit, she was very accommodating and unbothered by the attention. She even got up and moved when a spectator (who clearly had no idea who she was) told her that she was sitting in his seat.

Nevertheless, Fukuhara exuded certain intimations of what I believed to be the tell-tale affectations of Famous People. In the first place, she was immaculately well-presented for an athlete, very obviously having dressed and cosmeticized to be seen. She also laughed and talked much louder than anybody in the Contingent, and it made me wonder if that was just an expression of her personality, or if it was actually how one acts when one is surrounded by retainers and fans, i.e., people who admire you and laugh quickly at your jokes and want to please you, and are for all intents and purposes sort of below you.