The DVD from the A’s finally came in the mail! I’m no Rollie Fingers, but I’m grateful that I managed to pitch the ball all the way to the plate. Maybe next time, I’ll throw it off the mound.

Again, thank you to the Oakland Athletics for making this the most magical day of my life!

Gotta love my dad. He brought his handy camcorder to record my first pitch. Yay to my dad, hurrah to the A’s public address announcer who pronounced my name properly, but yuck to my celebration face toward the end of the video.

How sweet. A soft novelty baseball was passed around the office at work on the day of my first pitch. Everyone wrote their wishes all over the ball. What an awesome gesture.

Sorry Brendan, I’m flattered, but I can’t accept!

For all you well-wishers & supportive friends, family, peers, co-workers & fellow baseball fans…

For all those who played catch with me, despite the cold & winter afternoons & even putting yourself in harm just so I could figure out how to properly throw that ratty old baseball…

For all those who sensed my nervousness on the days before the big day, building up my confidence saying that I’ll do fine…

For all my friends & family who came to the ballpark early so they made sure they didn’t miss my first pitch…

For that one special East Bay baseball team with the awesome fan base & even awesomer front office staff…

For all these people…thank you! All of my recent fortunes are because of all of you!

Coming soon: the play-by-play of the minutes leading up to that first pitch.

Being on ESPN is on my bucket list, but this is pretty darn close…if not, better. It was short-lived on the home page, so I took a screenshot. My head is spinning with all this excitement!

Edit: Although not as prominent, the another link is found on the Oakland Athletics homepage as a text link:

Edit #2: Likewise, if you conduct a Google search for the ‘greatest sign maker‘, you’ll get this:

Note that you have to search for ‘greatest‘, not ‘best.’ This is gonna be awesome for my SEO ranking!

See my posters on the MLB site »

Yay, it was on TV! Thank you to the TiVo for properly recording the pitch.

In the beginning of the clip, you can see me & my wife Cindy being escorted to the mound at the bottom left of the video. After that, you can see my pitch framed perfectly behind & between the two commentators. Yes, the pitch was a bit outside, but very happy the ball didn’t bounce!

Best day ever!

For the adventurous or the price-conscientious, Japan offers a wide range of hotel & housing types for you to sample! During our three-week stay last October, we had the opportunity to experience a wide range of housing that Japan has to offer.

In Tokyo (& other major metro areas)

If you’re planning your first trip to Japan (we’re really excited for you!), Tokyo is likely at the top of your list of cities to visit. We stayed in the tourist-friendly Roppongi area & had a blast out there, especially since it was a place where we could step out of our hotel & be in the middle of it all. If this is the case, consider also Shibuya & Shinjuku if you can swing it.

If you’re on a budget, staying in non-major districts is just as good, since all of Tokyo is conveniently connected by trains & subways. For example, we stayed at a place called Nihonbashi, a few stops away from Tokyo Station.

If you’re on a super budget, you should totally try the capsule hotels, even if just for one night!

(Note that some capsule hotels will only cater to men, so keep that in mind when hotel shopping.)

If you suffer from agoraphobia, know that in most of the major districts, it can get crowded. Despite the density of humanity, the people here make sure that they don’t run into you & will provide adequate space if they can (this is thrown out the window during commuting hours on the trains). Here’s a common sight of the Shibuya crossing in the middle of a weekday:

For the adventurous

In the first part of our trip, our Tokyo hotel was classified as Western style (huge space, queen-size bed), so when we traveled to the island of Naoshima, we opted to sample the opposite end of the spectrum & stayed in a Mongolian pao—essentially, an outdoor tent!

Although the tent was hooked up with a few outlets for electricity, we appreciated the luxuries of a proper hotel room after a night spent roughing it up outdoors. It was nice to be connected to nature, even though we were kept warm at night by some installed electric heater & lights.

For the traditional

Try a ryokan for the real taste of Japanese culture! It won’t come cheap, but honestly worth every yen.

You get the whole Japanese experience: eating multi-course Japanese cuisine on the tatami mat served by your own Japanese maid, who then converts that floor space into a bed with an extremely warm & fluffy futon, dress into the robe (yukata), then walk to the communal hot spring a few steps from our front door for a relaxing, post-dinner dip.

Room comforts

One thing’s for sure about Japan—it’s clean. You can expect the same for the hotel rooms as well. A big part of this is the cardinal rule for indoor private spaces:

Just remember that because space is at a premium, everything is condensed into a small area. If you live in a small studio apartment, you’ll never complain about the space you don’t have after staying at a few Japanese business hotels. Here’s how they consolidate a toilet, sink & shower into a small space:

At the same time, you can get some electronic comforts, too! Introducing, fancy bathroom technology provided at the comfort of your seat. The best part of the experience is guessing what each button does while sitting on the throne:

At most business hotels, you’ll be handed a room key with a huge piece of plastic attached. Right next to your hotel room’s front door is what looks like two light switches:

All the outlets & electricity (even the room lights) are inactive until you jam the piece of plastic into the square slot. Since you need your hotel key to return to your room, this is a clever effort for power conservation. Also, for many Japanese hotels, it’s quite common that they’ll request that you leave your hotel key at the front desk while you’re away.

What’s left to mention as a part of the Japanese housing experience is the short-stay love hotel, but I don’t have much experience with that.

See the rest of our Japan photos »

I love Twitter contests. Remember back when in order to participate in a contest, you had to write a postcard to a company, find a stamp, then mail it off? Today, all you have to do is hit up your computer or smartphone & send a simple tweet. Free & easy, my kind of contest.

Last December, the Oakland Athletics held their 31 Gifts in 31 Days Twitter contest, in which they tweeted a question (some softball questions along the lines of Who is your favorite A’s player? or Would you rather hit a home run or steal home?) at 11:00am every day, & a chosen Twitter responder would win the day’s prize. Prizes ranged from an autographed baseball, an autographed Moneyball book, to a Ross Dress for Less gift card.

I tweeted on days when I was around my computer/phone at contest time. I played on December 25th, but lost. In checking my Twitter feed, I find a Direct Message notification from @Athletics two days later, saying:

The A’s “31 Gifts” participant on 12/25 could not be accepted. You are the next applicable participant. Please email [the A's]… w/your full name, age, and address to confirm the 12/25 A’s “31 Gifts in 31 Days” gift. Thanks.

Whoa…no way. How cool! I forgot what the contest winnings were for that day, so I check the website:

Jackpot! But could this be true? Still skeptical, I send the email to the A’s. On the same day, I get a response:

Hello Ian,

Thank you for your email.

The originally announced winner of the December 25 “31 Gifts in 31 Days” gift was unable to accept. Your tweet was the next eligible reply. If you would like to accept, you have won four Field Level tickets to an Oakland A’s game in 2012 and the opportunity to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.

We will have to find a mutually agreeable game that works for both the promotional department and your schedule. Could you look at the 2012 A’s schedule and provide me five game dates that might work for you? I can then check with the promotions department if one may work. www.oaklandathletics.com/schedule

Congratulations and thank you for your continued support of the A’s.

Yesterday, I just got confirmation of the date:

Hello Ian,

Thank you for your patience as we secured a first pitch date. Your first pitch game date is Monday, April 9. … [The A's Special Events Coordinator] will be able to provide you additional information when and where to meet on April 9 for the first pitch. Your four Field Level tickets will be in Will Call under your name on April 9.

Thanks for following @Athletics on Twitter.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t score a weekend day game. I’m still extremely grateful! I need to start practicing. The more I think about it, the more nervous I get. Anyone who has seen me pitch/throw will know that my aim is extremely bad.

So if you don’t have plans that Monday evening, I would be eternally grateful if you can come support me! If this is will be your first A’s game, I promise you I will do my darndest to make it the best Monday evening you’ll ever have. For those who have enjoyed a ballgame with me, save me a seat in front so you don’t have to suffer from my loud jeering in your ear.

If you’re on Facebook, I’ve set up an event. If you can come, please RSVP through the page below so we have an idea of how many people can come out. If enough people will come out, we’ll plan to sit in the bleacher section, which has open seating.

RSVP on our Facebook page »

Hopefully we’ll see you there! Go baseball & Twitter!

We’re back from Japan! After seven years from our totally awesome study abroad experience, we’ve finally found the opportunity to visit our old  home. The photo above marked the location of the beginning of my courtship with my wonderful wife, as this was the place where we had our first lunch date/picnic.

We have much stories to tell, advice to share, & nearly 5,000+ photos to wade through & edit for upload—keep visiting our site for more!

You’re probably read some news about the Japanese government giving away free flights to Japan, but they’re likely awarded to those who are willing to publicize their experiences. We’ll try to audition for the job through our blog, so if you can share our site with your friends & family who you would think would enjoy the wild & zany adventures of a married Asian couple in a foreign land, that would be the best! Thanks & stay tuned!

Not many know this about me, but I’m a geek for cars. It might have stemmed from my many logged hours on the video game/racing simulator Gran Turismo on the original Playstation. The world-famous Laguna Seca, a gorgeous & pristine racetrack in Monterey, California, is hallowed ground for racing enthusiasts. Driving up to the track is awe-inspiring, no doubt. The day’s event: the Grand-Am Rolex Sports Car Series.

With our day passes, we were allowed to go wander inside the staging area, which means that you can (theoretically) go up & touch the cars that just came back from a hot run on the track. Even for the non-racing crowd, taking a look under the hoods of these beasts, anyone can appreciate the engineering required to make these things roar. The cars were gorgeous, & there’s new appreciation now that I’ve got to witness these cars fly by 20 feet in front of you. As you can imagine, the cars were loud. Earplugs are a necessity.

Most notable is the Mazda MX-5 stock car races. With the exception of the sponsor stickers plastered all over the bodies & a few minor suspension tweaks, these MX-5 are stock as they came out of the factory. Budding racers who want to participate in structured, high-level competition should look into this.

The highlight of the day—and the point that persuaded me to take a day off work—was the Parade Lap, a chance to drive your own stock car on the track for two laps. I’ll probably only need to do this just once in my life, so along with my buddy Ricky, we brought a whole bunch of recording devices & rigged them inside my tiny GTI to record the event so I can re-live it forever (that’s healthy, right?):

Sure, we’re not flying down the corkscrew at 60mph, but it was still such a thrill. Perhaps this marks the start of my racing career? Who knows? Maybe I just need to fire up Gran Turismo 5 the next time I feel the need for speed.