...3974400 SECONDS 'TIL TOKYO

Fletch will be in Tokyo for the A's Home Opener and is willing to write it up for Elephants in Oakland. Thusly, he earns himself a Hall of Fame standing...

FLETCH's Mini-BIO: I was born and raised in the East Bay. I have since spent time in San Francisco, Tokyo (Japan), and I'm now back in LA in grad school at UCLA. Whenever I'm in SF, odds are you'll find me at the 500 Club. I have been an A's fan since my inception in the late 70's. My defining moment came in 1988 at Game 5 of the World Series, when I called Orel Hershisher a bitch before the game. I started a ridiculous A's blog (BostonHasAIDS), in 2006 while I was living in Japan, as an inside joke with some friends who I went to many A's games with while we were living in SF. ONE LONG HOMESTAND I found out in November that the A's would start the season in Japan versus the Boston Red Sox, but I do remember my initial reaction. "A's vs The Chowderheads to start the season in Tokyo?!! Hell yes, it's in March - when is my Spring Break?" I immediately found out that it was timed perfectly, as the games were taking place over Spring Break, and my wife and I were planning on visiting Japan at that time anyway! That's right bitches, Tokyo road trip. A quick aside - it might not be that interesting, but you're probably wondering why the hell I was planning on visiting Japan anyway. Long story short, I went to Japan 10 years ago on an exchange program, where I met my wife. While we live in LA now, my in-laws still live in Tokyo, and all of my wife's friends from childhood through college still live in Tokyo and we try to visit them at least once a year. Plus, for anyone who has never been to Japan, it's an awesome experience and it is the best culture I've ever known and the people are awesome. So anyway, I was in a unique position, since we have friends and family there. There was an online "lottery" for tickets in January. So we put in a request for 4 tickets for Game 1 and 6 tickets for Game 2, and we found out last week that we were selected for both games (I'm not sure if anyone was denied, but I don't care since I got mine). We were lucky, since I believe you had to either have someone in Japan to go pick up the tix and/or have a Japanese credit card, and I had both of those. The games are actually quite a bit more expensive than normal games; they used the same pricing as the WBC, which I went to while I was living there. It will be worth it though, for the Japanese beer girls alone. As many people can probably imagine, baseball has always been huge in Japan, but now there is a lot more interest in MLB with the influx of Japanese players in to the US. Obviously the most popular teams being NYY, Seattle and Boston. Its funny, once in a while I see old school A's starter jackets from the Bash Brothers days, when the A's ran shit in MLB, and were the hated big boys. Things have certainly changed. So obviously, w/ Matsuzaka and Okajima on Boston, I'm imagining that 95% of the fans that actually have MLB gear on will be wearing Boston gear, or as I like to call it - granny panties. For those who don't know, Japan is interesting in that they actually split the stadium in half, w/ 1 team's fans sitting on the 3rd base side, the other on the 1st base side. We'll be on the 3rd base side - Ole Chavy! I'll try to get some more stories and info down, but I assure you I'll get some good pics and stories from the week + in Japan.