Japanese Baseball
by Adam & Lara on 06/26/10
We are really starting to slip with this blog. But rather than sit here and give you lame excuses for why we haven't posted in over 2 weeks, we're going to take the first step in the blog neglect multi-step recovery program: admit we have a problem.
Now that we got that over with, let's get on with Japan before we sneeze/drink away too many braincells to remember it. Queenstown is a cold, damp town with lots of bars, so our current sneezing and drinking rates are astoundingly high.
On our first night in Osaka we scored tickets to an interleague Nippon Professional Baseball game between the Hanshin Tigers and the Orix Buffaloes. The fact that we got these tickets in the first place was a major triumph, since all online sources for Japanese baseball tickets are in Japanese. In addition, we were travelling with Derek Hall who is from Green Bay, Wisconsin, a town where they refer to baseballs as "small round white footballs." But even in the face of adversity, we emerged victorious.
To put it simply, watching a live Japanese baseball game is like watching a live American baseball game inside a giant spaceship full of Japanese people:
The only way to destroy Kyocera Dome is to hit a baseball directly into the center of it's roof-mounted reactor core.
On the field Japanball is identical to American baseball. It's the goings-on in the stands that make it a truly foriegn experience.
Nothing satisfies the ballpark appetite like a box of Johnsonville soba noodles. Admittedly, you can get this at a baseball game in San Francisco too.
Japanese fans go apeshit for the entire duration of the game, but they do it in a very organized manner. Fans from opposing teams tend to sit on opposite sides of the stadium. Chants are always led by a band of horns, drums, and a guy on a megaphone. And all signage appears to be professionally printed.
The expensive seats have personal air conditioners, and are sat in by people who don't spend the entire game talking to the people behind them.
There are male and female mascots, so you get more off-beat pelvic gyration and less uncomfortable androgyny.
Undeniably, the best part of the game was the 7th inning balloon release. Fans of both teams blow up giant tube-shaped balloons with a bulge at the top end, and begin thrusting the balloons back and forth with their hands. All of a sudden everybody releases their balloons in the air, and seconds later thousands of deflated balloons that have recently touched strangers mouths begin to touch your head and shoulders. Magical.
All in all it was a completely Japanese experience since it made us think "this would never happen in America" just as much as it made us think "this would never happen outside San Francisco."
