Welcome back from vacation!
So, in a nutshell: Tokyo is hot, hot, hot in the summer. English seems to have been replaced by Mandarin as the second language of choice but, as it was in Osaka, I made myself understood. Japanese baseball is much more fun than American baseball. Public transportation is a wonderful thing. Tokyo is also a vast city, high and wide and distant. Those charming drawn-by-hand maps that they give you at a hotel or at a store are rarely going to get you anywhere you need to go but become great souvenirs as you sit and look at them afterward and recall how you never found shit from it. Sumos on bicycles are adorable and some of them are not as big as you'd imagine. Put them in western clothes and they look like very built men with very good posture. There are no weight classes in Sumo and the biggest, heaviest Sumo compete against people like Enho who is 5'6" and weighs 216 lbs (or 168cm tall and 98 kg in weight in metric).
I went to the ball game of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows vs. the Hiroshima Carp. I popped for a seat behind homeplate and got this picture of a Carp pitching to a Swallow.
Japanese baseball has nine innings like American ball but in regular season play if there is a tie at the end of the ninth inning, it can only go for three more innings. If, at the end of 12 innings, it's still a tie, the game will end in a draw. There are team songs and cheers that are completely different from the other team's cheers and songs and also from the one before, When the Carp score, they beat together two small, firm, plastic bats that makes a lot of noise. When the Swallows score, they wave little team parasols. I was cheering for the Swallows but this made it very difficult to do. They were not making as much noise as the Carp did in any form. This waving and twirling of their parasols was so strange to me that I said out loud, "What the hell is going on?" No one understood what I was saying but, honestly, WTF? The Carp fans looked like they were having a blast but so did the Yakult Swallows fans. At the end of the game, the Swallows prevailed and all the Carp fans got up and left. All the Swallows fans stayed and the team set up a small stage, put up a Swallows backdrop, and a woman came and interviewed the Swallow who'd just scored the winning run. This was broadcast on the jumbotron and the fans took pictures of it on said jumbotron. There were cheerleaders between some innings, singing of team songs between others. The Swallows seemed to have two songs and the one they sing at the 7th inning stretch is a slow-paced non-fight song. The Carp had much livelier offerings which seemed to have been sung at the 6th inning stretch. The Carp mascot did not look like a fish but he was lively and slightly racy. The Swallows were male and female and they were low key in comparison. Before most people got out of the stadium, they would take off their team shirts and put them in their bags as if the whole thing never happened.
People can bring in food and drink from outside. When you arrive at the ball park, you have to have beer or soda put into a regular cup with a lid, which they provide. Only young women sell beer and they race around with small kegs on their backs, racing up and down the stairs like mountain goats. People bring in food from the outside, the traditional baseball foods of edemame, yakisoba noodles, sushi. They buy this from vendors who line the streets from the subway to the stadium selling food before the game. How much beer people consumed was impressive. For the guys by me, I lost track after five party-size plastic cups -- which will all be recycled. The legroom for the seats was nonexistent and no one seemed to mind (except for me and I moved a couple of rows up; it didn't really help all that much). People were arriving into the 7th inning and cheered just as much as if they'd arrived for the opening pitch.
Going to Japan? The first thing I suggest is a Sumo match. Sumo is terrific! But the season for baseball is much longer and it is much more fun than any American ballgame.
I went to the ball game of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows vs. the Hiroshima Carp. I popped for a seat behind homeplate and got this picture of a Carp pitching to a Swallow.
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| Batter up! |
Japanese baseball has nine innings like American ball but in regular season play if there is a tie at the end of the ninth inning, it can only go for three more innings. If, at the end of 12 innings, it's still a tie, the game will end in a draw. There are team songs and cheers that are completely different from the other team's cheers and songs and also from the one before, When the Carp score, they beat together two small, firm, plastic bats that makes a lot of noise. When the Swallows score, they wave little team parasols. I was cheering for the Swallows but this made it very difficult to do. They were not making as much noise as the Carp did in any form. This waving and twirling of their parasols was so strange to me that I said out loud, "What the hell is going on?" No one understood what I was saying but, honestly, WTF? The Carp fans looked like they were having a blast but so did the Yakult Swallows fans. At the end of the game, the Swallows prevailed and all the Carp fans got up and left. All the Swallows fans stayed and the team set up a small stage, put up a Swallows backdrop, and a woman came and interviewed the Swallow who'd just scored the winning run. This was broadcast on the jumbotron and the fans took pictures of it on said jumbotron. There were cheerleaders between some innings, singing of team songs between others. The Swallows seemed to have two songs and the one they sing at the 7th inning stretch is a slow-paced non-fight song. The Carp had much livelier offerings which seemed to have been sung at the 6th inning stretch. The Carp mascot did not look like a fish but he was lively and slightly racy. The Swallows were male and female and they were low key in comparison. Before most people got out of the stadium, they would take off their team shirts and put them in their bags as if the whole thing never happened.
People can bring in food and drink from outside. When you arrive at the ball park, you have to have beer or soda put into a regular cup with a lid, which they provide. Only young women sell beer and they race around with small kegs on their backs, racing up and down the stairs like mountain goats. People bring in food from the outside, the traditional baseball foods of edemame, yakisoba noodles, sushi. They buy this from vendors who line the streets from the subway to the stadium selling food before the game. How much beer people consumed was impressive. For the guys by me, I lost track after five party-size plastic cups -- which will all be recycled. The legroom for the seats was nonexistent and no one seemed to mind (except for me and I moved a couple of rows up; it didn't really help all that much). People were arriving into the 7th inning and cheered just as much as if they'd arrived for the opening pitch.
Going to Japan? The first thing I suggest is a Sumo match. Sumo is terrific! But the season for baseball is much longer and it is much more fun than any American ballgame.
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