Baseball Adventure!

We picked up our baseball tickets at a Japanese post office, where they were sent from the guy John bought them from (using a stubhub-like service). John showed him his ID and a sentence in Japanese on his phone that the guy typed in an email – voilà! Succesfully navigated the Japanese postal system (I guess).

We walked to the stadium and asked an attendant outside which gate we should go in. Since we happened to walk right up to the gate nearest our seats, and the concession tunnels were small and unassuming, I was expecting a smaller stadium. We walked out toward our center field seats and were wowed by the size of the stadium and the crowd.

We were in the Tokyo Giants section, the visiting team, in a hometown rivalry game against the Tokyo Swallows. There were multiple chants with each players name fit in to each yell. First I would make up silly syllables to chant, but then I realized everrryyyybody was wearing some hardcore fan gear, including a lot of jerseys (about half with players’ names in English, half in Japanese characters). So we would figure out which player was up from a combo of the chants/fans jerseys. It was a lot of fun to be an actual part of the crowd instead of just spectating.

For dinner, we hit the concessions of course. They had noodle dishes, soups, tempura-d mystery things, and a PILE OF VARIOUS HOT DOGS. Of course we hit up that stall (the one with the longest line, but it moved quickly!). After you picked up your plate o’sausages, you moved on to an assembly line of condiments – ketchup and yellow wasabi mustard that was distributed in quite the interesting fashion.

I thought I would switch it up and get what I thought was a basket of French fries and fish sticks. They were right next to the chicken strips/fries basket, but that one didn’t have the smiley faces. It turned out to be a big ol bucket of fried potatoes in various shapes! Hey I’m not complaining, but I did get a green juice from the konbini later that evening.

The beer girls carried around tiny kegs on their back for draft beer delivery. They also, strangely, wore baseball hats folded up and pinned onto their heads, instead of the, ah, more traditional hat wearing style. The home team had cheerleaders, and the Swallow mascot was carrying a giant bottle of yogurt on his back (their team is sponsored by Yakult Yogurt, the other team by what we think is a vitamin company?). At one point a fan from each team was chosen from the audience, made the big screen split-screen, and they played rock, paper, scissors against each other! 2 out of 3, and Giants won!

score!

The Swallows ultimately won the game, and the manager came out and addressed the crowd and led them in some chants, the mvp shot tshirts with a cannon into the crowd and there was more cheer/mascot dancing. It was quite a way to end a game.