In reference to my last post, the second unique thing we did today was go to a Japanese baseball game. It was the SoftBank Hawks of Fukuoka versus the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. From Fukae, we took the commuter train back into Fukuoka. We walked from the stop to Hawk Town, a commercial area built around the Yahoo! Dome. We bought our tickets, which gave us access to open seating in the bleachers. The roof was closed over the Astroturf field due to slight drizzle outside. There was only a single large seating level that wrapped around the field, but there were three levels of luxury boxes. While waiting for the game to start, we watched batting practice, some mascot dances, some pop group act, and some other weird antics.

Even by the first pitch, the small stadium was probably only half full, but as the game progressed, most of the seats filled up. The bleaches became the most crowded of all. Not only the most crowded, but with the loudest and most-dedicated fans. Many of them stood the entire game and chanted and clapped to lead of about dozen conductors scattered around the length of the bleachers. There were giant flags, blaring music, chants, songs, and those annoying thundersticks. We happened to sit just in front of the single section dedicated to the visiting team. They too had a conductor and their red shirts contrasted with the sea of yellow and gray. I thought it was funny that even in cheering at a sports event, the Japanese were still orderly and ritualistic. Besides the sections of die-hard fans, the fans were pretty docile- just the opposite of Korean baseball fans and perhaps a telling difference between the cultures. When the hawks scored their lone run, I jumped up and cheered until I realized that nobody else was standing (and it was still close at that point in the game). Another interesting thing was the food vendors, who with coolers of ice cream or kegs of beer on their backs would run down each aisle to the bottom of the steps, turn to face the crowd, bow, and then begin walking back up the steps announcing their food or beverage.

As for the baseball itself, it was pretty good. Not MLB, but not Korean baseball either (I might add for those that cannot reconcile how I could write that Korean baseball was so sloppy and they ended up winning the Olympic gold medal in the sport. The reason lies in the fact, that they halted their professional season for the Olympics, so they had professionals playing other teams amateurs). Besides the DH, it was pretty fundamental baseball- stealing, bunting, hit and runs. The defense was clean and the hitting simple. And while we did only see one error, there were a few times that it didn’t seem that players went all out on plays. But this could have been more a function of playing on a Astroturf field than a characteristic of Japanese baseball. Lastly, the game was slow. Almost too slow. There was 2 minute 15 second time limit between innings, but it took ages between pitches. After two and a half hours, it was only the sixth inning, at which point Joylani and I had to leave to catch the last train back to Sendai. The Eagles were leading 6-1, so it wasn’t much of a game anyways. Nonetheless, it was a fun date and a great day overall.