We went to our first Japanese Major League Baseball game last night with our friends Ginny, her hubby David & Rod. We saw the Yokohama Baystars last home field game against the Chunichi Dragons. (Baystars won 6-4) It was such a fun experience! I spent the 1st hour (of 4) just soaking in all the sights, sounds, and smells. Here's a list of cool observations, in no particular order:
- Organized cheering sections: the outfield is split down the middle. Home team cheering sections are in the right outfield, visiting team's on the left. (We were seated in the nosebleed section behind 1st base). There are no bad seats in this arena...the seats are steep and allow everyone to have a great view of every play.
- Brightly colored drink vendors...if you check our sandandtsunamis blog shortly, I'm sure Hubby will post some of his photos of beer gals such as Yebisu-chan and Asahi-chan. Hot tea and coffee were also for sale if you preferred not to go down to the main deck food vendors.
- Typical ballpark food varied greatly from America-dog (corn dog on a stick), hot dog on a stick, yakisoba, ramen cup-of-noodles, takoyaki (little fried balls of dough-covered octopus), French fries, ice cream, rice balls, fried gyoza. We could bring our own food into the park and did...try doing that in one of the ball parks in the U.S.!
- Super polite fans who know all the words to all the team's songs and cheers.
- Cheerleaders (!) who did a 7-inning stretch dance routine along with the home team's mascots (a giant baseball with a long red tongue a la KISS and boy & girl Baystars)
- Cool little Toyota MR2 painted in the Baystars team colors that would personally convey the relief pitcher onto the field (this happened at least twice last night).
Cool cheering paraphenelia in the form of hollow plastic bats connected by a little chain (slightly reminiscent of nunchuks) or plastic clappers. You could also buy any number of souvenirs ranging from Hello Kitty or Mickey Mouse pens to towel banners to stadium blankets.
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