Just a bunch of Carp!

After the museum, we headed over to the baseball stadium to watch a ball game! Our team was the "Hiroshima Carp". Here is a picture of the stadium:


This guy kind of stood out in the field. I don't think he's Japanese???

I found that going to a Japanese baseball game is more entertaining than going to an American one. Why? Because there is much more audience participation! The Carp were last-place in standing, and they were playing against the first place team. For a home game like that you would expect empy stands and not much in terms of cheering.

But all the fans still come out and they cheer every play. Check out this video:



These guys are doing this, and various other cheers throughout the entire game! Non-Stop! They have a different cheer for throwing a strike, being at bat, getting an out, etc. It was quite facinating to watch!

How do they organize the cheers? By having a cheer leader instruct everyone what to do! He would hold up signs telling us what to say, when to say it, etc. A band would play behind us to give everyone a beat to keep in synch to.

For the seventh inning we were given a bag of balloons to blow up. I had no idea what this was all about, but here is mine! It's big... And Long....

Here is a video of what we did with the balloons:



You can barely hear it in the recording because the mic on the camera isn't good but all the balloons have whistles on them. When the balloons were released the roar of balloons flying through the air and the whistles was a fun experience!

Believe it or not, our team won by a huge margin! The fans were ecstatic as this was really an unexpected turn of events!

This was a fun evening event! I've gone to a few Angels games here in the past, and most of it the crowd wasn't nearly as animated / into the game. I spent most of the time chatting, getting food, wandering around the stadium, playing games on my cell phone, etc. Pretty much everything BUT watching the game.

But in Japan everyone loves their baseball, so all attention is on the game. Being in a crowd that is that excited about the game really adds to the fun!