Adventurasia Community

The game took place yesterday (August 7th) at the Jingu Stadium located near Gaienmae Station (Ginza Line) / Aoyama Itchome Station / JR Shinanomachi Stations. Along the way, vendors were hawking various souvenirs - shirts / happis (like a very light cotton jacket) / balloons (these blow up to be quite long and around the 6th inning, hanshin tiger fans blow them up and let them fly — it’s an awesome display of colour) / noise makers of various sorts. I ended up purchasing this ‘clapper-like’ object which makes a pretty loud noise when you hit them together. My friend bought a hollow baseball (which can also double as a megaphone). I also bought some balloons…

As we had unreserved seats, we had to get to the stadium early. We got there 2 hours before the start of the game (around 4:00 PM) and already the Hanshin Tigers side of the stadium was packed! We managed to get some okay seats, although if we were willing to go to the Yakult Swallows side, there were plenty of seats (until about 5:30 PM that is — the game starts at 6:00 PM).

Fans - young and old - male and female - were at the stadium. Lot of company representatives / groups / as evidenced by the large blocks of seats already reserved. Many of the fans were dressed up wearing the ‘happis’ or ‘wrapping tiger towels around their head’ or ‘wearing tiger shirts’. A couple of die hard fans even wore tiger face masks! I’ve never seen anything quite like this - even compared to the World Cup games that took place last year…

There was this one ‘crazy fan’ who happened to sit right next to me. At one point she accused me of stealing her ‘bat souvenir’ from her bag. At first I didn’t really understood what she meant (as in the back of my mind, I thought she was making a ludicrous question, and I must have misunderstood) so I asked my friend what she was saying. It turned out that she was accusing me of taking her ‘bat souvenir’ and I said that I didn’t know what she was talking about. Finally, her friend pointed out to an object sitting on her lap, which turned out to be the thing she was looking for. Anyways, she apologized after that, and later on, offered my friend and I some official ‘Hanshin Tigers Mixed Nuts’ and ‘Hanshin Tigers Candy’.

I could see that the fans really got involved. In total, I took about 40 minutes of digital video using my DV Cam. I’ve tried to make a short clip here - although I’m not sure if it will work properly. Sorry. I’ve spent the past hour trying to use the iMovie program that comes with Mac OS X and been running into all sorts of problems. For example, the ‘import’ function seems to only import about 1 or 2 minutes of video at a time. Clearly a time consuming process (plus I worry that my video heads will break down faster). Then playing the clips and adding effects is a time-consuming process - the videos don’t even play back fully… It could be that my Mac is too slow (iBook G3 with 640 MB RAM / 120 GB External HD connected by USB as my firewire port is tied up with my video camera) so when I get more time, I’ll try to edit some other video and see what the problem is.

Anyways, if you were to see the video, you could tell that the fans really got into the game. I’d say about 75% of the spectators were Hanshin Tigers fans (myself included, jumping on the proverbial band wagon). There were a few people who I believe were hired to organize the cheers. One guy near our section, donned in a white happi, would blow a whistle and making hand motions like a conductor, get the entire crowd all riled up. In another section, there was a guy who blasted a trumpet with some sort of tune. The cheering went on pretty much throughout the entire game. Some guy even passed out photocopies of cheers for the individual players! Unfortunately, I couldn’t read any of them, and could barely understand the cheers. According to my friend, Hanshin Tiger fans are amongst the most ‘vocal/wild’ as the team originates in the Kanasai region of Japan where people are known to be more ‘outgoing’.

The following are some fairly recent stats concerning the two teams that were computing, both of which are part of the Central League.

The Hanshin Tigers
As of August 4th, the Hanshin Tigers were at the top of their league with 67 Wins, 27 Losses, and 1 Tie. The runner up were the Dragons with 48 Wins, 45 Losses and 0 Ties. It’s been said that if they win the championships, then Japan’s economy would improve.

Yakult Swallows
As of August 4th, the Yakult Swallows were in third place with 46 Wins, 44 Losses and 1 tie. However, as the Swallows beat the Hanshin Tigers twice (once on August 6th and once on August 7th), they might be second place in the Central League.

Unfortunately, and to a disappointed majority, the Swallows ended up beating the Tigers 5-2. Zannen!

Anyways, the game was alot of fun, and my friend and I are already talking about seeing another game! For both of us, this was the first time to see a professional Japanese baseball game live.

Here is some background information about Japanese baseball.

There are a total of 12 teams split into two leagues.

Central League (Home City/Park) - well known players
Hanshin Tigers (Osaka / Hanshin Koshien Kyujo)
Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya Dome)
Yakult Swallows (Tokyo / Jingu Kyujo)
Yomiuri Giants (Tokyo / Tokyo Dome) - Matsui Hideki
Hiroshima Carp (Hiroshima Shimin Kyujo)
Yokohama BayStars (Yokohama Stadium)

Pacific League (Home City/Park) - well known players
Fukuoka Daiei Hawks (Fukuoka Dome)
Kintetsu Buffaloes (Osaka Dome) - Nomo Hideo
Seibu Lions (Saitama / Seibu Dome)
Nippon Ham Fighters (Tokyo Dome)
Chiba Lotte Marines (Chiba Marine Stadium)
Orix BlueWave (Kobe Green Stadium) - Ichiro Suzuki played for this team

According to my friend, the fan favourites lie with the ‘Central League’ with most Japanese people being ‘Yomiuri Giants’ fans. However, the ‘Pacific League’, while less popular, has the stronger teams.