Osaka

7/16 - Hanshin Tigers and The Japanese Pasttime

This day was mostly a travel day. But that hardly meant it was a boring day. It was my introduction to bullet trains (shinkansen – I love that word). 175 mph to Osaka. It feels fast looking out the window. The world sort of bends as you look at the objects close to you. They are also super comfortable – which may also be because we splurged and got the ‘green’ pass instead of the regular ones which gives us access to the nicer cars, but hey, as far as I was concerned it was well worth it. One thing that I found interesting in traveling large distances in Japan was how you do feel how small the country is and how many people there are. By that I mean that you never really feel that it opens up into large fields and country sides. Being from the Midwest, it is particularly odd, but even on trips on the east or west coasts where the populations are denser, you see more large spaces. I never really saw that. Granted, we never left the main tourist corridor, so I’m sure it exists, but it left an impression nonetheless.

Going to Osaka on this day was my idea, and it was focused on one thing – baseball. When traveling I’ve found it really fun to go to sporting events that have a passionate fan culture. It acts as an interesting way to learn about the people there. In the US, you would do this by going to a football game, even better if it’s an SEC or Big10 college game. Going to a hockey game in Minnesota would work too. In Europe, soccer is the thing. Etc. For Japan, we considered a sumo match, which I think would have been great, but I happened to read up on the particular culture surrounding baseball in Japan, and it did not disappoint.

From the moment we went to board the subway to get to the game, they had organizers dressing in Tigers yellow pointing the way. One of the ticket machines would only give tickets to the stadium. We arrived at the stadium 1-2 hours early, assuming we could grab a bite to eat and wander around, but our train was already filled with yellow clad fans ready to start their game outing. Around the stadium there are vendors selling all sorts of things, but mostly food. Bento boxes (with players faces on the outside!), sushi rolls, chicken skewers, fried fish, etc. – Too many options really. Sam got a bento box and I grabbed a cup of chicken skewers. We sat outside and watched people pour into the stadium – apparently bringing in food and beer was perfectly okay as well. That is new for me.

We went in and were met at the door by stadium workers handing out jerseys and fans. Now these aren’t the typical swag you get in the US that have big sponsorship badges on them, or are made so poorly they don’t make it through the game. These were decent enough jerseys that I may actually wear again – well, if I can find a reason to wear a baseball jersey… As we figured out where our seats were, the stadium was already jumping. The crowd was being led by cheerleaders on the field in songs and chants. The 50k stadium probably had 35k in it already and the game wasn’t even starting for another 20 minutes. Lets also keep in mind that it was a Monday, very hot, mid-season game for a middle of the pack team. To be fair, they were playing one of their biggest, and most famous rivals, the Yomiuri Giants (the New York Yankees of the ­­Nippon League), but still…

The stadium itself was great. Built in 1924 (it actually predates the team which started in 1936), it has a very classic style with a unique color to the infield dirt (for reference, Wrigley field was built in 1914 – so not so far apart). Our seats were off the right field side and were actually quite good. But honestly, most of the seats – other than the visitor seats – would have been fine. Our section certainly had a lively crowd. The game was great. I’d say the only comparable game I’ve seen was a Dodgers playoff game at Dodger stadium, but even that I don’t think matched the consistency of crowd energy. From the first inning on, every batter, every out, every good play had a roaring crowd, a specific song, and nonstop clapping/plastic bat noisemaking. Every player had a song that was sung/chanted for him and would be sung for the duration of his at bat (granted, some had the same chant with names swapped out). Its also fair to give credit to the visitor’s section which was also making quite a racket for their players. It’s worth noting that supposedly you will be asked to leave if you cheer for the opposition outside of the visitor’s section – I don’t know if it’s true, but I didn’t see evidence to contradict it. One thing that I loved and that everyone I’ve spoken to that has been to a game loves are the beer girls. They have young ladies walk up and down the aisles with a chilled keg as a backpack, so when you order a beer, they just pour it for you fresh. Fantastic.

At one point during the game, a K. Fukodome came up to bat. As a Cubs fan, it was a familiar name so I checked to see if there was any chance it was the same. Turns out, he’s 41 and still playing here – not that he was a giant star in the MLB, but he did play for a few years during his early 30s (Japanese baseball contracts were apparently tricky to get out of and the result is players didn’t always go to the MLB very early in their careers). While I was looking him up, the guy in front of us, who seemed to find us to be very interesting kept looking at me so I showed him Fukodome in a Cubs uniform and said that I was a Cubs fan. The result of this was that everyone around us started talking to us and trying to get us involved in every cheer and every aspect of the game – I’m pretty sure they all used every English word they knew with us. It was rad. I’m sure it helped that by that point everyone in the section had had multiple beers, but I won’t quibble on the details. And before moving on, one last, and probably the best, part of the fan experience. During the seventh inning stretch, everyone would blow up balloons and on the field the cheerleaders led a chant, and then – well, you should watch.

The game ended up being a close one, ending in a 5-4 loss. No one left early, and people cheered to the end. We left the stadium and made our way back to the hotel, but the excitement both Sam and I had instantly put this as one of our favorite things we did in Japan. I really can’t recommend it enough. In fact, a slight regret is that we weren’t able to go to one of the other classic fan experiences for one of the Tokyo teams.

Photo gallery from the game

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