Baseball & Balloons

For Tawnee's birthday, a large group of us traveled up to Koshien Stadium in Nishinomiya (near Kobe and Osaka) to take in a Hanshin Tigers baseball game. I had seen a bit of a few games on TV and it looked really different from American baseball. The first noticeable difference is that the stands are jam packed all the way to the top. The second thing is the organized cheering. Everybody cheers and chants the same thing in unison in the entire ballpark. It's amazing that that many people follow along. The majority of people have Tiger paraphernalia and there are about a dozen giant flags that are waved around in the stands. The third difference which I find strange is that the fans cheer and do the chants when their own team is a bat. Now when I was growing up and playing ball, we would be really quiet when our team was at bat so that the batter could concentrate. Then when the opposing team was up we would cheer, "Hey batta battabatta, swing batta batta......." over and over hoping to sike them out. So Japan handles it backwards. The stands are pretty quiet, except for the opposing teams chants, when the rival is at bat. Now Saturday was a beautiful warm day and perfect for a game. Our tickets were in the visitors area; Yokohama Baystars. Due to this location there were times that I found myself chanting for them and not the Tigers; damn those chants were catchy. Now the funniest and most different aspect came at the typical 7th inning stretch. Instead of a stretch the fans (even the visitor's fans) start blowing up these really giant phallic looking balloons. Then at a coordinated time in some song, they release all the balloons. Pretty amusing! Check out my video of the event above.