Baseball and Badminton

Ok well, maybe all baseball and not any badminton. But you would be surprised how big badminton is in Asia. I have a lot of students who love playing it and when I was in China I saw lots of people playing it in the park.

Anyway back to the point of this post. I finally went to a Japanese baseball game. I had been wanting to do that since I came to Japan over two years ago. Since I used to live in Nagoya the team I wanted to see play was the Chunichi Dragons (the Nagoya team). So I called one of my friends who still lives there and asked her if she wanted to go with me. She got us some tickets and I took the night bus down to Nagoya for a fun weekend with my Nagoya friends.

Of course I pick a weekend with pouring rain in the city, so we ended up just spending a lot of time sitting around her apartment reading. But it was really nice to get in a little R&R. When the time came for us to head out to the dome we donned our golashes, rain slickers and umbrellas. Well, not really all we had were umbrellas, but all that other stuff would have been nice.

A sign at the entrance, it translates to something along the lines of "Go! Dragons."

We got to the dome a little early so we could do some shopping and get silly souvenirs for the baseball game.

Nagoya has this awesome dome, so even though it was raining there was no fear that the game would be rained out. The entire field was completely inside.

A view of the dome.
Dionne and I with our silly souvenirs. We had good seats back behind third base somewhere and since it was Monday and not super crowded we were able to move and sit wherever we wanted. Japanese baseball is actually a lot like American baseball. After all they did completely borrow it all from us.

These are the "cheerdragons" along with their mascots. At one point the guy on the left with the blue head was doing back flips, but he fell down, which is to be expected when doing back flips with that mask on your head.

T. Blanco is the token foreigner on the team. He got one of the home runs while we were there.

Blanco at bat.
The game was about as exciting as I remembered games back home being, which is to say it wasn't all that exciting. I mostly enjoyed wandering around the stadium looking at the goods being sold and watching the people.

It was exciting when one of the players (I forget which one) hit a home run. Actually, the Dragons got two home runs during the game. The Dragons won 3-0. I don't remember who they played either. I guess I would make a horrible sports reporter.

The scoreboard from when we left at the top of the ninth. Chunichi is the bottom row. We wanted to beat the crowds to the subway since I had to make sure I had time to get back and catch my night bus back to Tokyo.
I made the bus without any drama and settled in for a not so comfortable night's sleep on a bus. But all in all it was a fun weekend. I would go to another baseball game if given the opportunity.
GO! DRAGONS!