Fukuoka, Japan
Sunday, March 26, 2006
Turning on the television in the morning the baseball stadium was on, from the looks of it, it was already very busy. Queue's were forming round the block. We tried the phone number of the place we had found on the internet, they didn't speak English, I tried my best but in the end the hotel receptionist helped. It turned out that it was a lot more expensive than we thought so we didn't book it. By the time we had reached the baseball ground most of the tickets had sold out. There were just the 2 most expensive seats left. We coughed up the £20 that was needed each and went in. There was quite an atmosphere, every seat taken. The crowd all knew these elaborate chants involving hand movement and clapping, all except us. Japan had just won the baseball world cup, several of the Japanese players played for
Fukuoka Hawks so it was a big game. I must admit I wasn't completely familiar with all the rules of baseball so I was just trying to follow it best I could. I liked the game and would quite like to go again. It's more of a family afternoon out unlike football. Indeed people didn't leave after the game but waited for the singer who sang a couple of songs. The other thing I liked was the range of food and drink available bought to the seat, ice cream, meals, sandwiches, and most importantly beer which was draught, the barrel attached on the back of the sellers. Avoiding the queues we went before the singing had finished. Outside the ground there were a lot of people trying to take pictures of something, we went over to see what they were looking at. I'm not sure whether it was an original or replica, but it was the baseball world cup, I took a photo and went. The queue had quickly formed
around the block again. The baseball had taken up quite a large chunk of the day, it was dinner time now. We found an Indian restaurant which was nice and cheap, then when back to the hotel.
