In Japan, baseball is pretty big.
In fact, I might even go so far as to say it's more popular here than at home. We like to call baseball "America's pastime", but really, I think Japan loves it more.
Sure, the US has more pro teams, more money, the best players, and a longer history with the sport. We invented it, and it's definitely an important part of our culture. But consider this: there are 12 pro and 12 minor league teams in Japan; a country roughly the size of California. And, unlike just about all other imported sports, they have a Japanese word and kanji for it. In Japanese, baseball is 野球 yakyu. The first character means "field", the second is "ball". Soccer is サッカ sakka, basketball is バスケットボール basukettobo-ru, volleyball is バレーボール bare-bo-ru (no "v" in Japanese), golf = ゴルフ gorufu.... you get the idea. All in katakana, all words imported from another language. But baseball? Baseball is yakyu.
These days I mostly watch my junior high teams play, though I have seen a couple of pro games. Occasionally, if I am feeling especially playful, I'll even go practice with the teams after school.
What I haven't seen a lot of are high school games, since I don't teach there. And high school baseball is big here. Like, REAL big.
Culturally speaking, it's everywhere. In manga (Japanese comics), tv shows, movies, you name it. This summer the big thing to see is the movie version of the popular tv drama (itself an adaptation of the manga) "ROOKIES".
From wikipedia: Rookies is the story of an amateur teacher, Koichi Kawato, who is faced with the challenge of guiding a high school baseball club composed of delinquents. The students are wary of him and often threaten Kawato, but he refuses to abandon them and continuously speaks highly of recognizing their dreams. Eventually, the team is assembled and they dedicate their time to achieve their dream of going to Koshien.
A group of thugs and bullies, redeemed through their dream of going to Koshien.
You may be wondering what this magical place is. Amusement park? No. Tropical Island? No.
Koshien is a ballpark. A professional baseball stadium, located in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, and home of the Hanshin Tigers.
It's also the location of the two High School Baseball Tournaments, held every March (since 1924) and August (since 1915). In fact, Koshien stadium was built to host the tournaments. It opened in 1924, but didn't become the home of the Tigers until 1936. The tournament games even take precedence over the pro ones - if they need to be rescheduled the Tigers have to postpone any conflicting home games (^_^)b
The games held at Koshien are the culmination of tournaments all over the country. While the one in the spring (the National High School Baseball Invitational Tournament) is more selective (only 32 teams), the summer National High School Baseball Championship is more popular. It consists of 49 teams - one from each prefecture, and two each from Tokyo and Hokkaido (since there are so many schools there - in Tokyo because of population density and Hokkaido because it's huge). So basically, every year in August all the prefectures play against each other in one huge showdown.
The games are quite popular, even being broadcast on the television network NHK.
And this year, I went ^^
My former JTE, who is arguably a bigger baseball fanatic than I; actually, not even arguably, he IS a bigger fan than me; and I went to Koshien Stadium for one exceptionally awesome day of baseball. Since the games are so popular, we decided to go relatively early in the tournament - on the 4th day. And since Takayama is pretty far from Nishinomiya (between Osaka and Kobe), we had a looooooooong day of it too.
Because of the popularity of these games, getting tickets ahead of time is extremely difficult. All of the pre-game tickets were sold out before we even had a chance to try to get them, so we had to buy our tickets the day of the game. And you can only buy game-day tickets at the stadium.
On that day there were four games, the first started at 830 am. This meant we had to leave Takayama by 4am.
Yes, 4 am.
2 hour drive to Gifu City, then a 1.5 hour shinkansen ride to Osaka,
and another short train ride to Nishinomiya got us to the stadium around 8am
Bought our tickets, ran inside, and got some pretty awesome seats!
Under the shade, and right behind home plate ^^
I've mentioned before about some of the differences in watching baseball games in Japan vs the US. For the most part, these games went down the same way my junior high games go, except with a WAY bigger audience.
To start, both teams run out and greet each other with a bow and "onegaishimasu!" (one of those ubiquitous Japanese phrases that is used all the time and defies all attempts to give it a blanket translation; it comes from the word for "wish" , often means "please", and in this case is basically "let's play a good game!")
This is then followed by what I have termed the "game siren" - sounds like an air-raid or tornado siren and marks both the beginning and end of the game.
When I go see a junior high game, usually the cheering consists of the family of the team members (and at Miya's games, mostly just myself, ha ha ha). But since high schools are much larger, and also because of the awesomeness of getting to play at Koshien, the cheering for these games more closely resembled the pro games I've seen.
There were four games on this day, which we watched, one after the other, from 830 am on. I didn't know any of the teams, although I did recognize the names of some of the cities they were from. My JTE knows more than me and was able to inform me a little, but for the most part we just enjoyed watching the games. Which basically went like
And
^^The boy at bat in those videos' name is "Momiyama". And wasn't it SO kind of that man to stop right in front of me when the runner came in from 3rd??!? //sarcasm
At the end of each game, the players go back to the infield and once again greet each other, this time with an "arigatou gozaimashita!" greeting of thanks. And then the siren plays again.
The winning team will then remain on the field as their school flag is raised and their school song is played on the PA
The losing teams all collect some of the dirt from the field to keep as a souvenir of getting to play in the tournament. Apparently a tradition started in 1949.
So there we sat, enjoying the games, for 8 hours. And potentially ending up on TV, as the commentator box was just in front of us ^^
Does anyone else find it amusing that the camera is being protected by a straw mat? ha ha ha ha ha, I love Asia!
We finally had to leave around 430 pm to catch the train back to Gifu City. So it was time to bid farewell to Koshien
Leaving that early meant we missed most of the last (and most exciting, of course) game of the day. The score was tied when we left, both teams well-matched, a real showdown of baseball ability. It even went to extra innings. A real tragedy not to see it.
...but... when there's a will, there's a way. This is Japan! THE land of technology and gadgets.
We watched the rest of that game with our cell phones on the train
v(^_^)v
