One more Japan blog: Carp's Game

OK, so its been a busy last week or so, but I finally finished my last blog from my Hiroshima trip from last (last,last?) week...   it took so long because of the video!

The last night in Hiroshima (after the okonomiyaki),  I went with Y0-chan to a pro baseball game at Hiroshima Stadium,  which is right next to the infamous 'Atomic Bomb Dome' ( wikipedia) in downtown Hiroshima.  We got some $20 tickets at the door.   

Hiroshima's team is called the 'Hiroshima Toyo Carp' --  In Japan for some reason they include the name of the team's corporate owners in...  (since way before we started selling the naming rights in the US to things).  So for example the Fukuoka team used to be owned by Daiei Department store so it was the 'Fukuoka Daiei Hawks'  then they were sold to Softbank, so they became the 'Fukuoka Softbank Hawks'.... 

This is important to understand because the other team playing today was the 'Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters' -- which is the 'Fighters' owned by the Nippon Ham Corporation... not the Nippon Corporation's 'Ham Fighters'.... which would be a really uncool name.  Also 'Toyo' is the parent company for Mazda motors,  which has all is factories and hq in Hiroshima, thats why they are the major owner in the Carp...

Anyway, on to the game!

Out front the team's mascots were doing meet and greet.  The Fighter's mascot is some sort of cat.... he could actually do back handsprings in that suit, i was very impressed.  The Carp's mascot is named Slyly and is a copy of the Philidelphia ' Phillie Fanatic' mascot.

A lot of teams in Japanese baseball have moved to domed stadiums... but not the Carp... given the rainy summer seasons in Japan, I'm amazed that they can play at all w/o a roof (the Hawk's dome has a retractable roof,  but in all my tme there, I never actually saw them open it).    This day we were lucky, there were a few drops here and there, but the game didn't stop.

Before the game started they had a little league team come out and get some award...

Then during the team song and the announcement of the Carp players these two awesome displays of corporate marketing power made their appearence:

Yes, its Nissin's 'Giant Cup o Noodles' truck and Mitsubishi Tractor's 'Tractor with a Hat on'  (my god, its like some Conan O'Brien skit...)

Of course I took a lot of video and tried to take some nice zoom shots w/ my 7x Zoom on my new camera. So to make things efficient, I compiled them all into this Youtube video:

Video: Carp vs Fighters video

In addition to a lot of drunk Hiroshima fans shouting obscenities at the field (the Fighters racked up like 9 or 10 runs very quickly),  the other interesting thing to observe in the stands was this:

Best business model EVER... here's what you do:  get two attractive girls, put them in cheerleader costumes.  Get the girls to sell 'gift bags'  containing some snack foods, team souvenir, etc that cost maybe $2... and charge $10.  The person who buys the overpriced gift bag gets to take a Polaroid picture with said cheerleaders....    pure genius.  Over the course of the night these girls went up and down the stands and probably sold dozens and dozens of these bags. 

In fact two of the guys sitting in front of us bought it (the second guy came late and saw the first guy's picture and did it too):

I snuck a pic, since they were one row in front of us. 

Actually later I got a clearer shot, and I used my camera's auto-alignment feature to correct for the skew:

Damn, I wanted one too!  if only the snacks were at all appetizing... they were weird japanese things like shredded fish and some weird nuts covered in wasabi sauce...

I was pretty happy w/ the quality of the pics I was able to take w/ my camera.  One of the problems of having such a high zoom is that it requires a lot better timing if you want to get a picture mid-pitch, etc...  I'm going to another game on Monday (now that I'm in the US), I'll try it from the outfield now, maybe it'll be easier.

Anyway, it was a fun game,  the Carp almost made a come back, but the Fighters (who always seem to win when I watch them play) took home the victory.  As I mention in the video,  one of the foreign guys on the Fighters absolutely kicked ass... he got three homers in three consecutive at-bats...  if he ran faster he could have gotten 5 hits in his 5 at bats... Japanese pitching is not as good as the US... 

Last but not least, I forgot to include this in the previous entry:

I've included pictures of these things in previous blogs, but for those who have never seen it... this is in fact one of those ANA Pokemon 747s....  (more here). 

ps - If there's an interest, i can try and find some of my pictures from when i actually flew on the pokemon 747.... :-P