Sunday, November 3, 2013

Baseball in Japan

June 22, 2013

We are going to a baseball game in Chiba with Vicki and Howard. Brother Hiroaki Mizuno from the PBO office (over travel) arranged it and was able to get tickets for Paul and me to join them. Sisters Yumiko Sase and Naoko Kawahara are joining us too. We met Brother Mizuno on our last trip. He is a huge baseball fan and is very excited to be going to this game. The Chiba Marines is his team. He sent us the train schedule so I hope we don’t get lost. We’re supposed to meet them at 11:30am. We are going to have lunch, go to the beach, and shop before the game. I think the game is at 2:00pm. Vicki said to wear white since it’s a home game and she is bringing us a copy of the cheers. Every time your team is at bat, everyone stands and says these cheers through the whole inning until your team is finished having at bats.


In front of the Chiba Marines baseball sign


Brother Mizuno had printed us off a copy of the cheers. Each ball player has his own cheer and then there are general cheers. It’s amazing how everyone knows the cheers and hand motions. They have drummers that keep the beat and trumpet players. It’s rather tiring to stand each time your team is up. They also jump up and down in some of the cheers. Since we were a last minute add on, our seats weren’t with the rest of the group. That was okay because we didn’t feel the added pressure of having to cheer all the time because we weren’t with our group.


At the 7th inning stretch the fans release all these huge white balloons. At the bottom of the 6th inning, people began to blow up these huge white balloons that make kind of a whistling sound when the air is released. At the beginning of the 7th inning, all the balloons are released in the air. They are not tied so they go every which way when the air is released from the balloon. Then all these little cheerleaders and karate kids came out and the crowd sang a song. At the end of the song, they gathered up the balloons from the field and ran off, then the game resumed.



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