Baseball Game
This weekend I went and saw a professional Japanese baseball game in Fukuoka.

I'm not a huge baseball fan, but I had heard that baseball in Japan was a totally different experience than in the U.S. So I was curious to check it out.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about baseball in Japan is that it exists at all. I didn't fully appreciate this before I left home, but baseball is not by any means a global game. Britians, South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders often have no idea how the game is even played.

But for some reason are other, baseball really took off in Japan. And it became popular in Japan in the 19th century, well before the American occupation. Although Baseball is refered to as "The American Past time", I think it is now more popular in Japan than it is in America. In America many high school athletes gravitate to football or basketball instead, but baseball remains the only big sport in Japan.

Anyway, it was my first time to a Japanese baseball game. And for the Australians and Britians in our group, it was their first time to see a baseball game full stop. I did my best to explain to them how the game was played. It was somewhat an ironic position for me to be in because usually someone else is explaining the finer rules of the game to me. But I was at least able to explain the basic principals of the game.

In the end the Japanese baseball game was not nearly as different as I was expecting. The cheering was a little more coordinated and a little less spontaneous among the fans, but other than that, baseball was still baseball. As I mentioned above, I'm not a huge fan. And the game was a bit boring (the home team won by a large margin). So I don't think I'm going to go again anytime soon. But I'm glad I went the once.

Josh also wrote about the same outing on his blog.