Hiroshima's baseball team are called the Hiroshima Toyo Carp (teams in Japan are owned by corporations like Toyo and are actually fairly footloose, sometimes moving cities altogether). If ever there was a name fitting for a team, this is it. The Carp are TERRIBLE - apparently, they haven't won a championship since 1991 and they're the only team to have not placed in the top 3 at any point since the start of this century. However, they are regarded as having a very loyal and very lively fan base, which makes them ideal to see, especially playing at home.
Cue a short walk to the stadium the following day. I obtain an excellent seat on the morning of the game day for a very reasonable price, so I assume the stadium will be empty. I buy a Carp shirt, too, since I may as well get in with the home supporters and root for this team. Also it makes a nice souvenir.
At about 1pm I make my way to the stadium for a 2pm start. The stadium is busier than I expected.
The situation is similar to baseball in the US, with vendors prowling the aisles selling cans of soft drinks and beer, hot dogs, popcorn...the usual suspects. I was amazed to see a couple with draft beer rigs on their backs, though - how they ran up and down the aisles with kegs on their backs is beyond me! As with baseball elsewhere, despite the presence of alcohol, no-one got violent. Yes, it's just football.
Hiroshima Toyo Carp vs Nagoya Chunichi Dragons
1st inning, Carp batting. Note the team's manager with the ridiculous papier mache giant head, complete with clapping hands sticking out of the side, and a changeable scroll reading "APPLAUSE" and "THANK YOU" in his mouth. He appeared there at the start of each Carp inning to lead the clapping, and everyone loved it.
The Carp's utterly bizarre mascot, 'Slyly'. I have no idea what he's meant to be, but he's great.
At the beginning of the Carp's 7th inning, absolutely everyone got one or two of these balloons. All at once, everyone let them go, which was pretty spectacular. There were balloons flying around the stadium for a minute or so, whistling as they went.
The Carp are terrible. The Dragons are apparently very good. The Dragons pulled into an early lead, getting one run in the 2nd inning. Everyone knew what was going to happen.
Except, they were wrong. The Carp stumbled along until the 4th inning, during which they absolutely destroyed the Dragons by earning 3 runs in quick succession. From then on it was all over.
Final score was 3-1 to the Carp. Talk about unexpected.
Yes, the Carp actually won.
As a celebration I went back to Okonomi-mura (a 3-storey building composed entirely of small okonomiyaki restaurants) that night for another Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki (or 'hiroshima-yaki', naturally), which is made with either soba (thin) or udon (thick) noodles as opposed to just being the usual batter mix. Delicious.
I took one awful photo of the cook making my okonomiyaki (mine is one of the ones with the thin soba noodles).
The following day, my last in the Hiroshima area, I took a boat to the island of Miyajima, which is home to one of the classic tourist brochure views in Japan. Sadly, the weather could have been a lot better, but anyway...
Before you reach the classic attraction here, the first thing you notice are the deer. There are deer everywhere, roaming the streets and attempting to get food from everyone.
Deer in Miyajima, obviously.
A 5 minute walk from the boat terminal lies the main attraction - the 'floating' Torii gate serving as an entrance to the town's main shrine (Itsukushima-jinga) from the sea.
'Floating' Torii, with deer and a stone lantern.
From a different angle, with more lanterns.
Itsukushima-jinga shrine, with 5-storey pagoda in the background.
Obviously the rain was a little bit of a problem but it was still spectacular. Even the hordes of German tourists couldn't stop it being impressive.
That was yesterday. This morning, leaving Hiroshima, I caught a highway bus down to Fukuoka/Hakata (2 cities have sort of merged and people refer to it by both names), the gateway city to Kyushu - the southernmost of Japan's 4 main islands. I'm here for one day, and then I plan to do a circuit of the island, taking in (in this order):
- Nagasaki
- Kagoshima and Sakurajima (an active volcano)
- Aso-san (a cluster of volcanoes, one of which is active)
Yeah, the next week or so is going to be very relevant to my university course and should, I hope, be very interesting. Aso-san in particular is said to be really quite spectacular and should yield some good photos me to post here.
So, that's my rough plan. How well I manage to follow it remains to be seen, but it seems managable, and a few opportunities to camp (weather permitting) should let me save some cash, too.
Anyway, until next time. Take it easy,
James
