#8: Baseball at the Nagoya Dome! (June 21)

On Friday night five of my classmates and I went to see the Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya's pro team) host the Hiroshima Carp in a Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) game inside the Nagoya Dome. It was a great way to end the first week of classes, and was even a victory for the underdog Dragons! We all had a great time and it was a really neat experience. 

The Dragons' pitcher, Hiroto Takahashi, pitched seven shutout innings, their centerfielder Orlando Calixite hit an exciting solo-shot home run just over the wall into the Carp fan section in the 3rd inning for the game's winning run, and their closer Raidel Martinez got his league-leading 21st save completing the shutout. It was very cool seeing the home run: from what I've heard home runs are far less common in Japanese baseball, as they play a lot more small-ball strategies rather than power hitting. We were all quite surprised they won: they were last in their division heading into the game and the Carp were first in the division. 

The biggest difference in the experience, sights, and sounds of professional Japanese baseball compared to MLB are the cheering sections. Every stadium has two cheering sections: one for the home team and one for the visiting team. In these sections, the fans chant, clap, cheer, wave giant flags, and sing the entire time their team is batting. The entire half-inning. As soon as the opposing team comes up to bat, though, they go stone silent as the other team's cheering section takes up the chants, claps, flag-waving, etc. I think what I appreciated about it most was that while the team was at the bottom of the standings and the stadium was only half-full at most for the game, the cheering section was completely filled up and supporting the team every minute of the game. Even when the team is bad, their fans will still support them in their games, even if attendance drops so low the cheering section is the only populated part. A very neat feature of Nippon Professional Baseball.