On the Sunday night that we got back to Tokyo, we met Chen and headed out to a baseball game: Hanshin Tigers @ Yakult Swallows. Before leaving on our trip, JJM informed us that a player on the Swallows, Wladimir Balentien (from Curacao / Netherlands), was on pace to break the Japanese baseball single season HR record (I don’t know how he knows this stuff!?). Well, guess what: he did it at the game we were at, and even added another in a 9-0 shutout against the Tigers! Here are some pictures from the game (I’ve got the video of his at bat, but too big…)
The rest of the game was good fun. Maybe 33% of the stadium were rooting for the away team. Every player had their own well-coordinated cheers coming from the stands. The Swallows had a cheer that involved small umbrellas that nearly everyone in the stadium had. Kudos to Chen for scoring us tickets to the game!!
For the Sushi Zushi crowd, guess which one I had?
– The correct answer is both. I normally would only have the Sapporo, but after seeing this portable keg backpack contraption, I had to try the Kirin as well. Although I should note, Asahi probably has the soft drink / beer market in Japan, and their Super Dry is a damn good beer
On the exotic food note… Since meeting Edwin on Nicole’s trip to Argentina, she has not stopped talking about the chance to eat Takoyaki. Octopus balls. No, they are just a deep fried dough ball with a piece of octopus in the center. She finally had them…and they were “delicious!”
That’s so awesome that you got to see Wladimir break the record! And I’ll tell you how JJM knows about this stuff…because I read about it in the NY Times and told him about it and then told him to tell you about it!
Haha…we could have guessed that. I keep trying to get Nicole to read things (well, summaries of things) to me…but apparently I listen too slow
GO GO SWALLOWS! GO GO SWALLOWS!
Yes!! In the extremely punctual voice that could only be Japanese!
Their slogan this year was “All for Win”