Yokohama DeNA BayStars v Yakult Swallows

Yokohama is about an hour south of Tokyo, but it seems like it takes an hour to get places within Tokyo, so I find the whole distance thing here a bit confusing.

The stadium is small - about 30k seats, and it was mostly full on a hot sticky weeknight, so the BayStars definitely draw. They don't win much, but this season they have won a few more than the Swallows, so they are both at the bottom of the Central Nippon League.

Local kids stand on the field to greet they players as they are announced, and the players run out and meet the kids and sign their jerseys...it's a sweet way to start the game! The crowd chants the whole game, and the chants change to include each batters name as they come up (only the fans of the batting team chant.) We grabbed some bento boxes, a cucumber on a stick and some beer, got our seats and proceeded to chant along when we could figure out how.

Girls go up and down the aisles constantly (every 5 minutes no exaggeration) dressed in the colors of the brand of beer they are selling with a mini keg on their backs. They smile and wave and look super happy, but they are the only Japanese women so far that I have seen break a sweat. There is a lot of beer consumed, and a lot of bento boxes.

After so much running around the last couple of days, we only lasted about 4 innings before we headed home to bed, but it was a super cool experience and the boys definitely noticed differences between the baseball and and the baseball at home.Read more