Baseball, Zoo, and other things. . .

Hello everyone! Sorry it has been a while since my last post, I've been pretty busy. Luckily tomorrow is Friday and I have a fun weekend ahead.

Anyway, last Saturday I went to a baseball game with my Okaasan and her cousin. Our team is the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. Apparently the island of Hokkaido only has one baseball team. Nippon-Ham is the name of a Japanese company that owns or sponsers the team, I'm not sure which. Fighters is the team name. We were going against the Kyushu Softbank Tigers.

The game was a lot of fun. Unlike American baseball where the crowd may not get into the game that much or leave half way through it because their team is losing, Japanese baseball is very intense. Every time your team goes up to bat, all of the fans stand up. Each team has a band that plays cheers that the fans sing along to and the fans bang these plastic things together and do various motions for each cheer. Each player has a different cheer and there are cheers for homeruns and other things. I got most of them down by the end of the game.

Below is a video of one of the cheers. To the far right is the band, I don't think you can see them that well, but you can hear them.

And here are some pictures. Below right is Sapporo Dome, where the game was held. Below right is a shot of the field. Below below is a picture of the Fighters in the field.

By the way, my team lost. 0-1

On Sunday I went to Asahiyama Dobutsuen (zoo) with my Okaasan, my Oniisan, Daisuke, and two of my friends, Mal and Euna. The zoo was alot of fun. It had a lot of the same animals that an American zoo would have, but it seemed to have better exhibits for the animals. There was this huge thing that the Orangutans could climb on, an underwater walk way where you could watch penguins swim over you, and a tube in the middle of a room where you could see seals swim by.

After the zoo we went to Ueno Farm, a flower garden that had tons of different kinds of flowers. It was a pretty neat place to go to even in the fall.

On Monday school started up again. I guess this is my first official full week of school with electives and everything. I am taking a Japanese Culture class every monday for three hours. It should be a pretty interesting class.

On Tuesday two of my Japanese friends, Daiki and Yatsu, came over to my house and hung out and had dinner with my family. It was a lot of fun. They only live 10 minutes away so they wanted to find out where I lives so we could hang out sometime. There are a couple of good malls and outlets near where I live that would be fun to go to.

This weekend should be another fun weekend. Tomorrow night I am going to Yakitori with some friends. Yakitori is a type of Japanese barbecue. On Saturday I am going hiking up a near by mountain with a few friends and on Sunday I am attending an undokai, mini-Olympics. I am also going to a Halloween party on Sunday, even though it is the beginning of the month. (I will also be going to one at the end of the month).

Fun fact for the day: In Japan, instead of using lol in text messages and e-mails the Japanese use w. For example: That was a pretty fun time w. They get the w from the Japanese word for laughter, warai. So now you can do something different with you text messages.

Well that is all I have for today. I will try to make another post at the end of the weekend.

Stephen