Tokyo Baseball

From way up in the stands the members of the Yomiuri Giants look like little figurines in clean white and orange. Number 6, legendary shortstop Hayato Sakamoto, steps up to the mound and assumes the position, bat cocked, knees slightly bent. A few seconds of stillness, then the crack of wood on leather—the ball sailing high and away into the Tokyo night. 

Home run, Giants. 

Japanese baseball is serious business. On a  we join a crowd of thousands people on the way into the Tokyo Dome, a spaceship plonked in the centre of the city, all glass and chrome and flashing lights. Home to one of Tokyo’s two teams, (the other being the Yakult Swallows over the road) tonight the Giants are taking on the Chunichi Dragons from Nagoya, a few hours west.

The atmosphere is charged… in a friendly sort of way. There are chants and queues for pints of Asahi and stadium concession ramen, couples in matching black and orange jerseys and kids peering over shoulders for a better look of the perfect green diamond, made hyperreal by the glow of the towering floodlights. 

Next to us, a wisened man in thin glasses jots down what appears to be a highly detailed match report.  Every now and then the entire crowd rises to its feet to perform a tight routine of chanting and clapping, trying to maintain some enthusiasm as the two teams labour through the innings.

After a couple of hours it’s still level at 1-1, there have been no more Sakamoto heroics. People begin to drift out, thinking about work and school and dinner. Despite being newly-christened diehard Giants fans, we soon join them. Down the mountain of stairs and back out into the late evening, through the tired scrum in black and orange and into the comfort of a late-night noodle restaurant.