After Panasonic we went to Korea Town in Osaka (no, it has no Japanese name; they just call it "Korea Town"). I never thought we'd be having bi bim bab and drinking beer with a Stanford professor but I guess anything's possible. Afterward we went to this ice cream shop next door that specialized in these huge sundaes. They have a thing for corn flakes for some reason, I guess because they're so expensive in Japan. Note the US flag--engorging yourself with ice cream is apparently another American pastime.

Sunday was yet another rainy day so our plans for Frisbee with Ritsumeikan students quickly turned into—what else? karaoke. So in addition to Yangu Men, the Japanese version of YMCA, we discovered the Japanese version of the Aladdin song A Whole New World. Just amazing.

Thursday night we went to a Hanshin Tigers game in Osaka. It was interesting, to say the least. I never thought I would say this about a team called the Tigers, but they’re ranked top in the nation. And baseball is Japan’s favorite sport. But every game is like the American World Series or even a college game—there are tons of fans, tons of enthusiasm, and tons of cheering. This game against the Hiroshima Carps was sold out, and expected to be a slaughter like their 7-0 meeting last night.

The game is more or less exactly the same as an American game—right down to the English words for strike, pitcher, etc. (though these were banned and swapped with weird Japanese substitutes during WWII). But the diamond is much smaller, and the outfield much bigger. So home runs are a much bigger event—and each and every time a ball’s struck into the stands an announcement is made to “pay attention to flying balls”.

The fans are much more active than during any American game I’ve seen. (Maybe it’s just because the only American games I’ve seen were Detroit games, but still…) They come armed with noisemakers and little bats to clap together. They start chanting for every single ball pitched. Each player of every team has his own personalized cheer song the fans learn and sing from the stands, led by official Tigers prompters. (Think AxeComm, but more annoying.) We were in the Carps (read: cheap) section so there were these pumped up guys screaming chants and playing trumpets and drums to rile up the twenty or so Carps fans who were actually there. One spastic (and possibly drunk) Carps fan made a point of coming up front and repeatedly giving us all the finger each time they scored.