Go Honda Go!

Well now I'm posting bi-monthly. That's a little bit better! I'll see if I can get it back to weekly and then who knows-maybe even...bi-weekly?

Had a bit of an interesting day with my private class on Wednesday. Went to teach them at 10 o'clock and then they took me out to lunch afterwards. Then a couple of us (one of them the organizer of the class) went to the local Honda factory (her husband works for Honda) to board a bus and head into Tokyo to go see a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome. And not just any game either. None other than Team Honda was playing!! I remember when I played on the Bank of Montreal softball team. We played in some ratty park in Etobicoke somewhere. Team Honda on the other hand gets to play in the freakin Tokyo Dome!

Anyways I sorta got roped into it somehow (it's very un-Brendan like of me to do something like this) and I guess since our family recently made the switch from domestic vehicles to Nippon then I really ought to go and show my loyalties. Well believe it or not it turned out to be a fantastic time!!! I actually only saw a few minutes of the game and I was there the whole time. And it wasn't entirely because of the five different cheerleading teams either!

The atmosphere there was absolutely crazy. Basically what it is is a big tournament between all the different big companies in Japan. I know Honda has two teams in the tournament and JR train lines has about four teams and I'm sure Mitsubishi and Toyota must also have teams. The difference between these teams and our teams at Bank of Montreal is that these teams are good. That and they're playing actual hardball instead of self-pitch. The entire team is made up of employees and so are the bands and the male cheerleaders. The female cheerleaders come from different universities around Tokyo I think. And the fans are absolutely great! They almost all have some relation to Honda in one way or another. Maybe they work for Honda or have a friend or family member who works there or something.

Anyways I don't know about the rest of you but I tend to get the impression of Japanese people as a very reserved bunch-quiet people who work hard but may be a bit awkward in expressing themselves in public situations. Wow did that game ever prove me wrong! They cheered for literally the entire game. They were cheering their pitcher after basically every pitch and when their team was up to bat they cheered for literally the entire inning!! Some of those innings were over 20 minutes long too and they didn't stop for one second!! They had about five teams of cheerleaders (four girl teams and one guy team) that they kept rotating so nobody got to tired and the fans just chanted the entire time. I got a video of it which really doesn't do it justice because a)I was in the front row almost just behind the band so you can't see to many people, b)because the sound isn't as loud as it really sounds being recorded by my digital camera, and c) my 32 mb digital card ran out of memory after only a minute of recording time when I probably could have kept on going for another good 15 minutes at least. They clap fans together (special Honda fans) and my eyes were tearing up because of all the airflow.
It was fun as heck and if Honda makes it to the finals on Sept 5th then I'm definitely going to have to go again but first I'll have to have a little something to drink so I can be almost as crazy as those crazy Japanese!

I uploaded my video to YouTube if you want to check it out.