Baseball: Japanese-style

Now this event was mentioned before. And there will be plenty of photos from my Kyoto trip coming up. I'm still not finished scanning them all, and trying to work how best to split them up.
On the first day of my holiday trip to Kyoto, I did the normal thing you do after a long journey (sigh, overnight bus). I got the hell out of there. And promptly (well after not checking into my hotel and trying to find a large enough coin locker) got on the first train to Osaka.

I was going to catch up, well actually meet for the first tim,e Ken, a half Chinese/New Zealand native born Japanese Christian guy I met on the internet. I think he's the only person I've intentionally met after first meeting them online. A little weird, but I can't say the experience put me off. Neither of us turned out to knife wielding psychos, so I think we were both glad about that.

Ken's a baseball fan. And it was time for Koshien, the national high school baseball championships that year. Free entry. Lots at stake. High tension. Good players. And as you can see, it gets packed.

I'm not a sports fan. Something I'm trying to get over (I still refuse to celebrate watching cricket, baseball seems only moderately better). But this was a cultural experience. Not only was it probably my first opportunity to watch a baseball game in person, but probably the first time I've ever been to a national level stadium sports event of any kind. And, yeah, it was entertaining, even though I did have to pester Ken about what exactly some of the terms meant.

Oh. And as usual. I can't remember who won, red or blue. Sorry...

*sports*写真*japan*koshien*日本*baseball*cricket*stadium*京都*national*championships*大阪*kyoto*osaka*photos*