Posted by Jess
16 June 2011

Last night I had the opportunity to go to a Japanese Major League Baseball game between the Yakult Swallows and the Seibu Lions.   Yakult is a beverage brand in Japan that owns the team and Seibu is a department store chain.  The Swallows home stadium is about 3 blocks from our apartment, yet I hadn't been to a game yet.  I thought I'd share a few photos and observations from the evening.


We just bought general admission tickets, which were about $20 each.  When we walked in, there was a place to stop if you brought in food or drinks.  But they didn't ask you to throw it out, they gave you a stadium cup to pour your drink in.  So helpful!  The stadium is a bit smaller than US stadiums (but everything here is smaller than the US version) and the general admission seats were full.  We had a hard time finding seats for four.  We sat in the grandstand on the left field line, which didn't have a fantastic view of the plate but we weren't really there to watch the game anyway.  

There are a lot of vendors walking around the stadium selling food and beer.  There are women selling beer in cans and then there are women with mini-kegs on their back that walk around.  When you buy a beer, they have a tap on the keg, fill a cup and hand it over.  They keep the kegs in insulated backpacks and there are people who help them swap out the kegs when they are empty.  There are apparently men who walk around with hard liquor and soda/mixer guns as well but I didn't see any of those.  They wear brightly colored outfits that say the brand of whatever beer they are selling (Kirin, Asahi, Sapporo). 

I don't have our good camera (Jason does) so I apologize for the poor quality in the pictures.




The food options are a bit different as well.  There are pizza stands, KFC, hot dog stands, but there's also Japanese style food.  Our group opted for hot dogs (more like brats) - some had chili and cheese.  We also had some breaded octopus (well, the guys did - I didn't try it).







After the game, many fans stuck around for quite some time and beer was still being sold after the game was over.  Since no one is driving here and there are no open container laws, it's no problem to sell as much beer as possible!

Unfortunately the home team lost 8-0, but we didn't mind - we had a good time and I'm glad I got to have the experience.  It's a shame Jason couldn't join us!

Kanpai!
Jess