Trip to Hiroshima

I took a trip to Hiroshima with a group of buddies the other day. The main event was a trip to see the Hiroshima Carp baseball team. I have never seen a Japanese baseball game before and it was a little bit different. The baseball was the same but the way the fans conduct themselves is quite different. All the ballgames I've been to in the States consist of everyone drinking beer, eating hot dogs, yelling at the other team and cheering when their team does something good. In Japan, they still drink beer (there are ladies that walk around with kegs on their back and poor beer for you on the spot), the hot dogs are not the hot dogs traditionally thought of (and are not the main food attraction), they don't taunt the other team (they will actually sit quietly while the other teams fans chant something in Japanese to root their team on, and they have cheerleaders in the stands leading chants and songs. These cheerleaders aren't like the ones we have in the States either. These cheerleaders are have whistles, bang plastic bats and clappers and lead entire sections of people in crazy chants. At the 7th inning stretch they entire crowd lets balloons go which go everywhere. It was a blast!


Also on the trip was a stop at the Genbaku Dome and the Hiroshima Peace Park which is a memorial to the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WWII. It was my second trip to this memorial but the feelings where just the same. To see the pictures and the atrifacts at the museum are incredible. The magnatude of the destruction and thought that in a flash that hundreds of thousands of people were vaporized in an instant is just incredible. If anyone ever gets the chance to visit Japan, this is definately one spot you can not miss. Plus, you can see a ball game across the street.


Here are some pics: