Sōkeisen

It actually didn’t rain today, so I was able to see game one of the sōkeisen, the yearly baseball battle between Waseda and Keio. What did I learn? Japanese baseball is nuts. No, Hello Kitty didn’t play shortstop, and there were no lasers, giant robots, or radioactive lizards. The bizarre thing was that while your team is batting, everyone in your camp stands and cheers for the entire half-inning! Every time Keio got up to bat, the entire Keio section stood up, yelled, and cheered along with the band, cheerleaders, and pep-rally boys. And when Waseda was up to bat, they did the same thing. And this went on for the entire duration of the game. It made me think: There is nothing in this world that I care about enough to do that.

I attended the game courtesy of KOSMIC, the exchange student support group. Since I was constantly surrounded by foreigners, I was of course subjected to all sorts of broken English from the pep-rally boys. “Now is the time for the cheering!” “Now you are to be standing and not eating please!” Whatever you say.

The absolute scariest part of the whole thing was Waseda. Their cheers are basically a “Heil Hitler” arm movement done in rhythm. And every single one of them, meaning probably a good 200 or so people, was doing it in unison. It seems that not only do they have a baseball team, but they have a baseball watching team, whose job it is to intimidate their opponent with goose-stepping and nationalist propaganda. It didn’t help that we had the gayest sign ever—two fucking unicorns eating popcorn or something—and theirs was a bear destroying the Keio logo.

In fact, a couple guys from our group snuck into the Waseda camp and took pictures. They happened to be wearing Keio paraphernalia, geniuses that they are, and so they were easily spotted. Apparently they weren’t allowed to leave, and had to sit and Heil Hitler for a while, after which they managed to escape by shoving their way through the cheerleaders. It’s a good thing they got away, too, since I’ve heard bad rumors about Waseda involving goats. Let’s just leave it at that.

My final complaint: ¥700 beers. And that’s actually cheap for Japan, depending on where you go. What the fuck?

Also, new pictures up.

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