Now let me touch on some of the more upbeat elements of traveling in this awesome country. After our visit to the Peace Parks of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, we (Sonia, Emily, and Dan) went to the last baseball game of the season for the Hiroshima Carp. This was absolutely crazy! The stadium was not sold out, but the bleacher sections were covered with over 10,000 Carp fans. Unlike in America, here in Japan you are able to bring all of your home-made cheering accessories, which for the Japanese fans includes trumpets, drums, huge team flags, huge team color flags, megaphones, balloons, and much more……The bleacher seats were full and the noise was loud, even from the fifty fans of the visiting Dragons. As each batter came to the plate, the crowd would chant a different cheer hoping for a hit or homerun….at times, they would even yell out a homerun chant. The atmosphere was so much fun and sometimes more interesting than the baseball game. For food, instead of the usual corn dog and garlic fries, we elected to enjoy beef noodle soup and devoured this soup with chopsticks…..much different and led to some laughs. The craziness continued throughout the game and came to a climax with all fans blowing up and releasing balloons in the air….quite a colorful display of happiness!
After Hiroshima, we traveled to Osaka and Kyoto enjoying the many temples, shrines, culinary excitement, and music scene that these cities had to offer. One of the nights, we all enjoyed Okonomi-yaki, a savory pancake with vegetables, meats, and seafood mixed together and served with a teriyaki-glaze sauce. So tasty, that Sonia and I tasted this dish again in Tokyo, where we actually cooked the dish over a hot grill!
Sonia and I went to the Taste of Chaos concert featuring Taking Back Sunday and Senses Fail at the Hatch venue in Osaka. This show was a lot of fun and even more enjoyable to see these bands live in Japan. The venue had an amazing sound system and was clean. A surprising element of the concert was the politeness and quietness projected by the fans. They would get into the music while the bands were playing, but right after the band stopped the entire venue would be completely quiet (dropping a pin, you could hear it). It was really odd! Anyways, the show rocked and we ended up talking with the band members from Senses Fail when we go to Tokyo over the weekend (saw them in Shibuya over a photo shoot and gave a shout out to them).
After our visit in these cities, we finished our trip in Tokyo over October 20, 21, and 22. Most of our time was spent in the Shibuya and Harajuku districts, mainly just people watching and admiring the many shops in these districts. The shops, the people, and the advertising are pretty chaotic in these districts and makes for a fun time being a spectator. We also worked in our last sushi dinner, which included lots of toro, tako, ika, hamachi, kani, unagi, and ebi…so yummy, that I ended up having splurging on sushi the last three nights of my stay in Japan!
I said my goodbyes to Sonia, Dan, and Emily as they departed for the states on the 22nd. I had four more days to explore this cool place and to wrap up my finishing thoughts of this world travel.
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