Not another travel Blog

I left Hiroshima amidst the baseball frenzy of a carps home game, i hadn`t watched any sports since leaving England and was gutted not to be going. I was considering if it might be possible to go to Fukuoka to check in, then return to watch the game and grab the last train back afterwards. But after doing that journey for the 1st time my desire to do it another 2 times over became a little less appealing than it initially had been.
I checked into this cool hostel `the khaosan fukuoka` and while he was entering my details i had a skim through this free city pamphlet, and there it was, hawks vs eagles, still baseball just a hell of a lot closer, 6 o clock start at the yahoo dome! I dumped my bags and shot off on a 45 minute bus journey to the match.

The ticket was only a thousand yen, that`s like 6 pound 50, and for a country this expensive i thought that was pretty good going. Obviously the cheap seats meant i was the furthest from the game, our seats had no backs and the band was directly behind us, but seeing as the extent of my knowledge extends to `three strikes and you`re out`, i`m pretty sure i wasn`t going to understand anything for the next three hours wherever i sat. It was really just a chance to get to experience the atmosphere of sports in japan, and quite a strange one at that.
Maybe "strange" isn`t the right word as it kinda implies it wasn`t fun, which it was. They just definitely have their own way of doing things over here, that`s all. For a start no-one claps, everyone has these hollow plastic sticks to bang together, then they have these crowd conductors (guess u probably call them that) who orchestrate what songs/chants are sung. But it`s the chants themselves that are the strangest of things. They`re just so overwhelmingly complicated, involving waving, pointing, twirls, singy bits... the video doesn`t show it off to well, but it`s like a more complicated `Macarena dance` and just about everyone in the crowd knows it. Well actually it wasn`t even an `it` there was loads of them. Each one had it`s own routine and singing section. I mean back home we can shout a chant out together, maybe not perfectly in tune. But imagine if you gave us all sticks, you could probably see within seconds everyone holding there head because there mate next to them will of decided to hit them with it instead.
It was a quality night though, everyone came and left with a smile despite in the end losing, and although i didn`t have a clue what was going on, and couldn`t join in with a single dance thing (this was despite the efforts of the two girls sat next to me and a 4 year old who couldn`t help laughing at my rubbishness) i`d spent the money i`d saved on the ticket on a nice few beers. So i quietly got a bit merry while everyone else sang there way through the game.



The next day and heavy, heavy rain. I`d planned on just walking around the town before going off to `insert name of festival if i ever find out` festival. But that seemed unlikely now. I`d heard off a few people that there was a big indoor mall like complex called canal city which was in walking distance, it supposedly had good places to eat, some cool arcades (got to the final boss on tekken 6) and if i got bored of that there was a cinema that showed films undubbed.
Oh i also had the nicest dinner here, in the way Hiroshima is known for its Okonomiyaki , and Tokyo for it`s sushi, here was for its ramen soup. Ramen`s like a noodle soup, slightly spicy (well it can be) plenty of spring onions and usually a couple slices of pork, and yeah it was delicious.
I slowly walked the shops and arcades, i even stuck my head in the inhumanly loud pachinko room and just before resorting to the cinema i took a look outside to find the rain had just about stopped and the sun was starting to shine again. I thought i might as well give the festival a go if the weather was to continue like this



The pictures from here probably do more to show what it was like than any ramblings from me, i wasn`t sure what they were celebrating, it was alot of people dressed in white and banging drums and bells. Have a look here for pictures and here and here for the videos


My return to the common room of the hostel was greeted with a lot of people speaking English and quite a few of which were drinking. They where off out to some 3000 yen all you can drink rock club, and i quickly took them up on their offer to join. Now i don`t have any pictures from the night and the fact family are probably reading this means it`s best if i just say i had a few more than your recommended daily amount and that i got the metro back at 2pm the next day, in a state that i think looked as though i`d just learnt how to walk for the very first time, sooooo.... next!

Well actually there wasn`t a next, i got myself 4 hamburgers and a bag of bread to toast and apart from a short walk in the afternoon, the day was spent mainly in a state of pain and tiredness.


My rail pass officially dies today so it`s a short wait now until the boat pulls in, then i`m off to China.