Baseball and Dancing

I did two notable things this weekend. First, I met with my friend Tomomi and two of her friends, and we went to the Nagisa Music Festival in Odaiba. You can check out the Japanese website at www.nagisamusicfetsival.jp. It took place at the foot of the Fuji TV buliding, the landmark building that has the giant sphere contructed in it, and it consisted of 8 stages and dozens of performers, mostly Japanese, playing various types of club music and covering every single sub-genre. I am more of a Neil Young fan, but it was amazing to see so much live music. I was starting to get cynical about how much art and creativity was coming out of Tokyo, compared to other global cities such as New York, Paris, or London, but I guess that is only because I live in a more isolated suburban part of the city. I mean if you end up living in the suburbs of London, then your just going to be exposed to a bunch of chavs more than anything else. But this festival really showed me how cool Tokyo really is. Anyway, about two hours in the place was filled with red-faced Japanese whirling around, and I had stepped in gum. Our group would occasionally get split up as we visited the various stages, and would reconvene somewhere else. The girls really enjoyed dancing close to the music, but I preferred more bobbing my head at the back of the crowd. The festival continued about an hour past dark, and afterwards everybody at the festival contributed to picking up all the garbage that was tossed on the ground. That was a drag.
The next day I saw the Hanshin Tigers play the Yomiuri Giants at the Tokyo Dome. These two teams have a huge sports rivalry, like the Yankees and Red Sox, or the Lakers and Celtics. The stadium was almost packed to capacity, and the fans were going wild. People love cheering for there teams here, and they do it constantly, which is different from your average North American who watches the game casually and enjoys a beer. Both teams pitched exceptionally well, and the final score was a low 2-0 for the Giants. This made it difficult for my Global House friends, who for the most part have never seen baseball, understand the appeal at all. Man did they not get it...