When organising this trip with Pak I found that the Yomiuri Giants were playing at home against the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters on one of the nights we were there, and as myself and Dave had enjoyed watching the Hiroshima Toya Carps we decided to go. Kaoru, Derek and Pat joined us and we watched a rather fun game. The atmosphere inside the stadium was very good, there were girls running round selling beers (about 5 different brands) and soft drinks, and towards the end of the gae the tnsion got rather high. Yomiuri Giants won in the end, but despite early impressions it was not a high scoring game (4-3) and had the potential to go either way.

In many games like this a camera is traversed over sections of the crowd, well today was our lucky/unlucky day as were were caught in the glare, and asit was potentially a live match on TV that means many people in Japan will not have seen our faces and my stick banging (I picked up a set of Giants stick noise makers).

A good time was had by all, though the game finished too late to get any food so we went our separate ways.

Now it’s time to start to pack. Will be up at 06:00 local time tomorrow to near finish packing, and get ready, to breakfast at 07:00 and to leave the hotel before 08:00. We’ve just got to hope that when we get to Tokyo station the booking office for the Narita Express is open as we didn’t have chance to book today.

Oyasumi Nasai.