HR Record

On the Sunday night that we got back to Tokyo, we met Chen and headed out to a baseball game: Hanshin Tigers @ Yakult Swallows.  Before leaving on our trip, JJM informed us that a player on the Swallows, Wladimir Balentien (from Curacao / Netherlands), was on pace to break the Japanese baseball single season HR record (I don’t know how he knows this stuff!?).  Well, guess what: he did it at the game we were at, and even added another in a 9-0 shutout against the Tigers!  Here are some pictures from the game (I’ve got the video of his at bat, but too big…)

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The rest of the game was good fun.  Maybe 33% of the stadium were rooting for the away team.  Every player had their own well-coordinated cheers coming from the stands.  The Swallows had a cheer that involved small umbrellas that nearly everyone in the stadium had.  Kudos to Chen for scoring us tickets to the game!!

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For the Sushi Zushi crowd, guess which one I had?

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– The correct answer is both.  I normally would only have the Sapporo, but after seeing this portable keg backpack contraption, I had to try the Kirin as well.  Although I should note, Asahi probably has the soft drink / beer market in Japan, and their Super Dry is a damn good beer

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On the exotic food note… Since meeting Edwin on Nicole’s trip to Argentina, she has not stopped talking about the chance to eat Takoyaki.  Octopus balls.  No, they are just a deep fried dough ball with a piece of octopus in the center.  She finally had them…and they were “delicious!”

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5 thoughts on “HR Record

  1. That’s so awesome that you got to see Wladimir break the record! And I’ll tell you how JJM knows about this stuff…because I read about it in the NY Times and told him about it and then told him to tell you about it! :)

    • Haha…we could have guessed that. I keep trying to get Nicole to read things (well, summaries of things) to me…but apparently I listen too slow ;-)

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