Japan men are hard, like eggs soaked in onsen. They rarely show emotion,
attend work every day without complaint, and in the samurai tradition, never shed a tear. Yet, at baseball games all over the country, Japanese baseball players, the epitome of the Japanese male athlete, are given teddy bears when they hit a homerun. The crowd is littered with cartoon loving men too, reading comic books during the seventh inning stretch. And the beer vendors, walking kegs on legs but dressed like Daffy Duck, they too are a sight to see.
Alas the good men and women of the Osaka Dome handed out no teddy bears tonight. The Triple A affiliate of the Yomiuri Giants and their opponent the Lotte Marines, played into the 10th inning in an endless, beleaguering 0-0 game. Because the Eastaaaan League, as the Japanese call their farm system, is only for practice, games are not allowed to go past the 11th inning, a sad fact reminiscent of our heart renching janken loss in Ipponmatsu two years back. If the game goes to a tie, well, that’s it, we all go home happy.
In the ennui of the night, a night I had been looking forward to for most of the day, I took pictures of the colorful oendan (cheering sections) costumes and vendors outfits. I counted the number of Yomiuri players whose name contained the Chinese character for “rice paddy”: 6 of the starting members. I watched little boys smash green tea flavored ice cream and “American dogs” (corn dogs) in their mouths. I talked to salarymen whose jobs had kept them late, only to arrive in the fifth inning to scoreless tie. They said, “Why are they pulling Hayashi!? He’s pitching a no-hitter!” Practice.
The Japanese men who had played in tonight’s game had played better defense than offense, showing again the masculine mettle that prevails in this formal feudal country. The game ended 0-0.
On the way home on the subway young and slim girls in white tight jeans and fluffy red hair punched letters into their cell phones. Drunken middle aged men wobbled to find seats and old women shuffled past advertisements for the heavy bags they were carrying. Every demographic had its own set of accepted mores: the young girls paying attention to fashion, the middle aged men relaxing with liquor on their way home from work. The old women are shopping slaves to the department stores and as for the baseball players, they mix a strong, sedulous respect for hard work with a undying love for Winnie the Pooh.
