Experiencing baseball in Japan had been another of my bucket list items, so when we heard friends had plans to go the following night we quickly crashed them by inviting ourselves & four kids along.

From the start, everything about seeing the Yokohama DeNa Baystars was amazing. There was an eclectic energy as we walked up to Yokohama stadium, just in time for the first pitch.

The night just got better from there. As with everything, the Japanese have figured out how to make everything awesome. Baseball here is much more like a college football game than a professional baseball game, which is of course, exactly my speed.

There are chants for players & innings & home runs.

They sell plastic bat sets which are part of the chants, but which my son found a more amusing purpose for:

There are beer girls.

I didn’t see them, but apparently there are also Pop Rock Chuhais (a flavored alcohol) so obviously that is going on my list for our next game.

The constant action in the crowd meant that the game was way, wayyyyy more exciting than an American baseball game.  Just when we thought the game was wrapping up, the hometown crowd released balloons!

Not many things will hold a toddler’s attention for four hours – far, far past bedtime, with a light drizzle coming down – but this did. He was enraptured the whole time, and this solidified his baseball obsession. He now asks for baseball a minimum of one thousand times a day, and if our MLB package doesn’t deliver, we always return to these videos!

To buy tickets, we visited our local 7-11 and requested the same section as our friends – tickets in advance are available online (in Japanese) or from most convenience stores, where the nice clerk will usually handle all the details for you. Take the train to Kannai Station, and the stadium is less than a two-minute walk away. There’s no parking onsite, which again, is awesomely Japanese and awesome in general.