Colonel Sanders unearthed

Yesterday afternoon, Jenni forwarded me this story from Yahoo News. As she noted, it combines fried food, baseball, and Japan--a story made for this blog!

In 1985, Hanshin Tiger fans celebrated national championship victory by throwing a statue of Colonel Sanders into a river in Osaka. Said statue resembled Randy Bass, a "key team member." Osaka officials unearthed the statue from the gross-looking river yesterday. I looked up Randy Bass images online and got pretty much nothing. But no matter; look carefully:

I took this snapshot from the video that accompanies the article. Look at those eyes! Colonel Sanders is ASIAN. How on earth is someone named "Randy Bass" going to resemble this statue of Colonel Sanders? Hmm, now I want Japanese KFC...

One last note, not to blast this article or anything; I have much love for the Hanshin Tigers and their crazy fans. But the last line of the article reads: "Osaka, Japan's second-largest city after Tokyo, is located about 260 miles (420 kilometers) west of the capital." This is all lies. Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan after Tokyo! The BayStars need to get crackin' on putting Yokohama on the global map!

Homage to Yokohama Baystars Cheerleaders

We went to a Yokohama Baystars vs. Tokyo Giants game and sat in the bleacher seats. There is no point in going to a Japanese baseball game unless you sit in the bleachers! All the action is where the cheerleaders (ouendan) are--they tell you who you're cheering for, what to cheer, and how to cheer (the rhythm can be tricky; there are different cheers for various players and even moments during the game). These boys/men are all very passionate about cheering, and what they do is not insignificant--the cheering can be heard distinctly on TV, so if there is no guided cheering, the team and its fans look half-hearted and pathetic to everyone in the stadium and watching at home. They're like orchestra conductors! (See video below.)

And then there is this weirdo, who is apparently always present at Baystars games. He wanders around all of the stands on the Baystars side, always wears his sunglasses, and always carries a hand-made sign with weird messages. This one says something about not throwing stuff into the field even if you are angry...or something.

And here is a video of the bad-knee cheerleader guiding us into a victorious cheer for...Yoshimura? They seem to have a nickname for him. I can clap along but I never say anything because I don't know what to say, except that if I had a male child to raise in Japan, I'd encourage him to become of these guys! But maybe he wouldn't want to cheer for the weakest team in all of Japan, with the sorriest record ever? がんばれ横浜！