Fun with foreigner visitors

After a hard day's work in Tokyo, where do you take foreign visitors during the rainy season?

The answer we came up with was a baseball game at the Tokyo Dome!!

By some odd chance the Yomiuri Giants (a.k.a. Tokyo Giants) were playing the Chunichi Dragons (Nagoya's team).  I was happy to cheer on my hometown team, and check out the Tokyo stadium. 

The Yomiuri Giants are based off of the NY Giants of the 1930's (now San Francisco Giants).  They even have the same uniforms and team colors.  The Yomiuri Giants are the oldest and most popular team in Japan, and they have won the most pennants and Japan series titles. 

Take me out the the ballgame... buy me some beer and ... Pocky?!  It was a special Pocky promotion day.  Each free box featured a Giants player.  (Pocky is tiny chocolate-covered sticks.)

I was very happy because the food in Tokyo was a little more Westernized than Nagoya.  I had my first hot dog in 8 months!  It was delicious!

Here's one of the beer girls.  They carry small kegs around on their backs, so you can have draft beer in the stands.  Also notice that no ladies actually wear their baseball caps.  They fold it in half and pin it to their hair. 

Matt (from North America) and Fred (from Europe) in town for some training.  Fred hasn't been to a baseball game since he was a child living in New York in the 1970's!

When the Giants hit a home run, the crowd goes wild waving their orange towels.  Who knows, they might do a similar thing in Nagoya, but I've never seen them score a run, much less a home run!

Fan section with all of the orange towels.

Out came this giant Giants banner during the 7th inning stretch.  It truly felt like a college football game!

There was no "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" song at any point throughout the game. I was really disappointed because I was ready for the cartoon Wii voice this time!

Here is the Giant's mascot.  She's half "YG" logo and half rabbit.  Therefore, her name is "Giabbitt".

The Dragons played better today, but not good enough to beat the Giants.  Since the home team won, they had a MVP ceremony and interview after the game.  Notice the MVP on the jumbotron is holding a big "Giabbitt" stuffed animal!!  LOL.

Kerri is fist-bumping with a Giants player!!

Next stop on our Tokyo evening of fun is ... Karaoke!

It took a little convincing to even get Matt and Fred to agree to karaoke, but it's a true Japanese tradition! 

I thought they were going to pee their pants from laughing so hard when Tag asked me if I had my karaoke club members card with me!  I like karaoke, but unfortunately I'm not part of the "club".

Kerri and the giant wall of Zima bottles when we enter karaoke.  Who even drinks Zima anymore?

Apparently, we do!

Tag ordered us all Zima because we could get 10% off of our total bill, but I'm pretty the cost of 4 Zimas was more than 10% of our bill... 

Tag sings the Japanese national anthem.

We all had an awesome time singing the night away. 

Even though the foreigners were hesitant to karaoke at first, by the end we were all rushing to get our choice of songs in.  We even extended our time after the first 90 minutes because we simply weren't ready to leave!