Carping on

On the weekend Y Sensei and her lovely daughters accompanied me to the baseball where we watched Hiroshima Carp triumph over some lesser-known, regional team. Not one for baseball myself, I sat back on the bleachers and enjoyed watching the crowd who are famous for their chants and general raucous cheering. Many people were equipped with red Carp megaphones or plastic bats that they struck and hammered in frenetic beats, or waved in choreographed semaphoring, that took place at 5-minute intervals. In the seventh inning, the spectators inflated sausage-like balloons, fixed with a whistle at the mouth, and unleashed them into the air in a storm of colour. It was most hilarious to watch as the balloons jetted about the stadium making dubious windy noises – whistling “piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!”, and then to see them all descend in a rain of shrivelled, bespittled plastic. What larks!