00:07 John Daub: Hello everybody, I'm in Yokohama right now and this is Yokohama Stadium. This is where the Yokohama BayStars play as one of the Japanese baseball teams. I was invited here to check out one of the games by one of my friends and I said, you know what, why not just go live a little bit and give you an idea of what the atmosphere is like at a Japanese baseball game. It is radically different than an American baseball game. I think there's just so many different things going on at Yokohama Stadium.

00:37 John Daub: At a Japanese baseball game that's different. I'm talking about like the music, the food, the fans, the crowd, the cheerings, the way that the people move, the cleanliness of the stadiums. There's so many different things and I'm not going to talk a lot in this live stream but what I want to do is to give you just a feeling of what it's like to be at a Japanese baseball game without me having to talk too much of it because there's a lot of things that I think you can get out of it.

01:08 John Daub: I'm just observing, just taking it in and I don't care so much about the gameplay. I think what it is is just the atmosphere. So I'm going to take you around. This is where the food concession area is and then I'll take you into where the seating is and then maybe we can say hi to a beer girl or two because yeah, there's that and it's pretty cool. So let's take a look at the food area. I don't know how good the signal is going to be.

01:52 John Daub: There's the Yokohama Girls Festival. Very cool. Oh cool. I love Yokohama. And the star represents the BayStars. Cool. Cool. Wow.

02:27 John Daub: Whoa, you can see the beer girls walking in. They fill their kegs and go back out. Oh, there's a picture of the stadium. It's a pretty traditional round stadium, isn't it? Wow. So I think I'm sitting over on this side. Oh, this is what I had earlier.

02:53 John Daub: This is called the shumai curry. This is really good. And then they have one with cheese on it. And this is the shumai yakisoba. And shumai is this right here. It's a Chinese food that looks like this. Whoa. They have three kinds of sausages. I like the edamame on the menu. That's pretty nice. Whoa. Very cool. All right. They also have gyoza.

03:52 John Daub: BayStars gyoza, which is really, really good. Just a little bit pricey. I think it was about $5 for four of them. So the food is a little bit more expensive. What I like about BayStars games is they have their own craft beer. They have a BayStars ale and a BayStars lager. And it's all made here on site. Oh, here's the gyoza. Very cool.

04:23 John Daub: There's a Freshness Burger as well down there. So they sell burgers. And there's the gyoza down there. Nice. They have half-price beer days sometimes. I came on one of those. Really fun. One beer is 700 yen or about $6.50. And the girls, when you see them out here, you see them, they hold the money in their hands. It's kind of unique the way that the bills are between the fingers like this. And they have snacks attached to them. So they're always selling something. And they're really good at it. A lot of the beer girls are like idols. They have a following, especially with season ticket holders. So there'll be a lot of fans who know them by name. And that in itself is pretty cool.

05:33 John Daub: Alright, so I'm going to take you out to the seats. The game's on the line. So this is from the seats. So this is Tom and he's buying a lager. I really love the excitement right now. And right now at bat is the Hiroshima Toyo Carp. And they're over here. So this is where the Carp are. This is the opposing team. And they're really cheering a lot.

06:47 John Daub: Thank you very much. So this is the craft beer from Yokohama. It's really good. Cheers.

07:16 John Daub: Now it's time for Yokohama. The hometown team is at it now. And they're really at it. Nice.

08:06 John Daub: So right now we're in between the innings. And when the BayStars come back in, you're going to hear some of the chants. Each player has their own kind of a chant, which is pretty cool. I think that's what really separates American baseball. There seems to be a schedule where like in the bottom of the first inning, something will happen. The bottom of the third inning, something will happen. The bottom of the seventh inning, something will happen. And I'll post on Instagram where we released a bunch of balloons into the sky at the bottom of the seventh inning for the BayStars and it was pretty cool, I think, to see that.

08:43 John Daub: So I'm gonna release that on Instagram but just want to give you an idea. Here's one of those events. Wow. They're holding towels and chanting. This is so cool. And DNA is the name of the company that's the owners of the BayStars in Yokohama. Yokohama! Very cool. You can see the band playing up there in the stands. They keep it really clean as well. You can see the guy, they go around with trash bags. So the stadium is immaculately clean. There's the scoreboard. Pretty good seats that we're in.

10:47 John Daub: So that's all I wanted to show you. Just give you a taste. I know that the video might be blurry. There's like 30,000 people in there or something like this. It's extremely crowded. I do apologize if we're getting blurry video because it's just when you're in a crowded spot like this, you're not gonna get really good signal. However, let me put that all aside. If you can hear me, that's all pretty darn good.

13:17 John Daub: And it's a 3-3 game going into the eighth inning. It's really close. It was a warm, warm day in Yokohama and the temperatures just dropped really like a rock and it's kind of cold out here. So a lot of people are freezing and despite the weather, it is actually very, very warm with the people. The more you get up and you jump around, the warmer you get and just the vibe inside of a Japanese baseball game is really, really different. The cheering. Now what they were singing in there were chants for each player. So each player sort of has their own chants. They kind of alter it a little bit based on the player but it gives it this vibe like college football. Kind of like a local vibe if you're talking about something in comparison to the United States. Maybe a football game in Europe. I'm talking about soccer.

14:27 John Daub: But in general, I mean, I really like coming to Japanese baseball games. I shared a little bit of the food before. I don't want to get in too much of the food because I've eaten way too much. I had the shumai curry rice and the gyoza and a couple of beers. But Japanese baseball, I think, if you're here between April and September, you should definitely come and take in a game.

14:47 John Daub: In Tokyo, interestingly enough, there are a bunch of teams within Tokyo. Two within the city of Tokyo. The Swallows and the Giants. The Tokyo Yakult Swallows and the Yomiuri Giants. Nearby in Chiba, which is a short train ride, there's the Chiba Lotte Marines. The Marines have a very big stadium. You can buy the tickets at 7-Eleven vending machines. 7-Eleven convenience stores, which I thought was pretty cool. The BayStars are about a 30-minute train ride from Tokyo Station from Shinjuku and Shibuya. So it's very close. The JR line stops right at the stadium. So it's pretty convenient to walk to Yokohama Stadium where I am now.

15:23 John Daub: There's also Saitama. There's so many other teams in the Tokyo area. And of course, there's a team in Sapporo and Fukuoka and Osaka. They're the Tigers. There's Hiroshima Carp. So, you know, Japan is the size of California and to have such a diverse amount of teams is really, really cool. So there's always an opportunity for first-timers to go to a game. I don't see many that are sold out. Although today is pretty packed.

15:51 John Daub: So I hope you enjoyed the atmosphere of a Japanese baseball game. I'm gonna take you out and show you the stadium in between the innings to give you one more vibe. A little bit more of the vibe. And then I'm gonna cut out. So thank you very much for watching. Thank you for the well wishes on the wedding. She's a little bit shy to be introduced today, but she's very good. Next week you're gonna get a chance to meet her. She is here with me, my wife. I'm gonna take you outside, take a look at the stadium between innings. Bye bye everybody.

16:19 John Daub: Well this is a really really fun evening that we have here. Just check it out. This is it. See everybody. Have a good night, good day wherever you are in the world. Happy baseball!